Journey with Jesus #8

Here are the two Bible Study summaries for April.... Peace, Linda

Old Testament - The Body 04/16/09

In the Old Testament terms that describe the human structure are all very physical: clay, dust, kidney, heart, throat, flesh. In Gn 1:21 “God creates the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves.” The word for “living creatures” is “living nephesh.” This word nephesh—which is usually translated “soul” –basically means throat or gullet – so when God’s breathes life it becomes a living breathing and eating thing. God puts his breath or spirit into the throat/gullet to bring it alive. He does this for animals (Ps. 104:29-30, Eccl. 3:21) the same as he does for humans (Gen. 3:7). In Psalm 10 in three places (vv. 6, 11, 13) we hear that people “think in their hearts.” Most often the heart is the organ of thought and reflection. In Psalm 16:7 we read, “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.” The word translated here as “heart” is actually “kidney”. Generally the kidneys were associated with human desires; the heart with reflection and will. In the well known passage in Job 19:25-26 when Job states “I know my redeemer lives….then in my flesh I shall see God….my heart faints within me”, the last bit is more rightly translated “my kidneys are burning away within me” – indicating the depths of his desire and longing for life. Biblical Hebrew in fact does not have a word for the Greek intellectual organ, the “mind”. Hebrew “soul,” “spirit,” “heart” are all at different times translated in the Greek text with Greek “mind”. Thus embodied emotional centers and relationships were the instruments of thought and understanding, rather than a discrete thinking apparatus, the mind.

In the creation story human beings are made in the image of God. The Jews were forbidden to make images of God – but we are that living image.

So what is it about humans that makes us resemble God? Augustine would say that it is in fact our mind or intellectual soul. Classic Greek thought was that intelligence belonged to the eternal realm. Many commentators say that what is implied in Genesis is not intelligence but dominion. Psalm 8 illustrates this – in this psalm humans are only little less than God in regards to their dominion over nature. Dominion over the animals is seen today as a negative thing (because of the human impact on the planet –pollution etc). In Old Testament times it was a positive thing – a manifesto against paganism and fatalism. Today a more positive understanding would be stewardship – caring authority over the natural world around us. The other thing that differentiates us from the animals in Genesis is freedom of relationship –Ch 1 v.28. God created humankind in his image, male and female he created them. Human beings are collective and fully relational.

In the second creation story humans are made from the dust and the breath of God (Gen 2:7). Adam means redness/ red skin - very concrete, cognate with the red dust/earth from which we are made and to which we return. Life comes from the breath of God. Seen in the first deep breath of life in the infant that expands its lungs, and seen leaving in the last sighing dying breath. Human life is therefore totally dependent on God. It is this relationship that gives life. Life in the Old Testament is therefore relational and material.

In the Old Testament this life is all there is. After death the body sleeps in Sheol. And yet there is a hope that God will deliver from Sheol. Psalm 16 says: “For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the pit.” This is not resurrection, but it shows urgent belief in God’s power over death. Then in the book of Daniel (one of the later books written during great persecution, just some 200 years before Jesus), the author looks to protection from the angel Michael and to a time when these sleepers will awake. Dn 12:1-2: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. The word “everlasting is “endless” in Hebrew – until the vanishing point on the horizon (you never reach the end of it). In Greek it is translated as “for ages and ages” and in Latin “eternal” – which has a much more static sense of timeless perfection. The accent in Hebrew is on life that is boundless, rather than a separate “heavenly” order of existence.

In the New Testament endless life comes from our relationship with Jesus. When Jesus breathes out his spirit on the cross he breathes his life into us. The Holy Spirit which he gives is God’s endless life. Thus resurrection has already begun in and through the Spirit. The final resurrection is the consequence of this.