God likes diversity not unity!

A few thoughts from Where God Was Born: A Journey By Land to the Roots of Religion by Bruce Feiler ...


Yair Zokovitch, dean of humanities at Hebrew University and a biographer of David to Bruce and his archaeologist friend Avner:

"Biblical historiography is unique in many ways because it goes from one character to another, presenting our history through people. And that history is the story of the failure of our leaders. God is our blessing; our leaders are our punishment." pg. 85

Do you reckon this applies to us as well?  

 
When visiting Iran and learning about Zoroastrianism:

"In the battle of good and evil, Zoroastrians view death as a temporary triumph of evil, so any contact with a dead object can taint the forces of good.  As a result, humans were not cremated, because burning the body would defile the fire.  Bodies were not buried, because they would defile the earth. Bodies were left exposed in the open air, where they could be decomposed by the sun and devoured by vultures. This public exposure had the added benefit of reinforcing the religion's egalitarian principles, as rich and poor were disposed of in the same manner." pg. 292

Guess that would put an end to the cremation vs. burial debate, huh?  

 

Bruce's thoughts after rereading this story while in Iraq amongst the ziggurats:

In the episode that precedes Babel, the Flood, God is so angry at humans' lawlessness that he opts to wipe out all of humanity, "to put an end to all the flesh."  Five chapters later, after humans build the Tower of Babel, God no longer seeks to annihilate humans; he merely scatters them over the face of the earth. His leniency is telling. God is not threatened by humans' industry; he is threatened by their unity. Specifically, he worries that if humans put aside their differences and act as one, they will think of themselves as more powerful than God. To reinforce his view, God's response to homogeneity is instructive: He re-creates humans in heterogeneous groups, forcing them to live as distinct cultures, speaking multiple languages.

The message here is unexpected but powerfully relevant today.  When humans try to create one language -- when one group of people tries to impose an artificial order on the world -- God views this as a hubristic attempt to usurp his powers and slaps down the arrogation.  God insists on diversity. He demands that humans accept their differences. In rejecting the Tower of Babel, God rejects fundamentalism, the idea that one way of speaking is the only way of speaking and can be imposed on others at will.

God's solution is a cacophony of voices, living side by side. pg. 261

United we stand and become more like God, and divided we're scattered enough to never reach God's level?  Hmmm

Why do you think God scattered the people into the variety of cultures and languages? Do you like how Bruce applied the Tower of Babel story making it relevant for today?  I very much appreciate the thought of no one group imposing its will on everyone else. This is why I increasingly reject the United States having its hand in every world situation and on a more minor scale, why I think no one religious group should make the laws that apply to everyone living in a certain land.  I don't think most people want others to impose their interpretations of religion on everyone else. Thus why I hear talk of Americans who will fight militant Islam's global caliphate plans (if there truly are any...maybe this is just conspiracy talk.) 


Please share your thoughts on any of this!

Life After Death

"...Whoever lives and believes in me will never die." - Jesus

Nabatean tomb

After seeing Egyptian pyramids and enormous tombs that the Nabateans created in Petra, Bruce asked Avner why the Pentateuch doesn't pay more attention to the afterlife.  The Bible mentions the patriarchs being buried, but not much about how or why.  Avner replied:

"Because the Bible deals with life -- how to live a holy life, an ethical life, a spiritual life. One of the reasons the Israelites ignored Egyptian influence on death is that the purpose of life in the Pentateuch is largely to serve God, or to have a family that will serve God. There's no mention of an afterlife. Life ceases when you die.  And when you die, you stop serving God."

"But God continues."

"That's right. This is a break from other Near Eastern religions. In Egypt, in Petra, the kings become deities themselves.  The pyramids, these tombs, are representations of the power of those people after they die."

Pyramids

"But if you're an Israelite ---"

"There's only one God. He exists forever. So if you're going to build a temple, you build it to God. You don't build it to yourself." 

