Year: 2011

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Bible

The Undead

In the parable about the rich man and the beggar, Lazarus, Jesus shares an intriguing story. In it, both men die; Lazarus goes to heaven, but the rich man ends up in hell.

Desperate to spare his family from the torment he is suffering, the rich man makes a request of Father Abraham to send Lazarus back, warning those he loves. Abraham reminds him that they have already failed to heed the prior warnings that others have given.

The man persists, asserting that they would surely listen to someone who has returned from the dead. Abraham’s words are somber, saying “they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

This was later proved to be correct. After Jesus’ resurrection, hundreds of dead people came back to life, went into the city, and appeared to many. Yet despite hundreds of formerly dead people walking around the city, only a 120 believed and were waiting in the upper room as Jesus commanded.

What happened to all the rest? They saw the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection and hundreds of the undead, but they remained unchanged.

Jesus’ prophecy was correct, that “they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Though not everyone will be convinced, some will be. I am; are you?

[Luke 16:19-31, Matthew 27:51-53, and Acts 1:14-15]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

Translation Confusion

In continuing our discussion on Bible translations, let’s pretend I’m translating an ancient text. In doing a strict word-for-word translation, I come up with:

“She hit him, I never said.”

Even with punctuation inserted — which is a requirement — it is confusing (and sounds a bit like Yoda). Somewhat modifying a strict word-for-word methodology might result in:

“I never said she hit him.”

This rendering, however, can be interpreted in six different ways, depending on which of the six words are emphasized:

“I never said she hit him.”
“I never said she hit him.”
“I never said she hit him.”
“I never said she hit him.”
“I never said she hit him.”
“I never said she hit him.”

A thought-for-thought translation could be attempted to clarify and might result in:

“I didn’t communicate that she hurt him”

Of course, that still leaves ambiguity that likely did not exist for the ancient reader, as in:

“I didn’t communicate that she hurt him”
“I didn’t communicate that she hurt him”
“I didn’t communicate that she hurt him”
“I didn’t communicate that she hurt him”

This confusion begs for a paraphrase, which might result in:

“I can confirm that no one was hurt in any way.”

This is a clean and straightforward result. Of course, to come up with this rendering, the translators would have needed to look at the original text from the perspective of audience of that day and produce a modern day equivalent.

What if they erred in any of their determinations along the way? Then, what seems clear and understandable is actually skewed and misleading, but that of course, is a matter of opinion.

With all this, it is easy to see why there is debate over the various versions of the Bible, leaving me with my original statement that whatever version you will actually read, is the best one.

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

Which Version of the Bible is Best?

In the FAQ section of A-Bible-A-Day, one question is “Which version or translation of the Bible should I use?”

The short answer is to pick whatever version you will actually read.

Unfortunately, there is much vociferous, albeit unwarranted, debate about this issue. With what seems like a countless list of versions to pick from, they are roughly divided into three groups, which exist on a continuum: word-for-word translations, thought-for-thought translations, and paraphrases.

While a word-for-word translation may seem to be the most pure and accurate, the true meaning of a text can be obscured or even misleading given the cultural and time differences between an ancient document written in another language and today’s English for a modern society.

Some see thought-for-thought translations as the answer to this dilemma and a means to minimize confusion. This helps to some extent, but doesn’t completely address differences in culture, era, and worldview.

To address this, paraphrases attempt to provide a modern understanding of the ancient texts, using more accessible phrasing and terminology.

However, paraphrases are quick to become dated. Another concern is that the team doing the paraphrase has more latitude in the words they choose and must rely on their understanding of the original intent .

Hence, we go full circle, back to word-for-word translations, which takes me back to my original assertion to pick whichever version you will actually read.

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

Genesis Question 6

Asking respectful questions about the Bible is not a sign of rebellion or indication of disbelief, but can be a means of more fully pursuing the God who is revealed in the Bible.

It is from this perspective that I’ve been pondering the creation account and asking some questions. My final query is:

Question 6: People were not made until midway through the sixth day, so there were no eyewitnesses to most of God’s creative efforts. How then could details that no one saw have been known, passed down from one generation to the next, and then recorded in the Bible?

The solution is that God would have had to tell his creation how they came to be. Just as a parent leaves out details when a young child asks “Where do babies come from?” so, too, God must have left out details when he explained our origins to us. Still, I want to know more.

However, Moses puts my inquiring mind into perspective, confirming that God has kept some things from us:

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”

God is, in many ways, a mystery — and that is one of the things that draws me to him.

[Deuteronomy 29:29]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

Genesis Questions 3 through 5

Continuing with my questions about the Genesis account of creation — but never doubting that we and the world we live in were created by God — I focus on the person of Cain — who killed his brother Abel — asking questions 3, 4, and 5.

Question 3: At this point in the story, only three (living) humans have been identified: Adam, Eve, and Cain (Abel is dead). So, who did Cain marry? The conventional answer is his sister. Yuck!

In addition, it would have been a genetic disaster. A more reasonable answer is that God had created other people as well, and from them, Cain picked his bride.

Question 4: If there were only Adam, Eve, and their offspring, why would Cain need to build a city? Surely, one couple and their offspring would not warrant Cain constructing a city. The reasonable explanation is that as Cain wandered the earth, he encountered other people to live in it.

Question 5: Cain was afraid that the people he encountered in his wanderings would kill him. God’s solution was to put a mark on him to protect him.

Why did Cain need this mark for protection? Certainly, his family would know him. Only if there were numerous other people, would this be an issue.

Again, I ask these questions, not to poke holes in the Bible’s creation account, but to acknowledge that we are lacking details. In my next post, I will pose my final question and offer my conclusion.

