Genesis 5

 This week's Come Follow Me reading assignment is Genesis 5 and Moses 6.  I was kind of surprised that they didn't skip Genesis 5 because it is mostly a geneology of the descendants of Adam.  I think they included it because it mentions Enoch, and the story of Enoch in Moses 6 and 7 is an important story in the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I think I will talk more about Enoch next week, but for this week, I want to mention two things I found in and about Genesis 5.  

Genesis 5 is kind of wierd because it states that the descendants of Adam up until the flood lived crazy long lives.  In fact, if you do the math, Methuselah lived past the time of the flood. So, clearly, it isn't supposed to be a historical account of the descendants of Adam.  If that is the case, what is it supposed to be? What symbolic meanings can those long lives have?  One podcast I listened to this week gave the best answer I have heard on this question.  The "Talking Scripture" podcast with Mike Day and Bryce Dunford mentioned that the practice making long lists of kings that lead ulitmately back to deity existed in other cultures contemporary to the Old Testament.  These lists were meant to increase the prestige of a dynasty by portraying its founders as super-human and semi-divine.  That made a lot of sense to me.  If that was a "thing" amoung the peoples that the House of Israel interacted, it would be tempting to create their own version. 

Some interesting word translation things.  When it says in "This is the book of the generation of Adam.  In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him, "  The word for Adam in the first sentence, and the word for "man" in the second sentence are both the same word .  I don't know why they translated it as a proper noun in one place and as more general terms in the second. It could be translated "This is the book of the generation of humans. In the day that God made humans, in the likeness of God made he them." Of course, this is supported in the next verse when it says, that God "called their name Adam" meaning both the male and female, together, were Adam, or humans. 

Here is a chart of the descendants of Adam on the Christian Truth Center website.  They also list the Hewbrew meanings of each of the names.

More about the Fall

In the previous post I talked about some of the sybolic words in the KJ version of the story of The Fall.  I would like to take a step back and do a four-fold interpretation of the story of the fall.  You can see an introduction to this kind of approach in an earlier post. As a recap, it is a method developed by Jewish scholars that follows an acronym for the word that means paradise. דספר

 פ= Peshat =פשט =literal

ר=Remez= רמז=symbolic

ד=Drash= דרש=context

ס=Sod =סוד =secret or sacred

1. Literal:  Where Adam and Eve historical characters?  Many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe so.  They believe that Adam  and Eve are the great patriarch and matriarch of the human race. They talk about how Eve must have felt when she had to decide whether or not to take the fruit and how Adam partook of the fruit out of love for Eve and an understanding that it was important that they stay together and produce offspring.  They see the story as the actual origan story of the existance of human beings on the earth and and explanation of how God set up this life to be a proving ground for his spirit children.

2. Symbolic:  There are a lot of Symbolic interpretations of The Fall.  Eve's decision to partake of the fruit so that she could gain wisdom and experience is symbolic of the decision all of God's spirit children made to leave the paradise of the pre-earth life in order to gain experience on the physical world.  It is also symbolic of the life cycle of faith.  Also, As children we are innocent in our faith, but as we age we experience trials that make us doubt and suffer. We can feel cut off from the presence of the Lord.  It takes effort and work to survive spiritually, but we grow and become better disciples through sacrifice and faith in our redemption. 

3. Context: Tradition suggests that this story was written by Moses to be part of the guiding scripture texts of the Children of Israel.  It gave them a cultural identity, established their relationship with God, but also explained why life is difficult.  The Isrealites in this time period had no clear doctrine or belief in "heaven," so when they thought of returning to live with God they pictured the Garden of Eden.  When Moses established the tabernacle it symbolized the Garden of Eden.  It had decorations that looked like the plants of the garden, the Menorah symbolized the Tree of Life, and, as I have already noted, Cheribim were painted on the veil guarding of the Holy of Holies. The Temple was a symbol of hope that one day Isrealites could return to live with God in a state of peace and happiness.

4. Sacred of Secret. The story of The Fall sets up the whole story of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.  The rest of the Old Testament is an account of Fallen Man. The Lord sends prophets and the Law to help guide people to live better lives, but people keep falling short, returning to sin
over and over again. The Law cannot save them and nothing the prophets say makes any permant improvement in human nature.  It is only when the one that is fortold in the story of The Fall, the offspring of the woman who is wounded by the Serpent, comes is there any hope for lasting salvation.  The final chapters of Revolation depict the great dragon, (the serpent from the Garden) being cast into Hell, never to return, not by a great warrior, but by a lamb that has been slain, the wounded son of Eve, as a sacrifice for all.  

