In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 NASB God – Have we mined this verse yet? It’s certainly familiar, but it might be too familiar to actually understand what it says. Today I want to leave you with just a few remarks that might cause you to think once more about this…
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Understand – You won’t find this sentence in the Bible, so don’t bother to look. But you will find the idea behind Wittgenstein’s insight.[1] The idea is that the meaning of words cannot be fully explained with other words. What is…
Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; they came each one with his household: Exodus 1:1 NASB Names – The Bible is not a timeless guidebook. It is a story of the history of men and God. It is a recollection of what happened, not a…
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:8 NASB Word – Yesterday we considered the possibility that the Bible is not like books written from a Western point of view. Yesterday we suggested that the Bible is a book about experiences with the holy God of Israel,…
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:8 NASB Word – Western paradigms focus on answers. Experience is reduced to principles in order that we may predict and control. In fact, the entire enterprise of science, a principal characteristic of the Western mind, is an effort to…
Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll. He said to me, “Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.” Then…
About a dozen times each year I get this question: “What Bible is the best translation of the Hebrew and Greek text?” Inquiring minds want to know. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as easy as a National Enquirer article might suggest. The truth is that there simply is no English translation that captures all the nuances…
It’s quite likely that I will step on some toes here. Actually, I don’t apologize. I am not trying to dissuade you from reading your favorite English Bible and I am not trying to convince you that you need to understand the Bible from a Hebrew worldview. I would imagine that most readers already have…
January 4 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 Frame of Reference And The Earth – Are you so familiar with this opening verse that you no longer think about what it says? Yes, of course, it tells us that God created everything. That’s what the Hebrew idiom hashamayim ve…
Anything going on its belly, and anything going on all four, and all having many feet Leviticus 11:42 Belly – In the midpoint of the torah is the word “belly” (Hebrew gachon). At the very center of the torah, the midpoint letter is enlarged. If you were reading in Hebrew, you would see it like…