Jewish Temple

I liked this brief exchange because it stresses the deity and importance of God and not pharaohs or any other human leader.  Have you ever thought about the Torah's silence on the afterlife?  Were the people so busy trying to survive, that they didn't have time to contemplate after death, what happens to us?  Did they not care? Were they content in knowing this life is all there is to existence?  Or was it merely that the Jews' main thought was pleasing God and living set apart and holy in the here and now so there was no need to include much of anything about life after death?  Did they know if they kept the Law, they would have good things after death so why ponder the unknowable and unfathomable future - "what is eternal life like?" - when they could focus on the practical and doable part - what got them there?  Why do the New Testament writers include much more about eternal life and how to obtain it?  Even Jesus is recorded in discussions with someone in how to be 'born again' spiritually so he might have everlasting life.

Thoughts?


Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler; pg. 386

Dry humor seems fitting for a book that has many stories from the desert, right?

I'm still mostly reading Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler these days.  While I find Reza Aslan's No God But God interesting and informative, it's not a library book so I can take my time in reading it. For some reason I feel more compelled to read the other book mostly and I'm making good progress.  I keep finding words and stories that are either amusing, fascinating, interesting or make me stop and reflect.  (I shared a few of those the other day in my Pyramids post.) The author frequently gives some historical background - ancient and more modern - which I enjoy. He tells of people he meets and cultural experiences.  Definitely my kind of book!  And I love that little bit of humor he puts in there as well.

Like the day he and his archaeologist pal travel across the border from Israel into Jordan. He shares some background stories and then writes,

These days, peace is nominally at hand, and a visitor arriving from Israel is expected to come bearing cigarettes at least. Having made this trip many times, Avner knew the drill and presented our Jordanian guide, Mahmoud, with a red-and-white carton fresh from the duty-free.  "But they're not Marlboro," Mahmoud said.  "They're Gold Coast."  His disappointment at the cheap imitations was palpable, so Avner walked back through the security gate and to the border itself, only to arrive back fifteen minutes later, unsuccessful.  "Oh, well. It's all poisonous just the same," Mahmoud said, and we were on our way.  (pg. 353)

Love that line by Mahmoud there at the end!  

I remember seeing warnings like this in the Istanbul airport shops.

  
One day while they were climbing the narrow, rock-strewn path up a mountain in the Sinai, they were suddenly "joined by a swarm of hangers-on, a cluster of barefoot, eight-year-old boys who tugged at our shorts and reached into our pockets, parroting, 'Money. Dollars. Pepsi. USA!' We spoke to them, ignored them, sighed at them, turned them down, but still they continued to haggle with us for most of the way to the top.  'Money. One dollar.  Two dollar. Baksheesh!'  Eventually, after half an hour, they changed tactics and elected to hold our hands and sing to us.  'At least we have something to sacrifice when we get to the top,' I said." (pg. 216)

Don't worry kids. I'm sure he was just kidding!

 We stopped for directions. Then stopped again. We stopped a third time, and a fourth. Whoever popularized the theory that men don't ask for directions has never visited the Egyptian Delta. But the directions were often contradictory: left past the third mound of dirt, right at the fork in the canal; left at the tractor, right at the burning manure.  Eventually at a gas station we got directions that sounded right -- "Stay on this road, not left or right " -- if only because they sounded as if they came right out of the Bible. Within seconds, Avner produced a passage, Joshua 1:7, with the same instructions: "Turn not to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go." It's no wonder it took the Israelites forty years to cross the desert; they spent half that time just getting out of town.  (pg. 173)

Good luck getting outta there!

Pyramids, Prejudices, Egypt..oh my!

So I mentioned that I was reading Walking Through the Bible by an American Jew named Bruce Feiler.  The subtitle is "a journey by land through the five books of Moses" and so far I've traveled with him and his archaeologist friend Avner Goren through parts of Turkey, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Egypt. Currently I am in Cairo getting ready to head to Goshen.  (Isn't it great how I said that as if I'm actually traveling with them?)   I love all the historical tales meshed with modern times plus the archaeological stuff!  I've read 164 pages out of more than 400 so I wanted to jot down a few notes thus far. Most of these are just amusing descriptions or thoughtful observations of the author in his travels.

But first did you know that the largest pyramid has 2,300,000 limestone blocks that if you lined end to end could pave a single-lane road from San Francisco to New York?!  (pg. 157)    Woooooooooooow!  They sure must look bigger in person than they do in picture books!  ;)

So, yeah, I find stuff like that fascinating!  And here are just a few other things so far that have taken my attention.



