Lady R is always telling me "Life is Context." She's pretty good at reading a situation accurately because she's a great at determining meaning from the context.
I think we could take a similar approach when reading the Bible.
I've just finished one of my favorite books, In Search of God by Tryggve N.D. Mettinger. This is the first time I've read it all the way through although I was first introduced to the book in seminary. Our Hebrew professor had us read a portion of it about Job, and I was intrigued by the concept of God fighting chaos monsters (namely Leviathan and Behemoth). This started my journey towards my thesis.
Mettinger offers some thought provoking ideas of how to interpret the names of God throughout the history of the Hebrews in a Ancient Near East context. I'd like to share some his ideas on this. So, look out for those posts in the future.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Context
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2 comments:
God seems to be in recorded history our father. Before recorded history, she was our mother. Writting seems to made all the difference.
God is ineffable, distant, unknowable. God is singlular in almost all cultures. The guys close in and interacting with us (saints, sub-gods, orisha, jin etc.) are agents of God that quite often are actually inventions of man. Sometimes we recognize a real Avatar of God. In our time and space Jesus is such.
I have had to distill Jesus down to an essence in my own mind. An essence that did not depend on my upbringing, my Southern Baptist indoctrination, nor that would surcumb to the doubts and proofs that such does not exist.
Jesus is my liason to the God outside this existance, he is Grace.
Never met an person who didn't think they could stand some grace.
For what's it is worth, I think we see Jesus as the go-between between us and God. It would thus seem that only a 100% man and a 100% God could be the in-between man.
I would agree with the inventions of the other in-betweens. We sort of need something or someone to go to God on our behalf. We might say, "Hey you-in-between, I need to talk to God about something, why don't you go because I can't."
What a great comic book idea! There could be the humans, then the superhumans always trying to connect the humans with God. But my imagination gets the best of me.
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