Biblical Heritage Center Blog

  In my previous email I stated that “ God’s problem is getting people to love Him. ” This wasn’t a surprise, because for people to “ love ,” they must be “ free to not love .” If people did not have that choice , they could not love. God created humans to be “ choice making creatures ” (Genesis 1:24, 26-27):   “And God said, ‘Let the Earth bring forth a living soul according to her kind . . . Let Us make ADAM in Our image, according to Our likeness . . . God created ADAM with His image . . . male and female He created them .”   The words “ Us ” and “ Our ” have created many theological debates. To whom do they refer? We use linguistic models in our work and in this context, they refer to “ God and the Earth .” Prior to creating ADAM , God and the Earth were both involved in creating the animals .   1. God told the Earth to bring forth an Earth soul for the animals and the Earth did it .   2. After that God created ADAM . ...

  God has had this problem since He created Adam and Eve. It is a problem that He cannot resolve unless He changes what humans are or humans learn to do it for Him . So, what is God’s problem?   It is getting people to love Him.   Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor explained the meaning of the ancient Hebrew word translated “ love ” in the May 2014 edition of our newsletter Discovering the Bible .   When we in the modern world hear the word “love,” we think of an emotion, but when we look to the Bible we see a different meaning. In the Hebrew Bible, the word for “love” is “ AHAVAH .” The root of the word is “ HAV ”, which means “ to give ” – “ to love is to give .”  The Hebrew Scriptures have a strikingly pragmatic character. There, “ love ” includes “ conscious acts done in behalf of the person who is loved .” So, “ to love the Lord ” and “ loving your neighbor and yourself ” involve “ concrete acts .” This is what both the Jewish tradition and the Jewish Jesus ...

  In my last email, What Did Good Mean to Jesus , I used Psalm 34:13-14 as a context to understand what “ good ” meant. In the Psalm below, I use transliterations of three key Hebrew words that are very important in the teachings of Jesus. Their English translations are in superscript .             Keep your tongue from RAH evil , and your lips from speaking deceit MIRMAH . Depart from RAH evil and do TOV good ; seek SHALOM peace and pursue it.   In order to accurately understand the movement and teachings of the Jewish Jesus of history (Yeshua), a “ Kingdom of Heaven Vocabulary ” is a prerequisite. It gives you not only “ meanings of words ;” it also gives you the ability to “ recognize actions that reflect them ” in the teachings of Jesus. Below is what “ good ” ( TOV ) to Jesus:   Thinking about, talking about, and doing things that protect lives, preserve lives, make lives more functional, and increase the...

  As a person with a Christian Biblical Heritage , the words of Jesus have always been very important to me. But I didn’t know that the Hebrew words he spoke were buried beneath many layers of English translations of Greek words from ancient manuscripts of Matthew, Mark and Luke . I was reading Greek words written by scribes translated by English translators, instead of the Hebrew words of Jesus translated into English .   Yeshua, the Jewish Jesus of history , was a very knowledgeable teacher of the Hebrew scrolls of Jewish Scriptures . He used a style of teaching, in which he often “ hinted at ” things recorded in those scrolls, gave a “commentary” about them, and ended with ways to apply that information in life experiences .   Without an awareness of “ those hints ,” however, we are unable to “ hear his teachings .” But, thanks to the hard work of many scholars from multiple disciplines over the past 150 years, we can now “ hear the teachings of Yeshua, the Jewish Jes...

  The Story of TZEDAQAH   TZEDAQAH is a difficult word for English speakers to understand. At first glance it appears to mean something that simply makes no sense -- a combination of charity and justice . In English, charity is voluntary while justice is mandatory. This problem was created when translators incorrectly linked the Hebrew word charity to TZEDAQAH . They should have linked it to loyalty .   TZEDAQAH is a combination of loyalty and justice .   1. Loyalty to the community in conduct and honesty.   2. Justice by eliminating things that decrease SHALOM or create disorder in the community.   There is a far cry between TZEDAQAH , with its implications of social justice , and the word “ charity .” In the case of “ charity ”, the recipient sees himself beholden to the donor, whose action is voluntary . TZEDAQAH , on the other hand, has to be performed as a matter of obligation and the recipient is in no way indebted to the ...

  The three Hebrew words above have no English equivalents. The English words used to translate them are not accurate meanings. At a minimum, it would take a sentence or more to convey the Hebrew meanings to English readers . In order to understand TOV , SHALOM , and TZEDAQAH in the context in which they appear, you need to do two things.   1. Add their transliterations and meanings to your vocabulary and use the transliterations when you read and discuss verses in which they appear.   2. Use an interlinear Bible (it has Hebrew and English words) to locate the Hebrew words or use BHC translations of Bible portions in your Bible studies. ( See Website Page )   The Story of TOV   The Hebrew word TOV appears seven times in the first story in Genesis. The first appearance is in Genesis 1:4.   And God saw the light, that it was  TOV .   Most translators translate “ TOV ” as “ good .” Translators generally use lexicons...

  In the ancient world there were no Bibles; there were scrolls. In the Jewish culture the most important scroll was called “ The Torah .” The Hebrew word “ TORAH ” means “ Instructions ” and “ Laws .” The first section in the Torah scroll is the book we now call “ Genesis ,” and it contains “ The Stories of the Beginnings .” These stories are primarily sources of instructions , not laws.   As readers follow the flow of the text of the Torah , they move from one story to the next, with each new story adding to the storylines of humanity and the Israelites. One elohim (god) is the central character and He interacts with ADAM #1, ADAM #2, Cain, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph in the stories in Genesis . Each of these stories play important roles in Jewish and Christian Biblical Heritages. However, most Christians are unfamiliar with Jewish interpretations of them – including the interpretations of the Jewish Jesus . Another reason is that it is impossible f...