Primaries
And the Angel of YHWH appeared to him in the flame of fire from the middle of a thorn bush. Exodus 3:2
Appeared – Do you practice reading the Scriptures with an Hebraic worldview? Once the dawning occurs, and we realize that God chose Hebrew on purpose, then we will want to read the text as participants in the Hebrew culture, the ancient biblical culture. That might seem to be a simple, straightforward assignment. Just translate our English words into Hebrew thought, right? Just go backwards from the concepts that we employ to recover the ideas that Hebrews used to think about the world. Ah, if it were only that easy.
You see, much of the way we conceptualize the world has been so affected by the Western Greek penchant for precision, certainty and numerical reduction that we no longer imagine a world that isn’t made up of causal connections, essential properties and unifying theories. In other words, even our attempts to translate backwards often carry along conceptualizations that would not make sense to a Hebrew. Consider this:
“The question of why God revealed himself in the bush is not a question of how such a revelation is metaphysically possible, that is, how a nonmaterial being can embody himself in the material. Rather, the question is why the king of kings chose to reveal himself precisely from such a lowly object as bush.”[1] Once again we are reminded that in our world the primary question is “How?” but in the world of the Hebrew the primary question is “Why?” The causality of events is not nearly as crucial as the meaning of events. This is such a fundamental shift away from our presupposition of scientific naturalism that we can hardly imagine it. In other words, we first and automatically think of the event in terms of its metaphysical issues; its causes and its alignment with our conception of a closed universe governed by natural law. Then, and with some effort, we force ourselves to conceive of the universe as a place where divinity lay present in any moment, hidden behind the most ordinary things, ready to interject itself into our consciousness. We are not overwhelmed with wonder and awe. We are rather overwhelmed with complexity, the very notion intimating mechanical causality. How can we possibly expect to view the world as a living extension of a disguised divine reality when the question “Why?” barely penetrates our awareness?
The common seneh, a bush, nothing noteworthy, not even genus and species. Just any kind of insignificant bush becomes the vehicle of revelation of the greatest of mysteries, the divine name YHWH. It is, in fact, unimaginable. The God of glory, the Creator, the Most High is manifest in the flame in a bush? That would be the equivalent of inviting the King of Jordan to a Presidential dinner and taking him to McDonalds. The insult would be beyond description. What jumps off the page for a Hebrew reader is not how God could be manifest in a material way but rather why the King of kings would ever allow such humiliation. If you don’t know why, maybe you don’t read the Scriptures like a Hebrew. Maybe the paradigm shift is much bigger than you thought.
Topical Index: bush, Hebrew worldview, paradigm, seneh, Exodus 3:2, questions
[1] Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, p. 63.
This brings to mind the way I heard it told that as Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac he heard the voice, looked over and saw the ram, whose horns were caught in the thicket (they called it a thorn bush), he bent over with the knife and cut through branches of the thicket. Then he lifted up the ram and made the sacrifice with the thorn bush still entangled in the horns. I had never heard it explained that way before, but it makes a graphic connection to the true sacrifice.
Again, a quick response (more when we’re back after the celebrations)… the binding of Isaac extract you refer to, Gayle – in Hebrew tradition – does not read like the “30 second story” we see in English… it’s more like a minimum of 30 minutes! There is so much more, not included in the Bible account… And (as we’ve said before) Orthodox Jews do not see the ram as a substitute for Isaac, but a reminder of Abraham’s obedience in not only being obedient to God’s command to prepare to take Isaac’s life, but in releasing him when told to do so. In other words, we must concentrate on the ‘action’ and not on the ‘picture’. By the way, Jews think often of the ram’s horns because God took the right horn of that ram to use as the shofar that He sounds at momentous occasions – and all kosher shofars have to be made of a donor animal’s left horn.
As a literature teacher, the “why” is always supposed to be the most important question, but it’s always been the most difficult. I know I certainly struggle to put myself into “Hebrew shoes” when I read, and pretty much most of the rest of the time, too. I don’t always know how to make the jump from the very Greek education I’ve received to this Hebrew paradigm.