The Fall

 Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a unique view of The Fall.  For Jews and most Christians, The Fall was a terrible thing that doomed all of humanity to suffer a life of hard labor that ends in death.  If Eve had not listened to the serpent, we all could have been born and raised in a beautiful garden where all our needs were met, and we were all happy. Latter-day Saints, however, see The Fall as essential for the purposes of God.  In the Book of Mormon Jacob teaches "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." (2 Nephi 2:25) In the Pearl of Great Price version of the creation story, Eve says "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which god giveth unto all the obedient." (Moses 5:11).

Let's look at the Biblical version of the Fall.  We have three characters, Adam, his wife, and the serpent.  Let's talk about the serpent.  He is not named here, and the term Satan or Lucifer doesn't show up for hundreds of years. He mostly represents temptation, death, and hell.  He is discribed as "subtile."  I did a word chase on the Hebrew word used here, and it means either crafty in a pajorative sense, or clever in a positive sense.  I think they chose the word subtile in the KJ because the word in English also means bendy, like a snake, but I don't think that meaning carries over to Hebrew.  When he is cursed, God says, "Upon thy belly thou shalt go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life" (Gen 3:14). In a previous blog I talked about how later God calls Adam "dust" when he has sinned.  In the Hebrew, as in many languages, the belly is associated with physical desire.  In stories that follow we will see over and over again how physical desire leads people to rebell against God.  Cain kills Able for his flocks, Esau sells his birthright for a bowl of pottage, and Kind David becomes a murderer because of his desire for Bathsheba. The Lord's pronouncement on the Serpent shows, symbolically, that rebellious people and those who give in to physical desire become prey to Death and Hell.

The Lord also says "I will put emnity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise they head and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Gen 3:15)  The term used for "bruise" really is stronger than that.  It is שופ pronounced, Shuph, and it is  onomonopeic. It could be translated "wound" but suggests maybe "stomp" or "smite". The idea is that Eve's offspring will kill the serpent, but at the same time the serpent will rise up and attack the offspring.  It is a powerful forshadowing of the Savior, who was killed, but in dying conquered death. One podcaster I listened to pointed out that it is the offspring of a woman, not the man's.  This is another forshadowing of Jesus who had no mortal father, but did have a mortal mother.

Adam and Eve suffer consequenses for their decision to partake of the fruit.  The KJ says that the Lord would greatly multiply Eve's "sorrow and thy conception" (Gen 3:16).  That is kind of a loose translation.  It really says that Eve would become "very great, and toil in delivering children".   The Lord told Adam the ground will be cursed so that "in sorrow shalt thou eat of it" (Gen 3:17).  It is the same Hebrew word as in the previous verse, that means "toil."  So Eve will toil delivering and raising children and Adam will toil to raise and care for crops.  

Ok, this blog post is getting too long  but I will add one more "ohhh" moment I had at the end of Gen 3. The Lord places Cheribim "east of the garden of Eden" "to keep the way of the tree of life." (Gen 3: 24) Two things about this verse.  We will see in the next few stories that eastward=rebellion.  Also, I never realized that this verse is why the veil in front of the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle has Cheribim on it.  The Cheribim guard access to the presence of the Lord both in the garden and in the Temple.  In a way the Temple is a symbol of the Garden of Eden and teaches us what to do to return to live with God as Adam did in the Garden.

Genesis 1-2: Introducing Symbols.

 I am excited to at last start a week by week blog about the Come Follow Me reading assignment.  This week is Genesis 1-2.  If you have been following my blog, you know I have already dealt with a lot of ideas from these chapters, but here is one more.  I must acknowlege that some of these ideas came from Tim Mackie's lectures on the Pentateuch available on Youtube.

One thing that Moses does in Genesis 1-2 is to set up symbols that stand for ideas that are going to show up over and over in the stories that follow.  In order to understand both the Old Testament and the New, we need to understand these symbols because they were an integral part of Hebrew culture and those who wrote the Old and New Testaments expected the reader to pick up on the symbolic meanings.

The seven days of creation contain several of these important cultural symbols.  The first few days teach us symbols of order vs chaos which is associated with good vs evil. Light vs darkness, deep water vs dry land, wilderness vs a garden; all of these are symbols that will be used in later stories.  As an example, think of the Exodus story.  When Moses leads the children of Israel the Lord parts the water (=chaos/evil) and the Israelites cross on dry ground (order/good).  Then a pillar of fire (light=order/good) leads them through the wilderness (chaos/evil).  

