Part #3: Wrestling....In the Beginning

(Hebrew name for first book of Jewish Bible) In the Beginning

1:1 --In beginning, Elohim created/creating, the heavens and the earth

A number of questions can be asked about this short sentence, and the next several. There are disagreements among Hebrew scholars, too, on a number of issues.

#1 Was this the beginning of the whole cosmos or, specifically, the beginning only of the earth and sky?

#2 Why is God called Elohim (which means God,‘in a generic sense’ in Hebrew because the word is also used for other gods than that of the Hebrews, and even refers to messengers and rulers, too)
rather than YHWH as in In the Beginning , chapter 2?

#3 Why was the earth “unformed and void” in the beginning?
Why would God create it in what seems to be a negative state of being?
And were the heavens also "unformed and void"?

#4 Why was there “darkness on the face of the deep”?

#5 Why did the spirit of God hover “over the face of the waters”, the “face of the deep”?

#6 What was the light that God said, “Let there be…” since the earth’s sun wasn't created until the 4th day?

#7 Why did God see the light, “that it was good”?

#8 What does it mean to say that “God divided the light from the darkness”?

#9 Is the “darkness” the same as “unformed and void”? Did God create the “darkness” or oppose it by creating light?

#10 Why did God call the light Day, and the darkness Night since there wouldn’t be turnings of the earth to meet the sun until the 4th day?

#11 Likewise, what does it mean when it says, “there was evening and there was morning, one day”?

#12 Why do modern translators use words such as Genesis instead of translating the Hebrew word-for-word?

I actually prefer the Hebrew literal translations of the first 5 books instead of the traditional English names:

In the Beginning
-
The Names
-
And He Called
-
In the Desert
-
Things or Words


TO BE CONTINUED--


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

"History...a Nightmare" vs. "History...to Hope"?

"History is a nightmare we are trying to wake up from."
-James Joyce
VS.
"It is history that teaches us to hope."
-Civil War Talk website
---

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."
-Winston Churchill

“If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know.”
-British Prime Minister Lloyd George, on Great War

"“It is necessary to know how to conceal...and to be a great pretender and dissembler...those princes who have done great things have considered keeping their word of little account, and have known how to beguile men’s minds by shrewdness and cunning. In the end these princes have overcome those who have relied on keeping their word.” “Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it..."
-Machiavelli
VS.
"The first casualty when war comes is truth, and whenever an individual nation seeks to coerce by force of arms another, it always acts, and insists that it acts in self-defense."
-American senator Hiram Johnson, on Great War

“.... more deliberate lies were told than in any other period of history, and the whole apparatus of the state went into action to suppress the truth”.
-War Journalist Phillip Knightley, on Great War

"When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty."
-Member of Parliament Arthur Ponson, Falsehood in War-time, Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War

from Wikipedia:
Historian Anne Morelli's explanation of "Ponsonby's classic in "ten commandments of propaganda":

"We do not want war.

The opposite party alone is guilty of war.

The enemy is the face of the devil.

We defend a noble cause, not our own interest.

The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary.

The enemy uses forbidden weapons.

We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.

Artists and intellectuals back our cause.

Our cause is sacred.

All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors."

Notice how ALL--or at least most--of those characterize nearly all wars in history, and include present-day conflicts, especially the 7 ones that the U.S. and other countries are currently engaging in!

See also, Jesus Wars and The Great and Holy War by Historian Phillip Jenkins

At this juncture in my aged life--
after at least 57 years of reading history tomes--it would seem that history is
neither "a Nightmare"
nor a "Hope,
but
rather our past life, and so we ought to study it for dear life, hoping that we can ferret out what is true from all the myths, all the intentional lies and semi-lies, and all the misunderstandings, confusions, and distortions that comprise the FOG of HISTORY.

Seeking the Truth,

Daniel Wilcox

The Beginning of Wisdom

Remember we spoke last time of how Scripture is paradoxical, of how the Bible is mainly pictorial, symbolical, and mythical and less often or seldom logical, philosophical, and scientific. Poetic utterances come forward more often than journalistic prose.

So how does this help us to understand biblical contradictions? Consider Psalms 110:10-112:1 saying "The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom..How blessed the man who fears Yahweh..." versus I John 4:7-21 saying "Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God..God is love..There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."

First, notice that humans are "blessed" who fear God. In Scripture, to be blessed is a wondrous happiness. Obviously, the writer isn't dealing with the kind of fear that we often think of when we use the word today. When a person says he has a fear of terrorism, he is not "blessed."

Second consider a rather simplistic analogy: I both fear and love the Grand Canyon. I've never cringed toward the Canyon; that is not what I mean by fearing the Canyon. Rather, when I was on one of my many trips into the Grand Canyon backpacking, I had to crawl across several rocks slides and move along a trail only as wide as a large book and slanted toward a cliff which plummeted straight down over 1,000 feet!

The wind was blowing, yanking on my 60-pound backpack. Let me tell you, I was aware of the awesome danger--that this was real not some virtual game or safe tourist area. I feared the Canyon!

Yet contradictorily, I loved the Canyon. Few times in my life have I ever felt so in love with any place, any scene. To descend down dangerous trails, being able to look back geologically millions of years and outward visually for miles and miles, the vista so vast that I almost ended in ecstatic awe!

Extrapolate this basic example to fearing and loving Absolute Goodness, Total Truth, Ultimate Reality. Fearing and loving God are complimentary responses/actions. Ecstatic awe and deep intimate relationship with the Eternal are together as one. At least that is Jesus' view.

When I John writes that there is no "fear in love" he isn't speaking of absolute awe. Rather the writer is saying that an individual who responds to God's love will no longer have a cringing kind of fear of God. He or she will live in the Beloved.

Consider this modern version of these scriptural passages: "The Love of God is the beginning of wisdom."

In the Light of God,

Daniel Wilcox