Month: November 2020

In Back Door Introduction to the Bible, John Kaltner and Steven L. McKenzie state that “The problems that have come from taking Genesis 1 as history are well known.” They were not so well known to me. I grew up thinking that Genesis was accepted by all Christians as plain historical fact. I was surprised when this book so confidently said that this theory isn’t supported by careful reading of the text. It really changed my perspective on the text. I had always gone into reading the bible as though everything written was historical fact. The possibility that Genesis could be fictional- more like a fable- had never crossed my mind.

I think this serves as an example of how perspective can deeply change people’s interpretations of things. In Back Door Introduction to the Bible, the authors talk about how differences in interpretation lead to the “fight over teaching creationism as science in public schools, and museums featuring Adam riding on a brachiosaurus.” Imagine if people had come in reading Genesis as possibly more of a fable. These kinds of things wouldn’t have been argued for so hard. Genre really changes the context of words and how people translate them.

Judges 19 left me speechless.  It is so disheartening to hear how the concubine was treated, despite the men’s desire to have intercourse with the male guest.  When reading this story, it is easy to understand why no one came running to welcome the three of them into their house.  However, this story also made me feel serious disrespect and objectification of the woman.  The old man practically offered the concubine up for her body  (as well as his VIRGIN daughter), and let the people of the town abuse her and do whatever they desired to her all night.  Then, when the master found her in the morning and she wasn’t moving, he chopped her up into 12 pieces, one for each of the tribes.  It’s interesting to see the similarities between the abuse that the concubine suffered to that of the slaves suffering.  Despite it being a different type of suffering, both types were physical and were objectifying of people.  When hearing these stories, the slaves and concubine suffered not only physical suffering but also mental trauma.  Despite talking about some suffering that leads us to a stronger relationship with God, I think that this type of suffering is hard to recover from or see the positive from.  The last part about how the people who saw what had been done to the concubine forgetting it, as if nothing happened, was absolutely terrible.  I don’t know how you can keep quiet when you see something so traumatic.

When it comes to suffering in the Bible, there are many stories of stronger faith developing from people’s suffering.  One of my favorite stories of suffering leading to great faith is Abraham.  Abraham and Sarah struggled for many years to have children.  However, in Sarah’s old age, she became pregnant, miraculously.  They named their son Isaac.  One day, Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and despite Abraham’s great amount of love for his son, he trusted God.  Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, despite how much he didn’t understand why God was asking him to do such a thing.  This was God’s test of Abraham’s faith!  He wanted to see if Abraham’s love for Him was great enough that Abraham would even sacrifice his one and only son, and Abraham did.  He then was greatly rewarded by God as a result of his great faith.  Abraham believed that God had a greater plan despite how much suffering he was feeling from the thought of losing his son that he had strongly desired for so long.  So, he took his son and prepared for sacrificing his son.  However, God came just in time to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac to tell him that this was a test of Abraham’s faith.  This story is one of my favorite’s.  I often think about the suffering that I have been through and how God desires for it to bring out a stronger relationship with Him.  Today, I have come to accept that despite our many struggles we go through daily, God knows just how strong we are or can be and he wants to ensure that we use all of the strength that we have to continue to grow in our relationship with Him.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  We hear from one of the four gospels every weekend at Mass.  I’ve been listening to them since before I was even baptized.  Three different perspectives of similar stories are told in Matthew, Mark and Luke, however John’s gospel seems to be an oddball.  The gospel of John is not so much focused on history as the other gospels.  It is however read throughout the liturgical year.  The gospel of Mark dates to be the oldest and shortest account of Jesus’ life and death.  However, it puts emphasis on who Jesus is.  It emphasizes Jesus’ miraculous work as the Son of God and the Messiah.  Toward the end of the Gospel, when Jesus is dying, it is officially declared that Jesus was the Son of God (read for Year B of liturgical cycle).  Matthew puts emphasis on the fact that Jesus was a descendent of King David and how he opposed the Pharisees (read for Year A of liturgical cycle).  Lastly, Luke (read for year C of liturgical year) is the only book to account for the story of the road to Emmaus, which is told every year on Easter.  Luke was likely written by a non- Jewish Christian to a non-Jewish audience.  Luke emphasizes the imminent return of Christ which is different from Matthew and Mark.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell similar stories from different perspectives, while also focusing on different things.  It is also interesting to note that when you read Year A, B and C, you have read the entirety of the first three gospels.

As a Catholic, I really enjoy hearing the Homilies that priests give throughout the year, reflecting and connecting the gospels with the given scriptures for the day.  Often times, priests will help put these stories into perspective by giving a real life example or giving tips on how to live out what we can learn from the gospel.  They are often very insightful and applicable to our everyday lives.  That is one thing that I really enjoy about the gospels.

In 1 Timothy 6:3-5, I really like what it says.  It says, “Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about works.  From these come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among those who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”  I think these verses really hit home for me because as a Catholic college student, I often feel like many people think that we can fill the void we feel in our hearts with materialistic things, love, etc., however, these are ‘morbid cravings.’  Despite feeling good in the moment, they only drag us farther away from God.  The temporary happiness in reality doesn’t drown out the fact that we have to write five papers, and study for finals.  It really just makes us unhappy longer because we wanted the temporary happiness.  That is why God wants us to put the morbid cravings to rest!  He proceeds to tell us to be people of faith and rebuke all of the envy and other evil cravings that us as humans may think are inevitable.  If we make a mistake He wants us to come and confess, and fight the good fight of faith.  He encourages us to not be rich in money and things but rich in faith and good heart.

