Do We "Resemble" God?
Video Version of my Essay on Mistranslations - in Genesis, and Exodus -- That Blur Our Closeness to and Resemblance to Our Creator
Enjoy this Memorial Day presentation on video of my essay about our resemblance to God, as the original Hebrew has it in the Hebrew Bible’s Genesis, and about God’s in-person manifestation to thousands of people at once, at the foot of Mt Sinai, as the original Exodus 19-20 surprisingly (to me) recounts. (Just one spoiler alert: He may not actually have said “I am a jealous God” but rather “I am a zealous God”). This set of explorations below adds more evidence to my argument in my readings from the Hebrew Bible and the Geneva Bible in general, that subsequent translations, sects and denominations, both Jewish and Christian, whether intentionally or not, elided God’s interest in direct communion with ordinary people - and actually blurred His in-the-original likable, relatable, human-like character into being a character presented as more distant, irrational, punitive and impenetrable. The latter does not actually exist in the original text. Have four hundred years of theology damaged people’s understanding of their actual closeness to YHWH, and of His to us, in the story of the Bible itself, and has this alienation been based on numerous later distortions of the text?
Mr. Miller,
I found your pattern of logic intriguing.... just one thought poked it ‘s way into my musings about it. Where is the motivation to do this? To make “good stuff and not be slaves?” I submit that the only true force that will propel one forward to do good works is the singular desire to honor the Lord God Almighty and to give Him all the glory...”Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!”
Don't know if you've read Karen Armstrong's book "The Case For God," (2009) but she talks at length about the Jewish tradition of midrash, which according to Armstrong derives from the verb "darash," meaning "to study, investigate, go in search of." Armstrong notes: "Jewish interpretation always retained the sense of a quest for something fresh, expectant inquiry..." NOT a way to nail down doctrinal certainty.
The big reveal to me in her book is that religious fundamentalism is actually a modern invention! In the so-called Dark Ages, no such doctrinal certainty existed nor was it seen as a virtue. Instead, the faithful were expected to reach that place where words fail to describe God, "apophatic," or "wordless, silent." Even the term "dogma," which we now think of as meaning an inflexible, cast in stone set of doctrines, originally meant almost the opposite in Greek. "...it represented the tacit tradition of the Church that was not fixed or static but changed as the worshipping community deepened its understanding of revealed truth." The way I put it in my book, Words from the Dead, was: "When it comes to faith, then, perhaps what matters is the ACT of faith, not its doctrinal content." I was heartened to know that in this I was in fact touching upon a much earlier historical faith tradition.