6 min
Day 2366 – Theology Thursday – Walk Like an Israelite – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible Wisdom-Trek ©
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- Christianity
Welcome to Day 2366 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – Walk Like an Israelite – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible
Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2366
Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2366 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.
Today is the second lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Bible scholar and professor Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church.
The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God’s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it’s also a book that seems strange to us. While God’s Word was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. Today, our lesson is Walk Like an Israelite.
Dr. Heiser said that cuneiform tablets changed my life. He wasn’t kidding. As he looked back on his 15 years of graduate school in biblical studies, the turning point in how he viewed the Bible was his course in Ugaritic, a cuneiform language very similar to biblical Hebrew. This class compelled him to transform “read the Bible in context” from a naïve platitude to an issue of spiritual integrity.
A Bible Study Epiphany
Most of us have the impression that interpreting the Bible in context meant learning about a piece of pottery here, an odd custom there, or having a factual acquaintance with who was alive, and what those people were doing at the time of the biblical events.
But in his Ugaritic course, he learned that all of that can divorce the Bible from the ancient world in one critical way: It can exclude religious or theological ideas from all the “context talk.” It’s easy to presume that most of the Bible’s theological content was unique to Israel. Most of us learned that Israel shared some cultural customs with pagan Gentiles—like diet, dress, marriage, and family structure. But we thought Israel’s religious worldview was handed down from heaven, having no common links with paganism. That is not true, and the content of the tablets that have been translated since they were discovered in the past centuries changes the previous mindset.
For starters, the people of Ugarit, a city-state in ancient Syria, described their gods with words and phrases that are in the Old Testament—in many cases, word for word. Their chief deity shared the same name (El) as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (But the El of Ugarit could hardly be called holy by biblical standards.) The honorary titles and other descriptions of the Ugarit El and his primary assistant, Baal, are applied to the God of Israel in many passages in the Old Testament.
There are other examples. The behavior of prophets and the use of divination (casting lots, consulting the ephod) have clear ancient Near Eastern parallels. The design and purpose of the Ark of the Covenant align well with the use of sacred boxes known as palanquins in ancient Egypt. Trial by ordeal—such as that found in Numbers 5, where a woman accused of adultery must drink a potion to test her fidelity—occurred in surrounding cultures. Terms for Israelite sacrifices are found in ancient Gentile...
Welcome to Day 2366 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – Walk Like an Israelite – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible
Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2366
Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2366 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.
Today is the second lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Bible scholar and professor Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church.
The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God’s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it’s also a book that seems strange to us. While God’s Word was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. Today, our lesson is Walk Like an Israelite.
Dr. Heiser said that cuneiform tablets changed my life. He wasn’t kidding. As he looked back on his 15 years of graduate school in biblical studies, the turning point in how he viewed the Bible was his course in Ugaritic, a cuneiform language very similar to biblical Hebrew. This class compelled him to transform “read the Bible in context” from a naïve platitude to an issue of spiritual integrity.
A Bible Study Epiphany
Most of us have the impression that interpreting the Bible in context meant learning about a piece of pottery here, an odd custom there, or having a factual acquaintance with who was alive, and what those people were doing at the time of the biblical events.
But in his Ugaritic course, he learned that all of that can divorce the Bible from the ancient world in one critical way: It can exclude religious or theological ideas from all the “context talk.” It’s easy to presume that most of the Bible’s theological content was unique to Israel. Most of us learned that Israel shared some cultural customs with pagan Gentiles—like diet, dress, marriage, and family structure. But we thought Israel’s religious worldview was handed down from heaven, having no common links with paganism. That is not true, and the content of the tablets that have been translated since they were discovered in the past centuries changes the previous mindset.
For starters, the people of Ugarit, a city-state in ancient Syria, described their gods with words and phrases that are in the Old Testament—in many cases, word for word. Their chief deity shared the same name (El) as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (But the El of Ugarit could hardly be called holy by biblical standards.) The honorary titles and other descriptions of the Ugarit El and his primary assistant, Baal, are applied to the God of Israel in many passages in the Old Testament.
There are other examples. The behavior of prophets and the use of divination (casting lots, consulting the ephod) have clear ancient Near Eastern parallels. The design and purpose of the Ark of the Covenant align well with the use of sacred boxes known as palanquins in ancient Egypt. Trial by ordeal—such as that found in Numbers 5, where a woman accused of adultery must drink a potion to test her fidelity—occurred in surrounding cultures. Terms for Israelite sacrifices are found in ancient Gentile...
6 min