I also liked how you made the distinction between awe and wonder and complexity. I’d never even thought about it, but it’s true that I often am amazed at the complexity of the world and its workings. It seems to me that, at least in some sense, awe/wonder is connected to the complexity, but perhaps I am amazed at the workings of the world rather than at the Creator and why He created the world.
Gayle – very cool about the thorn bush imagery! I never heard it that way before, but I like the connections that it makes!
Skip, do we need to derive our Hebraic worldview BEFORE we come to the Scriptures, or do we get our Hebraic worldview FROM the Scriptures? It’s a chicken-egg type question.
If we are lucky enough to be born Jewish, we are head of the game. If not, then we will have to learn as we go. Either way, it’s work – and culture and history and paying attention to the details.
Yes, it is chicken and egg, but I like scrambled.
Scrambled chicken or scrambled eggs? 🙂
Both
Hey Skip! We know “how you like it” but my question is. WHY do you like it that way?
I do not need a metaphysical answer either!
“WHY do you like it that way?”
Hi Brian,
To quote Morpheus in The Matrix:
“You’re here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there.
Like a splinter in your mind — driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
According to Morpheus, you’ve got two choices: the blue pill (Greek worldview) or the red pill (Hebrew Worldview).
“Take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.” 🙂
Author Bob Hamp uses this quote from “The Matrix” to open his chapter “The Parable of the Acrobat” in his book THINK DIFFERENTLY, LIVE DIFFERENTLY. I think you’d like it since you have keen insight into symbolism.
“THINK DIFFERENTLY, LIVE DIFFERENTLY” Author Bob Hamp
Hi CYndee,
Thanks for sharing! I read some of Bob Hamp’s blogs and probably share many of his views.
At the same time, I’m usually a bit skeptical when someone is writing or talking about God or Jesus for any length of time without relating it to the Hebrew worldview found in the Bible.
For me it becomes more about their own subjective experience and less about the objective meaning of the text itself, which is primary.
But I did find him very interesting.
Thanks again!
“The next day, Yochanan saw Yeshua coming toward him and said, “Look! God’s Lamb! The One who is taking away the sin of the world! This is the man I was talking about when I said, `After me is coming someone who has come to rank above me, because He existed before me.’ I myself did not know who He was, but the reason I came immersing with water was so that He might be made known to Isra’el.” (John 1.29)
In saying that, Yochanan ben Zecharia (who was a Levite) declared Yeshua to be an acceptable sacrifice. This was a requirement of Torah, that a sacrifice had to be examined and declared acceptable by a Levitical priest before it could be presented to YHVH. Just another little gem that we miss because we have not been raised in Torah…
Hello Amanda,
“In literature the why question is the most important and the most difficult.”
I believe it is the most important and the most difficult regarding life. It is also i believe, the deepest also.
Even more profound than that is when God responds to your “why” with His own question. Over five years ago now; tragedy and the most profound experience happened in my life. My beloved of fourteen years succumb too a battle with brain cancer only after 7 1/2 months. Also she left behind a 3year old daughter.
During a time when her health had taking a nose dive for the worst and i was crying out “why” in so many different ways. God whispered a gentle question into my ear early one morning,
“Do you trust me?”
Question with a question. That was God’s answer!
I am so sorry for the loss of your beloved wife and your daughter’s loss of her mother. The passage of time alone doesn’t diminish the pain. My words of sympathy can’t convey the depth of my empathy, but I pray that our G-d, in His supreme way of connecting with us in the depth of our sorrow, has, is, and will continue to comfort you. Tragedy never makes sense to our natural minds.
I too have heard G-d’s questions in response to my questions. I see that as the pattern that Yeshua used in many situations. It was frustrating to me at first, but actually I interpret it now as an invitation to continue the conversation with my heavenly Father who cares about the smallest things in my daily life. There are no final answers until we enter eternity and can see the beginning from the end. Until then, we must trust the One who created everything. Praise Him from whom all blessings flow!
Hi Brian,
That is a very powerful story and I am very sorry to hear about your wife.
I can imagine what you must have gone through but don’t know how I would manage raising our kids with my wife’s help.
It must be very difficult on your own and I wish you well.
A bush. A manger/feeding trough/hole for hay.