We also learn in Genesis 1 about the Lord's Spirit or רוח (ruach), which is a word that also means breath, or wind.  It will come up again in the story of Noah where the wind dried up the flood, and in the story of Joseph as the "spirit" that impelled Pharoah to look for an interpretation of his dream.  Often when you see this word show up, the message is that the inspiration from the Lord is at work. (even our word, inspiration, contains the root word that means to "breath".)

There are more, but you get the idea. With the creation story we are literally and literarily setting the scene for the rest of the Bible.

Adam and Eve's Names

A little over a year ago I started studying Hebrew. Most of my study time has been spent on learning basic grammar and elementary vocabulary. In the fall of this year I decided it was time to actually go to the text and start reading, very slowly, making sure I understood each word and much of the gramatical structure. I have been at it for about 2 months, and I have only made it to Genesis chapter 3. As I have been going through the story of "The Fall" of Adam and Eve I have had some interesting realizations. Let's start with names.

The name Adam, האדם, is a word that comes from the word that means dirt or soil האדמה. It is also a word that means "the man". So all through Genesis 3 there are a bunch of word plays on the name of Adam. For example, the Lord tells Adam that "cursed is the ground (האדמה) for thy sake." In other words Adam is cursed because the ground (adamah) is cursed. Then later in verse 19, the Lord says "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the ground (האדמה) for out of it wast thou taken: for dust through art, and unto dust shalt thou return." It is interesting that the term that is translated "dust" here is not the "adamah" word. Adamah is most often used to signify tilled earth, where as the word that means "dust" here is more like dry dirt, i.e. dirt that can't bring forth crops. Calling Adam (tilled ground) dust (unfertile dirt) is quite a putdown.  Also, when the serpent is cursed, he is doomed to eat dust all the days of his life (3:14). If you see the serpent as a symbol of death and hell, death and hell is eating all the rebellious "dust" humans all the days of his life. 

Then there is Eve's name. All through the creation story, up to the fall, Eve has not yet been named. Instead, they refer to her as Adam's wife, or אשה, which is also the generic term for a woman. When Eve partakes of the fruit, the Lord curses her that she would "greatly multiply they sorrow and thy conception." This is a really loose translation. Hebrew doesn't have superlatives, so when they want to emphasize something they say it twice. In Genesis 3:16 it says that the woman will הרבּה .הרבּה ארבּה means to become great, or big. By saying it twice the Lord is saying she will get very big. So he wasn't necessarily mulitplying her "sorrow," just her belly. Some Christians believe that if Adam and Eve hadn't taken the fruit, they, and all their descendants, would have lived in the Garden forever and that woman would have been able to bear children without getting huge and having hard labor. However, I think it is significant that it wasn't until after the fall that Adam names his wife, חוה, The name in the King James is translated as Eve, but if you pronounce it in Hebrew, it is Chava (with a hard "h" sound, like at the end of the name "Bach"). Chava is a really early form of the Hebrew word that means "life" and she is called that because she is the mother of all חי (living things). The Pearl of Great Price (one of the four cannonized books of scripture for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) suggests that Adam and Eve, in their innocent state in the Garden, could not have children (Moses 5:11) and that by partaking of the fruit they were enabled to have "seed". The fact that Eve wasn't named "Life" until after the fall supports this idea.

I will save a discussion of the fall for another blog. I just wanted to point out that there is a lot of name symbolism going on here that is totally lost in the English translation.

The Sacrament

The bishop (local congregational leader) has asked me to give a talk in church in October.  I am thinking I will use as my topic the Sacrament (like Catholic communion).  The Sacrament has incredibly rich symbolic meaning. Of course, the center of the Sacrament symbolism is the Savior.  Jesus established the ordinance during his last supper with his disciples. "Take, eat, this is my body..." (Matt 26: 26).  He clearly stated that the bread represented his body and the wine represented his blood that he was about to sacrifice for the sins of the world. 

So, what does it mean that we eat and drink emblems of Christ's body and blood?  

In one sense, by taking the bread and wine (or water in my church) we acknowlege that we are each a part of the need for an atonement.  "All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) and cannot be justified without the atonement and grace of Jesus.  I am a sinner, the person sitting next to me is a sinner, the person on the stand is a sinner.  We are all equal in our need of the grace of God so we all partake of the Sacrament.

But, also, by taking of the emblems of the sacrament, we also accept the grace of the atonement that is offered us. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thurst." Just as bread feeds our physical body, God's grace through the atonement can nourish our spirits. Each person who partakes the bread and water can be strengthened.  The Sacrament reminds us that we are all both condemned as sinners, and enabled to become saints. 