Upon meeting one of Avner Goren's colleagues and being invited into the historian and "patriarch of biblical scholars," Avraham Malamat's house:

"'Welcome to my home,' he said gesturing grandly and noting that he had 10,500 books in his personal library.  'How many about the Bible?' I asked.  He seemed surprised by the question. 'Ten thousand five hundred.'"   (pg. 94)

Of course!  What other kinds of books are there, right? 



The author's image of archaeologists:  "grown-ups playing in the sand. They're adult versions of sandbox architects, taking materials they find in the ground, arranging them in a certain coherent order, and sprinkling in their own imaginations to create a thriving reality where the rest of us would see nothing, or worse, pave it over and build a mall. They're squabblers at times; absentminded often.  But, at their best, they're sort of inverted prophets. If prophets foretell the future, warning of what might come, archaeologists foretell the past, warning of what already happened."  (pg. 104)

That mall thing kind of got to me!


The author met another archaeologist, Gabriel Barkay, and they discussed the time when biblical archaeology became popular.   When asked how does proving the Bible help faith, Barkay replied:

"'I'm a local Jew,' he said. 'I don't care whether this or that detail is incorrect in the Bible. It doesn't change my attitude toward the Bible, toward religion, toward God. Or toward myself.  But in America there was an idea that the Bible is a kind of machine; if you prove that two of the screws really existed, then the whole machine existed, and if you take out two screws, the whole thing collapses.  But the Bible is not a machine. It doesn't have screws.'" (pg. 106)

Gabi continues, "'Serious people know that some parts of the Bible go well with archaeology, others do not.  So what? I'm not going to find in archaeology, ever, a business card that says "Abraham, son of Terah."  But it doesn't matter. It's not a book of history. It's a book of faith.'"  (pg. 107)

Now that card would be an awesome find! :-)


When he first arrived in Egypt the author admits to his dread.  Growing up Jewish, he had a thought of Egypt being an enemy country. Not because of current events, but rather because of the biblical account from Moses' time when the pharoah enslaved the Israelites.  So he first thinks he is being heckled by people on the streets until he realized the teenagers were offering him cigarettes and asking if he knew Michael Jordan.  He felt so comfortable by the next night that he used public transportation and when he asked for directions, the fifteen people in the van all joined in the conversation and half of them got off the van early in order to walk him to where he needed to go.  "'The biggest surprise about the Middle East,' I declared to friends, 'is how friendly the Arabs are.'"  (pg. 124)

I can so relate, Bruce!  The Syrian Arabs I met were oh-so kind!


While traveling on the famous, life-giving river, the author speaks of his "aversion to the Nile.  This feeling, I was beginning to see, like many I unknowingly carried around within me, stems largely from the Bible, and the deep cultural prejudices I inherited from it as a child.  The Nile may have given rise to the greatest civilization of antiquity, but that civilization, in turn, almost annihilated the Israelites.  In my mind, Egypt was the adversary, the aggressor, the other.  And before I could embrace - or even appreciate - this part of the Bible, I first had to overcome any latent hostility to Egypt."  (pg. 136)

Wow, I wonder how many of us carry around cultural prejudices we maybe developed as children. I know at one time I didn't really care for Germans because I thought of evil Hitler and images I had of Germans being OK with killing Jews simply because they weren't white, blond or blue-eyed.  I wasn't even taught to be this way, but just kind of picked it up somewhere in my mind while reading about Germans and maybe watching The Sound of Music where those evil Germans were after the captain to come fight in their war!  It's amazing how prejudices can form even without us realizing it!



Later in the book the author and his friend Avner were talking after having visited the Egyptian Museum where they saw the wonders of Tutankhamen's tomb.  Bruce asked Avner what made him the most excited about all that they had seen buried with the Egyptian ruler.  Avner didn't say the gold or mask or anything about the artifacts, but "the human touch."  "'This was designed by people, it was built by people.'"

I told him about my conversation with Basem [a Muslim tour guide who had his degree in Egyptology], in which he said he felt distant from ancient Egyptians because they had different beliefs.

"I believe that if I were to come back in that time," Avner said, "I would be able to bridge the gap.  I feel they were people like us, despite their beliefs.  It's like coming to Egypt today.  People in Israel think Egyptians are different from them. Still, it was fun to talk to the driver on the way from the airport. He was very curious about Tel Aviv. He had heard it was a great city.  What is the cost of living there? How are the people there? In spite of the gaps, which are big, we're much closer than people think."