[Genesis 4:17, Genesis 4:13-15]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

Genesis Questions 1 and 2

By faith, I believe that God created us and the universe in which we live. But that resolute statement does not preclude questions about the biblical account of our origin. Here are two of them:

Question 1: On the fourth day of creation God made the sun to separate day from night and to mark the passage of time. If it wasn’t until day four until we knew what a day was, how then could the first three days have been measured and counted?

Consider that if someone was in pitch-black, solitary confinement for a period of time and then later given a watch, he would still not know how much time had already passed.

Question 2: What about Eve? In Genesis 1, it says that on the sixth day God created man and woman — at the same time. In Genesis 2, the timeline is different. The world is made; Adam is created and placed in the garden of Eden to care for it and all the animals.

Then God realizes that his creation is incomplete. Adam is alone. So then God makes Eve. This occurs after he made everything else and not at the same time he created Adam. Which is it?

More Genesis questions will be asked in the next post about Cain.

[Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 1:27-31, Genesis 2:4-22]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

Questions In Genesis

In my prior posts, In the Beginning, Creation or Evolution, and the Time-Space Continuum I pondered about the reality behind our origins. The Bible’s book of Genesis provides us with an explanation of how things began.

This is an account that would have been comprehensible to ancient man, one that would have sufficiently answered the timeless question of “Where did we come from?” in a way that primitive people would have understood.

But the debate for a modern man is if the Genesis saga is mere mythology, scientifically sound, or theological truth. I hold firmly to this third view and am simultaneously open to the second, while firmly rejecting the first.

As I read the creation account in Genesis, many questions come to mind. These are not faith-confronting issues, but rather ponderings that lead me to conclude that there is more to the story than what the Bible provides.

I will share my creation queries in future posts, not to poke holes in the creation narrative, but to stand in awe of a creator who has all the answers, but didn’t feel it germane to share the details.

So, despite unanswered questions, I am unfazed. Isn’t that what faith is?

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

God Answers Prayer

In my post, The Implications of Omnipotence, I noted that there is nothing that an all-powerful God can’t do, yet, not every prayer is answered — at least not the way we think it should be.

However, before we criticize God, consider:

  • Maybe our request is contrary to God’s nature, such as asking him to harm another person.
  • Perhaps what we ask would require someone’s free will to be superseded, such as, to make someone do something they don’t what to do.
  • What if God said “yes” to everything? (Consider the movie “Bruce Almighty” for a demonstration of how bad that would be.)
  • If God answered every prayer every time, immediately solving all our problems, getting us out of jams, and shielding us from the consequences of our actions, God would become our grant-a-wish-genie, literally spoiling us rotten.

When Jesus was teaching about prayer, he noted that even flawed parents know how to give good things to their children, so even more so, our heavenly father will give good things to his children.

  • Just as parents may wisely withhold some things for the long-term good of a child, God will do so, too.
  • Children need chance to learn, grow, and mature, sometimes through failure or disappointment, so too do we.
  • Doting and indulgent parents keep a child from maturing and becoming stable adult. God loves us too much to let that happen.

Sometimes, “No” is the best and most loving response.

However, when it’s in our best interest, there’s nothing God can’t and won’t do for us when we ask. That is his nature; he is omnipotent.

[Luke 11:13]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

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Bible

The Implications of Omnipotence

In my post “Omni God,” I mentioned that, among other things, God is “omnipotent.” This means that God possesses unlimited strength and has universal power and authority.

The word omnipotent occurs in Amplified Bible, but most translations use “almighty” instead, often in the form of a proper name, as in the Almighty, God Almighty, Lord God Almighty. Almighty means having absolute power or being all-powerful.

God is omnipotent, with unlimited power and authority, so there’s nothing that he can’t do — including no prayer that he can’t answer.

A related word is sovereign, which means to exercise supreme, permanent authority. God’s sovereignty is not so that he can be malevolent towards us, but to be benevolent. He does not want to withhold things from us, but to give things to us.

God is omnipotent and sovereign, able to answer prayer, so we can confidently ask with the expectation that he will answer (more on that in my next post).

David said, “I call on you, my God, for you will answer me.”
Jesus said, “Everyone who asks receives.”
John said, “We know that we have what we asked of him.”

God’s omnipotence and sovereignty reveals that he has the ability and desire to answer our prayers.

[Psalm 17:6, Luke 11:9-10, 1 John 5:14-15; also see “The Implications of Omniscience” and “The Implications of Omnipresence“]In my prior post, I made a couple of tweaks to the prayer of Jabez.  The original text reads:

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” 

Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!”  So God granted him what he requested.

Consider my paraphrase:

Jabez was a man of honor and integrity, but his mother had nicknamed him “hemorrhoid” and always called him a “pain in the butt,” because his birth was so painful. 

Jabez pleaded with God: “Bless me abundantly — so that I may bless others — and grant me much influence; keep me on the right track, so that I may do good things, and no longer be viewed as a pain in the butt!”  And God said “yes!” to his petition.

That’s what the prayer of Jabez means to me.

[1 Chronicles 4:9-10]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

Categories
Bible

What the Prayer of Jabez Means To Me

In my prior post, I made a couple of tweaks to the prayer of Jabez.  The original text reads:

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” 

Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!”  So God granted him what he requested.

Consider my paraphrase:

Jabez was a man of honor and integrity, but his mother had nicknamed him “hemorrhoid’ and always called him a pain in the butt” because his birth was so painful. 

Jabez pleaded with God: “Bless me abundantly — so that I may bless others — and grant me much influence; keep me on the right track, so that I may do good things, and no longer be viewed as a pain in the butt!”  And God said “yes!” to his petition.

That’s what the prayer of Jabez means to me.

[1 Chronicles 4:9-10]

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.