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It's in the touch Submitted by PigSP on Mon, 2015-04-20 06:02.
Everything is there for a reason down to the jots and tittles. thanks for forcing me to look at it closer.
Your observation is great for the literal interpretation. But every jot and tittle speaks of Christ and I have not unpacked that sufficiently.
There is a theme or motif that I have not studied out yet. The theme of the touch. So help me see it all the way to the cross. (In the Hebrew hermeneutic everything is a collaboration rather than an argument)
Here are the rules we play by:
Divine meaning
Since God’s word is established forever (2Sa 7:25 the servant is Christ), a shadow means the same thing everywhere is it used. If a donkey is a shadow of a prophet, everywhere there is a donkey, it is a shadow of a prophet. This rule alone makes the shadows humanly impossible to fabricate as it requires the interlocking of a double entendre found in all the scriptures. (This keeps us in awe)
Free-for-all allegory has been properly criticized because allegorical or metaphoric meanings have no way to be verified, and we are persuaded by the loudest proponent of a meaning. This rule dis-allows free-for-all allegory by setting an impossible standard for the use of allegory. Every donkey is a prophet, every garment is a work, etc. such that every scripture participates in a hidden picture of Christ. Such a phenomenon is impossible for men to produce and therefore when we observe it occurring, we can have confidence that it is God’s intended meaning.
Consequence of lack of Divine meaning The resulting interpretation is likely to be free-for-all allegory and eisegesis.
Christocentric
The riddle of Samson (Jud 14:12ff) tells us Christ is the answer to all the riddles. If the shadow doesn’t look like Christ, it isn’t a good shadow. (This keeps us focused)
Jesus told the disciples on the road to Emmaus that all the scriptures spoke of him (Lu 24:13ff), and chastised the scribes and Pharisees for searching the scriptures to seek life, but rejecting him, since they spoke of him (Joh 5:39 ). If we don’t see Christ in the scriptures, we have missed the primary purpose of the scriptures. And if Christ is not central to a proposed SP interpretation, it is to be rejected. This rule alone separates SP from Gnosticism, Kabbalah and Midrash.
Consequence of lack of Christocentric meaning: You miss the point of the scriptures in revealing God through Christ.
Self-contained
And since we are to let everyman be a liar and God be true (Ro 3:4), outside references are not required to solve the riddles and see the shadows. (This keeps us devoted)
Not only are we not going to bring in extra-biblical books to determine the meaning of scripture, but we will not make apostles out of historians by elevating their writings concerning the meaning of scripture. We will not make apostles out of document critics. Errors to documents spoil the hidden narrative and once the hidden narrative is known, the proper document can be discerned. Nor will we accept what God has shown you personally, unless He has shown it to you through the scriptures.
Consequence of using outside resources: You make the historian, or the document specialist into an apostle, giving him power over the interpretation of scripture.
Self examination
Jer 17:9 The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Our assumptions about scripture and the rules we use to guide our interpretation effect the ultimate meaning that we get from scripture. It is important to evaluate those assumptions and rules to ensure that they permit the scriptures to speak for themselves rather than permitting us to impose our own meaning upon them.
My assumptions and convictions are these:
1. The Bible is the word of God which has been protected for us in such a manner that it is considered infallible in every jot and tittle. By using the proper methods of interpretation, as taught by the apostles, errant manuscripts may be discerned. 2. The meaning of the Bible is contained in multiple layers as described by the church from the earliest days, as a literal and a spiritual layer. These layers are in complete agreement with each other in every way. 3.The hidden spiritual layer is discerned using methods taught by the apostles in the New Testament. It is called the meat of the gospel, whereas the literal meaning is called the milk of the gospel. The milk is sufficient for salvation. The meat provides the spiritual nourishment to enable a mature faith and walk.
The rules are discerned using the same methods as discerning SP, so it should be expected that those practicing literal methods may disagree with how the rules are determined. That doesn't matter. SP needs to be evaluated to see if it is self-consistent as well as if it produces verifiable, meaningful and orthodox results.
Consequence of not doing self-examination: The measure of truth becomes the individual and the standard changes to meet your own goals.
Humility
Since God has said that not a jot or tittle will pass away (Mt 5:18), until one knows why each jot and tittle is there, a complete understanding has not been derived. (This keeps us humble)
Such humility is exemplified by one who listens to others’ opinions and based on scripture, tests all things to hold fast to those things which are good (1Th 5:21 ). Such humility is missing in one who insists that only his opinion is correct, and uses phrases like “The Bible says so” while pulling passages out of context and displaying an attitude of unwillingness to discuss the meaning or context of those passages.
Consequence of lack of humility The scriptures are wrested or twisted to mean what you want them to mean.
2Pe 3:16 As also in all [his] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as [they do] also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Complete
Since man shall live “by every word” (Mt 4:4, Lk 4:4), a doctrine is not sound until it sums up and includes all that God has said about it. (This keeps us searching)
This attitude of searching recognizes that the Bible is full of meaning, and that perhaps one person in his own studies has not yet identified or considered all the applicable passages. This attitude is missing when a few verses are used as a shotgun to force a discussion to a preconceived conclusion.
