Bible Topics

I have a huge idea bouncing in my brain. Elohim was the generic word for any "Deity." "Yahweh" was the special name to signify the God of Israel. This name, too, is generic in that it stresses he is the source or cause of all things and keeps them in existence.

However, the word "Bara," is from the Aramaic-Hebrew of the 2nd to 1st century B.C. It means to "beget a son." The last writers of the OT stressed the Fatherhood of God to establish the Brotherhood of Man. This is the point from which John Baptist and Jesus start. The followers of Jesus were to infuse this "brotherhood" in the society in which they lived. It took almost 3 centuries to convert Rome. Then the world was to follow.

As to the notion of a God or a deity, almost all cultures had something. The genius of the Hebrew God is that the teachers of the OT took God out of the sky and made him an unseen but surrounding presence. He was a kind of Father figure. Jesus Christ went a step farther. He stressed the "brotherhood" of all people in their daily lives because they all have one God as Father. The proof of a real God would be the depth, sincerity and universality of true "brotherhood" or "community."

I am anxious to develop this biblical notion of God. I knew something big was roiling around in my head. Suddenly, the picture fell together. All the pagan cultures had a hierarchy of higher and lower gods. One couple was always supreme.

These gods had all the fickleness of their human followers. They were easily offended and then they flung out their punishments. It could be crop failure and starvation. It could be defeat at the hands of the enemy. The difficult part was what to do to assuage their anger.

From the very start, Moses meets Yahweh on the mountain and brings his presence right to the people.

I'll get some time on my comparison between the Biblical picture of God and the attitude of all the pagan cults of antiquity. How much of the early biblical "History" is fact and how much is imaginative story is hard to say.

The creation story is a borrowing from the pagan mythologies which is re-written by the priestly editors in the 6th century BC, and again in the 2nd–1st century BC by the Apocalyptic editors. The final creation story is written with one idea in mind. The whole world in which we live is to manifest the Fatherhood of Yahweh. He is not sitting in the sky or some high mountain. He is a "surrounding presence" manifest by the true "Brotherhood of man."

The "patriarchal stories" are an attempt to give an historic setting in time and place by the beginnings of the Hebrew people. Genesis 11–59 covers a period of at least 600 years, 1850–1250 B.C. Then comes the Moses story. This begins on a mountain top and comes down to earth. Instead of a myriad of orgies and fertility cults, Yahweh sends down a Moral plan of action that has become the basis of all law and rights and duties in the western world. This first version was developed by Moses and more in detail in the "Sermon on the Mount."

I was reading my basic article on how to read the Bible. In it I stressed the need to know the literary form in which it was written, the people for whom it was intended, and the meaning of the words in that original language.

As I look back at the Council of Trent in 1563 and see the high-handed, authoritarian way in which the Council members acted, I was surprised only Luther had rebelled. Yet that council and its pronouncements held sway in all Catholic schools of theology until 1942. Then Bea had to slide the encyclical letter into a pile of papers.

Lyonnet, SJ, in Rome at the PIB was the first person I met who saw the whole picture and was able to teach it publicly.

I have thought about Christ starting his work. He had doubts about himself as seen in the number of times he asked who the people thought he was. He was an idealist in that he was convinced of what had to be done. This would bring on the anger and opposition of the leaders both of his people and the Romans. His knowledge of people was good but fallible in that his leader denied him and his treasurer sold him. Jesus was quite a man and left his mark on the world.

The biblical writers did not bother their heads about "how" the world came to be. Their one thought was "why." The first writers used the generic word "'asah" — which means simply "to make." In the last century BC, when the Greeks were talking about "How," the writers of the Book of Wisdom said simply it developed from "Hyle amorphi" — a "formless mass." St. Thomas, in the 13th century AD, developed the 5 arguments of "causality." Again, he did not touch the question "how." He just stressed that everything came from the power, wisdom and goodness of God.

Evolution is great evidence of Wisdom and power. Anybody could take boards, nails and tools and make a wagon box. But it takes a tremendous wisdom to make a little seed that grows into a big tree which can provide the lumber.

The work I did on Proverbs is applicable to the questions of the day. One of the major issues is the place or role of women in our society today. The Roman milieu definitely saw woman as an inferior being but the Bible did not!

From the very start, woman is presented as a partner equal to man on all scores. The Book of Proverbs ends with its elegant poem on the true dignity of woman. This was written and sung at a time when the Greek civilization saw women as sexual playthings and servants. It was sung as an aria or solo at the Jewish gatherings in the synagogues. Then the examples from Jewish history were recalled — Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Ruth, Judith, Esther.

I reviewed my writing "Who is God?" There is no doubt about how much it is needed. The notion of God prevalent among Christians today is clearly a relic of the pagan gods of Greece and Rome.

The Biblical notion is so clear. We don't and can't have any true picture of God. We can only point out aspects or qualities that we think he has. Each book of the OT is a masterpiece in this way. When we get clear to the end of the OT we get a treatise like Job which challenges everything said about God up to that time.

Yesterday, I read again the writing I have done on who Jesus Christ is, and is he applicable to our life today. As he himself said explicitly in Luke, Matthew and John, the whole of his teaching plan and goal is harmony, community and sharing among all people. He did not develop a complicated theology or set of laws. He took the basic foundation of all society as expressed in the 10 commandments, applied them a bit more and said "That's it!" The description of the first Christians in Acts and Paul shows that they lived by this plan.

Originally, a new meaning was to be given to the annual Seder or Paschal meal. It was to commemorate the work of Jesus Christ as the new Moses rather than the Pascal Lamb of the Old Moses. This action was to be seen in the Cup of friendship which concluded each Passover Meal. Each participant dipped a piece of bread into the final cup of wine and that was it.

The Pauline communities extended this custom to every community meal which was held on each Sabbath. However, this weekly participation was strictly voluntary.