"But what makes you think that?" I said. "In Exodus, Egypt is the enemy."

"Not so fast," he said. "Egypt is not a bad place in the Bible. It's the pharaoh, he's a bad man."

"But I thought you said those were the same thing."

He smiled. "The pharaoh of Joseph was not a bad man. Remember, he saved Joseph from prison and invited his family to live in Goshen.  It was a different pharaoh, four hundred years later, who put the Israelites into bondage. That's when the Bible changes its mind.  That's when Egypt becomes the enemy."  (pgs. 154-155)

And although these Jewish men didn't probably continue with this train of thought,  I can't help but remember the angel of God instructing Joseph to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt in order to avoid Jesus' death after Herod's decree that all baby boys be killed in his attempt to get rid of this new Jewish king the wise men were searching for.  (see Matthew 2)



After giving description of the congestion in Cairo and the traffic, the author records Avner's take on the taxis:  "'The only reason these cars have steering wheels is so they have a place to put their horns.'"   (pg. 148)

I can only laugh at this because I remember the horns of Damascus!  I've never heard so much honking!  And I hear Cairo is waaaay worse!



Speaking of their visit to the Egyptian Museum, the author says, "Founded in 1858, the museum outgrew its current facility within months and has never recovered. Allowing one minute for each object, it would take nearly nine months to view its 136,000 artifacts. Forty thousand more objects lie crated in the basement, where many have sunk into the ground, requiring excavations.  Egypt:  where even the museums are archaeological sites."  (pg. 148)

Ha! Loved that last line!


Did you find any of these interesting, impressive, noteworthy, troubling, amusing or do you now know for certain that I am warped and find the weirdest stuff to take the time to share?  Do tell!

Notes: Moses Wrote The Torah

Background:  Some Bible scholars believe Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible whereas other scholars argue for editors during or after the Israelites' exile compiling the Torah (and other early OT books) from oral tradition and some written records.


A Survey of Old Testament Introduction by Gleason L. Archer, Jr. is a 500+ page book that my dad let me borrow.  I'm about halfway through and wanted to record some notes that I've made thus far. No use reading a book this size without learning something from it!  And if I don't write it down, I may forget. So...blogging it is.

The author presents theories of men who have varying thoughts on the authorship and time period in which the OT books were written.  His emphasis seems to be on Genesis and the rest of the Torah since many believe Moses did not write it and that the first five books of the Bible were compiled by editors during or after the Israelites' exile.  The author makes a case for the conservative view...reasons that make him believe Moses did write the Torah and why it had Aramaic loanwords and such things that others have used to "prove" it was written by editors during or post-exile.  It's a rather large and somewhat technical book. During parts of it I am merely wading through, while other areas are of some interest.

Chapter 8 dealing with The Authorship of the Pentateuch was really good. I thought the author made a strong case for his beliefs. He told how the editor/late date hypothesis made it such that when a P title for God was used in a supposed J text, the theorists had to make it such that the editors did a lot of copying, deleting and pasting within the text. (Yes, I realize editors delete and add a lot, but if you read the chapter you'd understand better why I took note of this.)

Despite the fact it was regularly done in other religions of that time, for some reason it seems unbelievable to the Late-Date Theorists that Moses could or would actually use TWO different words for God.  Elohim and Yahweh couldn't have both been used for God by ONE author within the same verse or chapter in their view.  The author states that Elohim was often used in passages about God as Creator whereas Yahweh or Jehovah was used in covenants between God and man.  (see pg. 125)

Regarding the two creation accounts, I found the "element of recapitulation" argument of interest.  The author claims this "technique" was "widely practiced in ancient Semitic literature.  The author would first introduce his account with a short statement summarizing the whole transaction, and then he would follow it up with a more detailed and circumstantial account when dealing with matters of special importance.  To the author of Genesis 1-2, the human race was obviously the crowning, or climatic, product of creation."  (pg. 127)

There is much more that took my attention, but people arguing that a Hebrew couldn't write books at that time perhaps did not realize Moses - as part of pharoah's household - was educated in Egypt  where "the art of writing was so widely cultivated that even the toilet articles employed by the women in the household contained an appropriate inscription."  (pg 118)  Also since Moses was part of the Israelite crowd wandering in the wilderness for all those years, why could he not have used some of that time to record what God wanted him to write?  The author has a chapter on archaeology that shows Semitic people were not as uneducated and illiterate as we may want to think they were.  Sophisticated writing has been unearthed.