Consequence of lack of completeness Conclusions may be premature.
Pr 18:13 ¶ He that answereth a matter before he heareth [it], it [is] folly and shame unto him.
Rigorous
Since every word concerning life and death must be established by two or three witnesses (De 17:6), every shadow must have at least two supporting scripture witnesses. This means we cannot define a shadow with a single verse. The shadows speak of Christ and the cross. There is no other topic which addresses life and death for all men. (This keeps us rigorous in methodology)
A shadow is a hidden meaning which is not contained in the literal meaning (Ro 10.1). Shadows are not the product of a wild imagination and are therefore verifiable by the scriptures. When a shadow has two or three witnesses, it should be regarded as a tentative meaning. This rule specifically forbids a single verse from becoming definitive.
Consequence of lack of rigor: Conclusions may be premature and/or wrong.
So we collaborate to solve the puzzle: How does the touch apply to the cross?
The discussion takes the form of improving the answer by applying the rules above. This is exciting for me. The game begins.
The Clues Submitted by PigSP on Mon, 2015-04-20 06:44.
There is an easy way to do this and a hard way.
The easy way.
When Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God, Jesus said that no man had revealed it, but that God had. Peter had a revelation and didn't even know it.
Peter knew the scriptures somewhat, and had observed what Jesus had done and said. God stuck his finger in Peters ear and mixed up everything that Peter knew until it was correlated. God used what Peter knew and observed.
Later Jesus said he would send the Holy Ghost to remind the disciples what they had been taught. one again, God uses what they know.
And we are encouraged to not worry about what we will say when brought before magistrates.
So we fill our head with scripture (study to show our selves approved) and then we ask God to give us wisdom in the matter. Wisdom is described as the searching out of riddles.
If the answer to the riddle is in the knowledge contained in your head then when God sticks his finger in your ear, he points to it.
Otherwise we do it the hard way, by seeking; really just adding to the scripture in our heads.
The word touch נגע means touch, came, reach, bring, near, smite, nigh, plagued. The alphabetic metaphor means: the son of man נ pursued ג the flesh ע . Remember that the letters are huge metaphors and the single words I used to describe them are just hints of what the metaphor is about.
Then we collect the clues. Since the word has to have the same metaphor everywhere it exists, we collect everywhere it exists. while we do this, we also substitute the known metaphors.
Ge 3:3 Eve says she can't touch the tree. The bride thinks it can't touch the cross.
Ge 12:17 The Lord plagued/touched Pharaoh because of Sarai. The Lord plagued Christ because of Israel Ge 20:6 God prevented Pharaoh from touching Sarai. God prevented Christ from touching Israel. Ge 26:11 Abimelek commanded that no one should touch Abram or Sarai. Christ commanded that no one should touch Christ or the church.
Ge 32.25 The angel of the Lord touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh and it withered. God helped Christ put aside the instincts of self-preservation in Gethsemane and helped him face the cross.
Ex 4.25 Zipporah touched the foreskin to Moses's feet. Israel touched the covenant to the life of Christ. The purpose was to remind Christ not to forget Israel as he obtained the church.
Ex 12:22 The Israelites touch the bloody hyssop to the doorposts and lintel at passover. The church transfers it's sin to Christ as it nails him to the cross.
... bunch more . They all have to fit the metaphor of touch when we discern it.
All men pregnant Submitted by PigSP on Mon, 2015-04-20 08:14.
>>I was wondering if your comments was a reply to the excerpt of my paper on 1 Tim 2 that referenced the Genesis fall account.
Yes.
I think some of the keys to understanding are: 1. image and likeness 2. Woman from the rib 3. Sin vs. transgression 4. Men pregnant 5. No male or female in Christ 6. Paul encourages the Corinthians that all should practice gifts, but tells Timothy he doesn't let women teach 7. When Paul speaks of marriage he says he is not speaking of marriage. 8. And Paul has a very convoluted statement about who is the head of whom, which is difficult to parse and understand. 9. Women saved through childbearing. 10. The law of love superseding all 11. The identity of the Kingdom of Heaven 12. Add your puzzle here.
Various conclusions about women in the church ignore one or more of these topics. If these issues speak to the issue of the role of women in the church, then a complete answer is not yet known.
Although we do not use outside sources to solve Biblical riddles, it is interesting to note that when we solve the Biblical riddles, several outside riddles are also solved.
The Sikhs (which have source contacts with Christianity, probably Thomas) have a saying that men must become virgins, which is similar but not identical to the Jeremiah prophecy.
And the Gospel of Thomas has a saying that women must become male:
GOT (114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
Again, the Sikh and Thomas references do not participate in solving the Biblical riddle because of authority issues, but when the Biblical riddles are understood, these are also understood.