During Covid-19 restrictions members in my church were permitted to administer the sacrament in our homes.  For me and others I have talked to, this was a very special and sacred experience.  But this is not the ideal. I don't think the church will ever perminantly do away with coming together to take the sacrament. 

Meeting together to partake of the sacrament was a test of faith for early saints in the Holy Land.  Jews were raised to be very careful not to eat with Gentiles.  Their dietary laws prevented them from even using plates and utensils that might have touched foods that were considered "unclean".  That is one reason why the Lord had to give Peter the vision of the unclean animals (Acts 10: 9-16) before he was convinced it was OK to share the gospel and a meal with gentiles.  As the gospel spread to the Gentiles, the practice of meeting together to share the sacrament helped to unify the Jewish members and Gentile members

In the Book of Mormon the people who were witnesses to Christ's visit to the America "did meet together oft to partake of the bread and wine, in rememberance of the Lord Jesus." (Moroni 6:6)  It is a great unifying ordinance.  Each Sunday church members all over the world take the sacrament in the same way after hearing the same prayers.  The connection also goes back through time.  The Book of Mormon records that the sacrament prayers were the same then as they are now.  With one ordinance we have a shared experience with all the saints from the present and from the past. 

So why is it important that saints come together to partake of the sacrament?  By partaking of the sacrament which symbolizes the body of Christ, we acknowlege that we are part of the Body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:12-30.)  What does that mean?  Christians generally agree that it was important for Jesus to obtain a physical body so that he could accomplish his work on this earth.  What did he do with his physical body?  He reached out and touched the unclean (Matt 8:3)  He fed the hungry (John 8: 1-11).  He blessed the sick (Luke 4:40) He comforted those that were mourning (John 11 32-35) and he cleansed the temple (John 2:15).  Now that Jesus assended into heaven we are his physical body on earth.  We are supposed to do the same kind of things.  We are supposed to do what he would do with his physical body if he were here.  We are his body, the Body of Christ.

By taking the sacrament we acknowlege all that; that we are all sinners,  that we are all blessed with grace through the atonement, that we are all the Body of Christ, and that we all have the responsibility to do what he would do if he were here.  Acknowleging that together unifies us and equalizes us.  It also strengthens and enables us to keep the commandments and always remember him as we promise we will do.  And God promises that if we do, and as we do, his spirit will be with us and help us. 

So there are some thoughts about the Sacrament.  There are even more symbols, but this is starting to be a long post, and so I will stop there.

Zion, Bethlehem and a whole bunch of symbols

This week in our study of the Doctrine and Covenants, there is much talk about building Zion. So I decided to look up the hebrew meaning of the word Zion. Pre-Christian era, it was just a place name, ציון, the name of a hill near Jerusalem where the original City of David was built. If you have read the Christmas story in Luke you are familiar with the term, City of David.

"11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."
I had never really wondered before why the angel told them to go to "The City of David" and then the shepherds went to Bethlehem. Why didn't the angel tell them to go to Bethlehem? Back to that in a minute. First a look at the name, Bethlehem.

The name Bethlehem, בּית לחם , means "house of bread" in Hebrew, but it means, "house of meat" in arabic. (sorry, I don't have an arabic font, nor would I know how to use it.) So, can you see all the symbols here? In John 6 Jesus said,

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

So where did this man, whose flesh, (meat) was living bread, come down from heaven? in Bethlehem, of course, which means both, house of meat and house of bread. It is a symbol of the sacrament, and ultimately, of the atonement.

And where was this city, Bethlehem built? on Zion! (actually, I don't know if Bethlehem is actually on the hill, Zion, but it is certainly associated with the City of David, which was built on Zion.) In modern scripture (D&C 97) the Lord says "for this is Zion—the pure in heart". How else to become "pure in heart" than through the atonement of the"Bread of Life" as symbolized in the Sacrament.

One more symbol, in Matt 22: Jesus asks
"42 What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David."
We know from Matthew's geneology that Jesus was literally a descendant of David, and that the Christ, or Messiah, was prophecied to come from the lineage of David. So it makes sense that he would be born in the City of David. Even though Christians often give David a bad rap because of his adultry with Bathsheba, to Jews he is the quintessential king figure.

If Zion is another name for the Kingdom of God, and Jesus is the Son of David, the ultimate king figure, then it makes sense that Jesus would be born at Zion, and that is were we, like the shepherds of old, are called to gather, worship, and meet our king.