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    • Ash Wednesday (and Ashes) in the Bible

    2012 - 02.22

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    For Roman Catholics, today is Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent. In 43 more days, it will be Easter. When I was growing up as a Roman Catholic, this was an exciting time: though it was still cold and snowy, springtime was coming soon. For others, Ash Wednesday is the day after Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Mardi gras. The partying is over, time to get to the serious business of repenting and fasting.

    Like most Christian holidays, Ash Wednesday isn’t a biblical holiday in quite the same way as, for example, Passover. To the best of my recollection, nothing particularly interesting happened to Jesus 43 days before his resurrection. The number forty was considered special, and perhaps holy, in Judaism and recurs in many stories from Noah’s flood, to Moses’ asking of repentance after the golden calf incident, and even to the amount of time Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert.

    But while the holiday itself isn’t biblical, the key tradition of the holiday is: Catholics will be given ashes on their foreheads during Ash Wednesday services. This sign of mourning and repentance may be one of the oldest (and oddest) artifact of early Jewish culture that survives in modern Christianity.

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    A Time to Every Purpose, Under Heaven

    2012 - 02.22

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    My heart has been heavy this week and I found myself pondering the imponderables of life and death, sickness and health. My wife and I just returned from a weekend in Los Angeles, attending a beautiful memorial service for her departed grandmother. But on top of that, I have just learned that one of my dear friends is fighting for his very life. My heart is heavy and I find myself turning to the bible… though I admit it’s in my very peculiar way. Life and death is a topic the bible says quite a bit about.

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    Found Link – Study With Jeremy

    2012 - 02.14

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    If I had more time, there are two things I’d like to do: update this blog more regularly, and spend more time with my friend Jeremy. But since I can’t do the former, at least let me tell you about the latter because he’s just announced his new blog and I’d like to share it with you. (Judging from his posts, he may have been updating and not telling people for quite a while…)

    Torah scroll (source: Wikimedia Commons)

    Jeremy is one of life’s more interesting souls, a man of stubborn contradictions and surprises. He also happens to be brilliant and there are few things I enjoy more than inviting him over to ponder biblical imponderables. He’s also studying to be a rabbi, although in a non-traditional way, under the tutelage of Rabbi Natan Margalit. Along the way, he’s been blogging and I’d like to share two of his posts with you:

    All Beginnings Are Difficult – A personal essay about Jeremy’s struggles with his experience of love, and how this experience of love has affected his ability to become a rabbi. It’s a reflection on Genesis 1 and the creation story.

    Indeed, we learn in Talmud that God’s main creative act after Creation has everything to do with love: the creation of a new family through the ceremony of marriage. Marriage is nothing if not an intentional limitation of options. Commitment means eating this ice cream cone, and not throwing it away when a more appealing flavor comes along, or when the store next door charges a nickel less.

    Blessed is the One Who Trusts in God – A deep look at the meaning of Jeremiah 17:7.

    The beauty of Jer. 17:7 is its reciprocity.  The trust that exists between the righteous person and God is very much a two-way street.  It isn’t so much trust that anything in particular will happen; it is more a matter of trust in God, or faith in God, and God having trust or faith in the individual.

     
    I hope you enjoy his blog. I have three posts in the draft folder. Certainly I’ll get time to finish one soon!

    Up next: The Dead Sea (eventually).

    Masada in the Bible

    2012 - 01.25

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    The situation was desperate: a small group of Jewish soldiers were surrounded. The year was 72 AD, only two years after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and eight years into a rebellion that pitted Jewish soldiers against the Romans. The Romans were winning, Jerusalem had been captured, and this may have been the last stand. The place was Masada, a fortress on a plateau on the edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea.

    This is the first in a short series I’m calling “Biblical Tourist”, pictures and commentary on a recent trip to Israel. This was my third trip so I didn’t see all of the typical things, but I took a lot of pictures. Each entry in this series will connect to bible passages in some way.

    So, what happened? And where are the pictures? And how does a fort built more then thirty years after Jesus figure into the bible? Read on for more!

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    Isaac at Moriah and the Temple Mount

    2012 - 01.13

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    It’s no mystery that I love all the “begats” in the bible and I’ve built complex charts and relationship maps to tease out interesting details. (My family tree of every named individual in the Torah is completed, but I have to make it presentable and write up explanations for some of my choices.) I am now trying to pay more attention to the places in the bible and their connections.