So, how does this connect with slavery?  If the slaves have believing masters, it is important for the slaves to treat their master with utmost respect, for they are members of God’s family.  As a matter of fact, the slaves are encouraged to be even more helpful.

Archaeology suggests that the Exodus never happened, and that Joshua never conquered Jericho. So how did the Israelites end up inhabiting the land of Canaan?  Well the dates don’t exactly line up, so some archaeologists believe that Jericho could have been destroyed by fires.  This hypothesis is also supported by the evidence that was found.  Evidence suggests that there is an even higher chance that there was an earthquake though, given the location of Jericho.  It has been shown that there are earthquake patterns that reflect that of an earthquake storm, where earthquakes continue to occur along the faults, shaking up and moving the people, thus explaining how the Israelites ended up in Canaan. I have never heard of this prior to taking this class.  I have only ever thought that the story of Joshua was exactly what happened, but this story has definitely opened up my eyes to view stories in the Bible from a new perspective.

One point from the video that I found very interesting is that this is a story of liberation. The archaeologist mentions that if we take the story’s details as exactly how they are written, it leaves out the main point of the story, which in this case is liberation.  The point is that there was an important leader named Joshua, and the Israelites ended up in Canaan, but there is no way that we can know exactly what happened.  All we have to work with is evidence, which suggests that the Wall of Jericho is along or near the fault lines, where there is much seismic activity.  Therefore, there is no way to conclude that there was actually a war fought, or that Joshua lead them to conquer the land.

Our discussion on Revelation and how it is apocryphal literature reminded me of the many people I know that think that there might be a chance that we are nearing THE END OF TIME.  Yes, I know it sounds crazy, however the time is going to come sooner or later, all in God’s perfect timing.  When I was younger, my mom would always talk to me about the Book of Revelation and how it talked about the end of time, and I just was never really interested in it.  Recently, death has been something that I have just had to accept as part of life, and I think that flipped a switch, because now, I think about Judgement day a lot.  There is a Christian song that I absolutely love and that will move you to tears.  There was also a movie created about the making of the song.  It is called “I can only imagine” sung by Mercy Me.  In the movie, it explains how the son had to make amends with his father, because his father gave him a hard childhood.  When the father gets sick and the son finds out, he has a change of heart, and therefore forgives his father.  One of the most moving parts for me was when the father and son both come to terms and realize that the son was in the wrong for holding a grudge on all the mistakes the father had made, and how the father was wrong in how he treated their family.  Anyways, the song talks about Judgement day and how we will react when we stand before God and have to say all that we did during our life.  Every time that I listen to this song, it causes me to reflect, and through reading Revelation, I now know that this song is directly referring to Revelation 20:11-15.

Connecting prophecy, prophesy and prophets really enlightened me, and gave me flashbacks to when I took Old testament in High school.  Prophecy is the noun, prophesy is the verb, and prophets are the people prophesying.  When it comes to prophets, I found it interesting that they were often seen as God, however, I can understand why the people thought this.  Often times they were delivering messages directly from God and therefore it makes sense that the people thought that the prophets were God.  The prophecies seemed crazy and shocking to the people because they were often warnings to the people that they needed to change their ways to connect more with God.  They were reminders and warnings to the people that the people need to withhold their end of the covenant and act ethically.

Revisiting the flood stories, I reflected on what key differences existed between the Yahwist version and the Priestly Writers version.  The first was the most obvious, and I also think the most important: the use of the term Yahweh vs. Elohim.  Yahweh in Hebrew translates to mean “LORD” and Elohim translates to mean “gods” or “deities.”  I found this difference quite significant because as a child I was always told that LORD was “YHWH” or the one and the only God.  The differentiation between gods and God was always emphasized when I was younger, and I think this is an example where the differentiation becomes critical.  God refers to our God, the one and only all powerful and all knowing God, however, gods refers to other “gods” that people turned from God to worship, such as Ba’al and others.  Another key difference is the duration of the flood.  Being raised in a Catholic school, I have reflected on this story many times.  The duration of the flood in the Yahwist version is forty days and forty nights, however forty days and forty nights is simply symbolic of a long time.  It is very interesting that the Priestly Writer’s version mentions 150 days.  In the notes at the end of the article it says that the flood lasted one year and 10 days.  This got me thinking that we potentially have an idea of how they measured time, however, there is no way to know that the article’s one year and ten days is accurate.  These are two key differences between the two versions that I found very important to highlight.

After reflecting on these two versions, I have discovered that when comparing these two versions of this story with the Bible that I have, details from both versions of the story are present.  Both versions are intertwined to help more thoroughly tell the story, which I find very helpful, but a little redundant at times.  Overall, these two stories have some key similarities, however some crucial differing details from both  that are included in the story of Noah and the flood.

Our discussion about Revelation was one of my favorite lectures this semester. Reading it is extremely confusing, but hinges mostly on one’s knowledge of horses and the number 7. For some reason, I never knew that the number 666 originated in the Bible, I just knew it as a demonic symbol. In my personal experience, my mother and pastors believe in the prophetic aspect of this book. It’s terrifying. Blood, anguish, and monsters dominating the earth pales in comparison to the pandemic and climate change we’re going through now. Whether you read it as a literal prediction of events or an epic metaphor for the end of times (whether a certain time period or the end of the earth in general), it’s still a lot to process especially in comparison to the stories of hope preceding it. The New Testament often talks about the hope of Jesus and the early church, so this is a stark contrast through the images of pain and judgment.