The beginning.

Impressum

Five years of Seminary, three educational trips to the Holy Land, 15 years as a United Methodist pastor and United Methodist youth pastor.

    Introduction

I am not intending to disrespect your church or beliefs. When I became a United Methodist Pastor I saw the church in a much different light than when I was a member. As a member I had a circle of friends and everything was joyous and wonderful. After being a pastor I saw evil in the church and I saw it was a club run by the money people to promote their agenda for their club and not the agenda of God.

 
Two of my favorite verses in the Bible are from Deuteronomy:
Deuteronomy 30:19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and love God in the land I am giving you.
And Deut 1.6 The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Break camp and advance.
Choose life and advance. If church and church teachings make no sense to you this might be a way to understand what the scriptures meant when written and why they were written and how to apply them to your life then this might be up your alley. In my opinion, much of the history of the Old Testament was written as a response to the Jewish exile in Babylon between the years 586 B.C.E. and 533 B.C.E. In exile the Jews asked, "How did this happen, our city and temple are totally alienated and we are all carried off to Babylon for not paying monetary tribute to King Nebakanezer. The answer came in oral stories refined and then written down that explained all the things they and done wrong and what to do to avoid those mistakes in the future. They showed God's anger in punishing their wrong doing. Thus the Old Testament God comes across as being miffed all the time. In the beginning of the beginning of the Holy Bible, known by some Jews as the Holy Scriptures or by Christian as the Old Testament we see evidence that the Scriptures were written by four sources, or schools as it were with similar but differing agendas. There is always an agenda. God's pure message comes to us as pure light but it goes through the human being like pure light through a bottle. Humans puts our own twist on the message. God does the best God can with that intervention. See:http://www.theopedia.com/JEDP_theory. J. is German Y English. Jehovah in German, Yahweh in English and yhwh in Hebrew. J Refers to the eternal God of Justice. It is rendered LORD, all caps, in much of the Old Testament and of course in Genesis 2. The stories and writings are from c 960 B.C.E. (Before the common Era or the year 0) in the southern Kingdom of Judah. Yhwh is good, generous. all knowing, and also our judge. Yhwh brings punishment as in Exodus in plagues and killing the first born of all living things including Egyptians and punishment of Sodom. Which I will discuss later and has nothing to do with homosexuality. That is one of the many grossly misunderstood stories in scripture.

E. Elohist is for Elohim and has it origins c. 850 B.C.E in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. E. refers to the supreme God who is mighty and shows mercy. Elohim is plural form and in my opinion does not point at the Trinity as many believe but was given that designation from respect of all powerful nature of Elohim. As in Elohim the all powerful God of Mercy created everything including humans in as God or in the image of God. This means humans share power over all the earth with God not that we are gods or god like. But God has given us power use all the earth without exploiting it. We use it as God would use it. Or we should anyway. Elohim gives of all the good things of the earth to eat. Think of the variety of the waters teaming with fishes, and plants and vegitables and fruits and nuts and hamburger joints. Just seeing if you are paying attention. God gives us an indescribable variety of foods. A bounty we cannot comprehend. 

D is for Dueteronomist writers and is primarily confined, but not totally to The Book Of Deuteronomy c. 600 Jerusalem during religious reform.    High Priest Hilkiah was rummaging  around in the Temple tyding things up when of all things he came upon a scroll he called Deuteronomy which means, Second Telling. Hilkiah quickly told good King Josiah of his find.  Methinks the High Priest wrote it himself.  Be that as it may the book described the evil wrongdoings of the people and the terrible vengeance of the Lord.   The king tore his clothes (luckily he was wearing a light summer gown) and cried out "Woe is us.  We must put on sack cloth and ashes and repent.  And the word went forth to all the people, "knock off the sinning or get the royal foot up your behinds.   Thus came the religious reform. 

P is for Priestly sources c. 600 - 400 B.C.E.   This source of many priests emphasis the important role of priests and that God message be relayed though the High Priest and not the kind.   It focuses on ceremony like circumcision (gasp) sacrifice, P includes many lists (especially genealogies), dates, numbers and laws. Portrayals of God viewed as distant and unmerciful are ascribed to P. P partly duplicates J and E, but alters details to stress the importance of the priesthood. P consists of about a fifth of Genesis (including its famous first chapter), substantial portions of Exodus and Numbers, and almost all of Leviticus.  P has a low level of literary style.

    Do you need to know and remember all that?  No.

Gen 1 and 2 are both creation stories.We need to understand that the God we know, and we typically use the name God, Is not a vengeful killer. He is portrayed that way to scare Hebrews in ancient times to toe the mark. They had no way of knowing their work would be read thousands of years in the future by a bazillion people over a world they could not comprehend.

While reading today's Bible we can appreciate how hard it was in the middle ages to translated it from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and then English and a multitude of other languages. Originally in the Old Testament an entire book would be written without spaces, vowels, and punctuation. so gdsnwhr could be translated, God is now here or God is no where. Imagine the entire Book of Genesis written liket that. The translators filled in a lot just by what sounded correct or seemed to fit.

The ancient story tellers and writers were very clever. Adam means man in ancient Hebrew. Adamah is ground. So Adam was made from Adamah. Translated to Latin it would be humans came from the humus.

Take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is metaphor not history. Think about it. Adam and Eve did not have a written language. Heck, they didn't even have pencil and paper. While humans were made as God or in the image of God, and God knew they would get wise to the fact that humans could be capable of doing fun things that were not in keeping with the purity of the Creator God's perfect creation. Humans did not eat from a forbidden tree. Humans, the Creator God's greatest creation learned quickly and they introduced bad things into their environment. That is the nature of humans. The so called serpent is the temptation of being naughty. The ancients described temptation as naked, smooth, unprotected, vulnerable. The whole fall from grace thing is a way to explain why an all powerful God, (Elohim) would have imperfection in God's perfect creation.