    Using my previous post on the Binding of Isaac as an example, the fact that Isaac lived at Beer-lahai-roi after his near-sacrifice deepens the text. Now, we as readers can connect that as where Hagar first met God and ponder its significance. While the book does not provide easy answers, we can ask new questions. Did he go there because it was hallowed ground? Was there a connection between him and Hagar or Ishmael at that spot? Could Isaac have gone there in search of God himself, as Hagar did when she ran away? There are no answers to these questions, but asking them brings us closer to Isaac and closer to the text.

    As important as Beer-lahai-roi is, undoubtedly the most important place mentioned in the Binding of Isaac is Moriah, the region where he was to be offered to God. It may be the most important place in the while bible.

    Read on for more.

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    Errata: Isaac in the East

    2012 - 01.11

    Tags: , , , Category Commentary | 1 Comment »

    Oh, the troubles a little comma can make! Yesterday’s post on the separation of Abraham’s family after the Binding of Isaac had an error: I mistakenly said that Isaac had gone eastward between the time his mother died and when his father did. It’s a simple mistake and it’s because I was reading Genesis 25 using an archaic translation:

    But unto the sons of the concubines, that Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts; and he sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country.

    Genesis 25:6 (JPS, 1917 Edition)

    Somehow in my reading and my note-taking, I got confused by the clauses. It was the sons of the concubines that were “unto the east country” and not Isaac. While the bible doesn’t say, Isaac was probably at Beer-lahai-roi, where he was both before and after this passage.

    This doesn’t change my explanation much, except to say that Isaac didn’t choose this as his special place to go when his father passed away. It does drive home me a lesson for me that I should know already: translations matter. I use the 1917 JPS for this blog because it’s so cut-and-paste-able, but it is also not the most modern of translations. The meaning of words drift over even a hundred years and I like to be sure that words mean what I think they mean. Still, this is more a case of misreading than a text gone bad.

    The New International Version (1984) gives a clearer translation:

    But while he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.

    Genesis 25:6 (New International Version, 1984)

    Much more understandable!

    Up next: Back on Moriah!

    Abraham’s True Sacrifice – His Family

    2012 - 01.09

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    We’re up to one of those famous stories in the bible. The “Binding of Isaac”, as it is generally called, is almost as well known as Noah’s Ark or the Parting of the Red Sea and it does so without cute animals or Charlton Heston. In this story, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to Him, only to relent at the last moment and provide a ram to use instead. Because of his commitment to God, Abraham proves himself worthy again to be the patriarch of the future Israel.

    This test and validation narrative is a good one, but a careful reading shows that God wasn’t demanding an empty sacrifice of Abraham. Although Isaac was spared the knife, God dealt Abraham a tremendous hidden sacrifice: a family, a father and son, walked up the mountain together but two strangers walked down. In one stroke, Abraham’s family was shattered. He, his son, and his wife would never be together again.

    Read on for more.

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    Merry Christmas!

    2011 - 12.25

    Category Reposts | Comments Off

    Merry Christmas!  I hope you enjoy this repost from last year:

    Christmas in the Bible

    What I want for Christmas next year? More consistent blog updates. Or, more properly, more time to read, contemplate, and write. Sadly, even Santa hasn’t worked out how to gift that. Have a great holiday.

    Advent in the Bible

    2011 - 12.22

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    As a child, Advent wasn’t one of the holidays that I understood. I was raised Roman Catholic, so during those years it was as familiar to my 6-year old self as Lent– which is to say they were periods of anticipation for Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. (Oh, the crazy ways that idolatry invades everything, but I digress.) Maybe we had an advent wreath or am advent calendar around, and I remember getting them in my Catholic elementary school, but that was the limit. As I grew a little older, my family rotated through a few varieties of Protestantism, some of which certainly had Advent and some of which did not. I probably didn’t notice.

    Curious about Advent in the bible? Read on!
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    Happy Hanukkah

    2011 - 12.21

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    Happy Hanukkah! It’s the first night of Hanukkah for Jews, a celebration of the restoration the Temple after it was profaned by Greeks around two hundred years BCE.

    Hanukkah is a post-biblical holiday, but strangely one that is in the bible for Roman Catholics but not Jews or Protestants. I wrote up quite a bit about Hanukkah in the Bible last year, so please check it out.

    Don’t want to tour memory lane? That’s fine! So check out this fun music video by the Maccabeats explaining the history of this fantastic holiday:

     

    (It’s catchy, isn’t it?)

    Up next: Thoughts on Advent

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