Side note: It appears that although the Gospel of Thomas is not scripture, that it is a collection of riddles plausibly descended from the teaching of Thomas demonstrating how to solve riddles in the Bible. It is not intended to be a doctrinal book at all, but a methods book on metaphor. When read as such, there is no doctrine in it which is contradictory to the New Testament.
When I make statements like that, it is fair to question my understanding of New Testament doctrine rather than accept that I know it :
1. There is one God who is triune in nature expressing himself in three persons. The term 'person' does not divide God into three parts, but each person fully expresses the nature of the one God. The distinctions between them is an interesting study of it's own.
2. God has revealed himself to all men through general revelation and has given them the requisite ability to respond to his word so that all men are without excuse.
3. God created all things good and man is incapable of judging how God runs his universe. We say that bad things happen to good people. But from God's perspective, he designed a universe where you reap what you sow. When you do not acknowledge God as God, but make yourself god by choosing what is right and wrong in your own eyes, you choose the calamity which God designed into the system, which makes every man declare that the course they have chosen is not the way it is supposed to be. The resulting suffering drives the flesh back to God, while the law does the same with the spirit. God declares that his system of cause and effect is good, and the calamity which befalls sinful men is good. We do not live in a 'fallen' world, but one in which God is every bit in control.
4. The primary message of the Bible, the Book of Life and the cross is that God is God, and we cannot be intimate with him if we do not acknowledge that. The purpose of the cross is to reconcile the teachings that God is Love and God is Holy, so that the Father is revealed through the Son. When Adam was faced with the question "Who do you say that I am" Adam chose to call God a peer. We are faced with the same question concerning Christ.
5. There is no salvation through any but Christ. Those who become the bride of Christ were chosen by the Father, worked for and wooed by the Son, and Gathered by the Holy Spirit. They are now one flesh with Christ and are his witness and testimony in the world.
6. We love Christ because he first loved us, even while we were enemies. We respond to his love by being obedient to him as a bride to her husband.
7. The New Testament contains the testimony of the apostles that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, as prophesied in the OT. The testimony is simple enough for the most simple, and divinely sublime sufficient to confound the wise.
Good Greek analysis Submitted by PigSP on Mon, 2015-04-20 09:31.
I do not intend to demean your work by calling it Greek.
Your analysis is thorough in the context of what the Greek hermeneutic offers, and I hope you got a good grade on it, since it demonstrates Greek reasoning well.
For the purpose of expanding our tool set, please allow me to make observation comparing it to the Hebrew rule set.
1. The Greek method makes apostles out of historians. Using cultural clues to interpret scripture means that God's word is not self-contained. As such, with time, his word becomes more difficult to understand as the culture changes, and may be impossible to understand cross-culturally. Certainly basing an interpretation on historians is far from letting scripture interpret scripture.
2. When Greeks reconcile apparent contradictions, the tone is that scripture doesn't really mean what scripture says, for half of the proof tests. Greeks come up with reasons not to believe the parts that don't support the position. These excuses are generally in the form of textual criticism or historical context.
3. The Greeks never define the hermeneutic which produces truth. He who controls the hermeneutic controls the exegesis. If you were motivated to write a defense for keeping women silent, you could use the same texts, in fact would be required to, and come up with a different conclusion. The determination for Greek truth is in the rhetorical skill of the presenter. This is why Greek rhetorical debate has continued on these issues for nearly 2000 years. Another solution is to select a group of men who define orthodoxy and simply measure doctrine against them.
4. The use of Kabbalah is misguided. The Kabbalah is intentionally designed to direct attention away from Christ. When we resolve Jeremiah's riddle, it will be easy to see the error of the Kabbalists.
5. The Greek is allowed to have the meaning of things be different in different places. The Hebrew hermeneutic requires they be the same in different places, but permits it to be different in the same place. Sounds crazy but you will see how it works as we flush out the four layers of scripture. (Quadriga)
6. Christ said that all the scripture speaks of him. The Greek hermeneutic does not require a Christological interpretation. The Hebrew hermeneutic requires an interpretation for each of the four voices (prophet, priest, judge and king) exercising the usefulness of the scripture in doctrine, correction, reproof and training in righteousness. The Christological interpretation (voice of the prophet) is the sanity check on the rest.
You handle the scriptures well using the Greek tools and you are now beginning to think like a Hebrew as your boundaries for scope are broadened.
To touch or not to touch - is that the question? Submitted by FelixPhil on Mon, 2015-04-20 09:32.
תִגְּע֖וּ
Tav - Faith Gimmel - Rich man running after a poor man to give him charity Ayin - Divine providence Vav - connection
Faith gets God's attention. Someone who is rich in Christ is sent as the agent for divine providence which enables the connection between the poor man and God. Shades of Cornelius and Peter. Ruth and Boaz. Rahab/Salmon/Joshua
Gen 3:3 first mention. Num 16:26 Korah's conspiracy to grab the priesthood - admonition to Israelites not to touch any of it 1 Chron 16:22 Part of the praise before the ark - God rebuked kings - Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm. Psalm 105:15 a psalm - same as in Chron.
Did Eve attempt to grab the priesthood through the flesh?