Some argue that the Torah has some Aramaic loanwords which point to the exilic period when the Israelites were spread in regions that spoke Aramaic  (e.g. The book of Daniel has much Aramaic and was written during exile).  These scholars say the Torah should have no Aramaic words if it were written during Moses lifetime, however, the author makes a claim that Abraham and Sarah came from an area of the world that likely spoke Aramaic not to mention Aramaic and Hebrew along with several other Semitic languages are related somewhat.  Who knows where Aramaic left off and Hebrew began as far as the children of Israel go?  Hebrew could be an offshoot dialect of Aramaic...so having Aramaic in the Torah isn't really proof that it was written hundreds of years after its claim.  Not only would Abraham and Sarah likely speak Aramaic, but Isaac's wife, Rebekah, was brought back from that region and later Jacob went there, lived at least 14 years and married two women - Leah and Rachel - who may have spoken Aramaic. Leah, Rachel and their maidservants were the mothers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel so I don't find it hard to believe some of "mama's tongue" made it into the children's vocabulary and thus the Bible. (see pg. 138)

The author also found it curious that the Torah - if written post-exile where the "chosen line of David had reigned for more than four centuries in the holy city of Jerusalem" didn't have "a very strong and explicit sanction for the kingship."   He writes, "It is hardly conceivable that any patriotic Jewish author, who believed in the divine authorization of the Davidic dynasty, could have passed it over in complete silence."  (pg. 156)   Likewise Jerusalem is not spoken of with high regard as this holy city would be referred to in future biblical books. (pg. 163)  Actually Jerusalem is not even mentioned by name in the Torah.

"Although Jerusalem appears in the Hebrew Bible 669 times, it is not mentioned in the Pentateuch. Instead when referring to Jerusalem, the term "the place that God will choose" is used."  (source)


The End.  :)

a book review on The News Answers Book

The New Answers Book is a compilation of over 25 questions on creation, evolution and the Bible. The general editor is Ken Ham from the apologetics ministry, Answers in Genesis. While a few of the chapters and explanations were too scientific for my brain, others were fascinating and enlightening. The book dealt with issues such as Genesis, the days of creation (six literal days), dinosaurs, carbon dating UFOs, the global flood, fossils, the Ice Age, death and suffering and more. One topic I enjoyed a lot dealt with the "races" of mankind. I didn't realize this understanding of races was rooted in evolution which believes the Caucasoid "race" was the most superior (sounds kind of like Hitler and proponents of enslaving black people, eh?). Ken Ham said we should get rid of that evolutionized term because all people are equal in God's eyes. The only race is the human race. God did not make us all look exactly alike.

I also appreciated the chapter on defense-attack structures on animals and plants. Was this part of the original creation which God declared "very good" or was this a result of the Fall? Indeed Romans 8:22 reminds us that "the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now" as a result of sin and death entering the world. Not only was the serpent, men and women cursed, but all of creation. Before the Fall, animals did not attack and eat one another, but suffering and death are a result of sin entering the world. This is one reason the evolutionary theory of dinosaurs living millions of years prior to man is wrong. For dinosaurs to have killed one another and die from natural causes would have meant there was suffering and death in the world prior to sin, and simply the Bible teaches this to not be the case.

A favorite thought from the book concerning chemical evolution is that "the evolutionist is asking us to believe that a tornado can pass through a junk yard and assemble a jumbo jet." :-) Yes, evolution is that ludicrous! And they say we are foolish for having faith in a Creator who brought about all this order, creativity and goodness!

Another favorite chapter dealt with archaeology and how it supports the Bible. Psalm 85:11 says, "Truth springs from the earth." Over the years people have ridiculed the Bible for mentioning something that was later found to be true. In fact even many secular archaeologists use the Bible because it has proven to be so accurate in its mentioning of customs of the day, languages used, prophecy, specific incidents and people, nations and so forth. That was an incredibly encouraging chapter because it is further assurance that the God Who gave us His Word can certainly preserve it in order that men and women today can know His plan of salvation.