Photograph by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash
Reignite your feeling of miracle and perused the Bible with new eyes
Might I at any point be straightforward briefly?
The Bible has pretty peculiar stuff in it. The issue is, the vast majority who read the Bible seldom perceive how extraordinary a portion of its items are. So the Bible becomes old.
I grew up hearing stories from the Bible, so somehow or another I became desensitized to a portion of the more abnormal things inside. It's lamentable, yet when you hear similar stories again and again, you can lose your feeling of marvel. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be like that.
What I appreciate most about the Bible is figuring out how to peruse it with an open-minded perspective. Doing so takes natural stories you can discuss in your rest and gives them new essentialness. Perhaps the most ideal way to peruse the Bible with open-minded perspectives is finding out about the language and culture.
The following are 5 abnormal Bible sections that will reignite your feeling of miracle.
The one with the streaker
Whenever I first read the section beneath, it made me chuckle.
One youngster following behind was dressed exclusively in a long cloth shirt. Whenever the crowd attempted to get him, he got out of his shirt and took off stripped. (Mark 14:51-52)
Believe it or not, this person in a real sense stripped frightened down.
This peculiar stanza comes from the disloyalty and capture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. An outfitted crowd captured Jesus, and his nearest devotees all took off. One individual even takes off stripped.
I have such countless inquiries here.
In the first place, for what reason was this "youngster" just wearing a cloth shirt? For correlation, it resembles saying the person was in a robe. Anybody out in the open would have been wearing in excess of a long shirt, so this person obviously wasn't dressed for the event.
A few observers think the man awakened around midnight, potentially when the outfitted group passed by his home while heading to capture Jesus. He surged out wearing only his night garments to see what was occurring. Sounds adequately sensible.
Second, who was this youngster?
Once more, no one knows without a doubt on the grounds that the text doesn't say. It's conceivable he worked in the Garden of Gethsemane, and emerged to see what was going on the grounds.
In any case, most pundits accept the youngster was Mark himself, the essayist of the Gospel. Mark was a companion of Jesus' follower, Peter, who was additionally there. He might have kept in touch with himself into the story to show that he was not any more fearless than any of Jesus' different supporters. Past humiliation doesn't mean God can't deal with you.
The one where holy messengers and people make infants
On the off chance that you've at any point perused in the main book of the Bible, Genesis, this refrain could have grabbed your attention.
Back then, and for quite a while later, goliath Nephilites lived on the earth, for at whatever point the children of God had sex with ladies, they brought forth youngsters who turned into the legends and renowned champions of old times. (Beginning 6:4, NLT)
Alright along these lines, heavenly messengers in addition to people rises to goliaths. Got it.
You can truly go down a deep, dark hole assuming that you Google this section, however we should avoid paranoid fears. Insofar as I can tell, the "goliaths" aren't really the congested humanoids the vast majority of us envision. A sign to their personality is in the last piece of the refrain.
The posterity of these holy messengers and ladies were
"the legends and popular fighters of antiquated times."
The first language of Genesis was Hebrew, and the Hebrew word utilized for "goliath" is gibbor. It signifies "Champions, legends, heroes, powerful men." Why does that matter?
It's difficult to say without a doubt, yet maybe the consequence of heavenly messengers and people having sexual was extraordinary champion legends, similar to the legends and diving beings of other antiquated societies. Their height as goliaths was more about their incredible deeds than their actual size.
Obviously, somebody will call attention to that in Numbers 13, the Hebrews dreaded the relatives of Anak who "Come from the Nephilim," living in Canaan. The Hebrews guaranteed they were little as grasshoppers contrasted with them and wouldn't go into the Promised Land. In any case, since the Hebrews should "assume control over" Canaan in war, it's sensible they were contrasting their capacity with take up arms against these extraordinary, experienced heroes.
Or on the other hand perhaps they were goliaths. Who can say for sure? That is the very thing makes perusing the Bible tomfoolery!
In any case, the essayist of Genesis believes us should realize that God is more impressive than even the antiquated legends. God will demonstrate it in the following stanza, which starts the tale of Noah.
The one with the savages
Indeed, that is savages as in tissue eaters. It's a natural refrain to most Christians.
So Jesus said once more, "I come clean with you, except if you eat the tissue of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you can't encapsulate everlasting life." (John 6:53)
Um — excuse me?
Christians today acknowledge this as a component of Jesus' clarification for Holy Communion, the act of eating bread and drinking wine (or grape juice) to recollect the life and work of Jesus. Yet, that isn't obvious from this stanza alone.
A few even blamed early Christians for savagery. Yet, every religion has rehearses that outsiders can’t understand. And it’s unlikely the idea of eating a god’s body was new.
In the Ancient Near East, some religions practiced eating and drinking the body and blood of a god. People believed it gave them the powers of a god.
For example, take the Greek celebration of Dionysus. It was a fertility ritual where participants drank wine. They believed the wine was Dionysus’ blood and perhaps it helped with fertility.
However, the Christian Eucharist or Holy Communion isn’t about taking on the “powers” of Jesus. The bread and wine used represent — or become, for Catholics — the body and blood of Jesus, sacrificed on the Cross to save the world. It is an act of gratitude for Jesus’ sacrifice.
The one where they cut a deal
The entire biblical narrative revolves around a covenant. That doesn’t mean much to us in the Twenty-First Century because we don’t have covenants anymore, not like in the Bible, at least.
Today, we make deals, we sign contracts, or enter a legal agreement certified by a notary public. A biblical covenant is all those things together and then some.
One of the most important covenants in the Bible is God’s covenant with Abram (later Abraham). God made a covenant and promised Abram he will be the founding father of Israel. Here’s how it went down:
The Lord told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side… After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. (Genesis 15:9–10, 17, NLT)
Okay, I cheated a little with this one and threw in an extra verse or two. But I want you to see what’s happening here–chopped up animals and smoking firepots.
Before the days of written contracts, promises between two parties needed to make sure each side held up the deal. When people made a covenant in the Bible, they’d cut sacrificial animals in half and arrange them in an aisle. It may sound grizzly, but it makes sense.
In this type of covenant, each party would walk between the cut halves and swear to uphold their part of the covenant, or face the same fate as the sacrificed animals. Not a bad incentive.
In God’s covenant with Abram, God appears as a “smoking firepot” and walks down the aisle. God “covenants” with Abram to make him the founding father of a nation. But God does not ask Abram to walk down the bloody aisle. Abram is under no obligation to uphold his end of the covenant.
God wants Abram to know God is trustworthy. Even if Abram fails (and he does), God swears to uphold God’s promises.
The one with the weaklings
English-speaking readers of the Bible can’t understand all the choices a translator has to make when translating the original Hebrew or Greek text.
Words in Greek and Hebrew can have multiple meanings in the same context, and translators can only choose one. So, when you read a translation of the Bible, you don’t get all the rich layers of meaning some Bible verses hold. Let me give you a great example.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5, NRSV)
This verse comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, one of the most popular sections in the Bible. He suggests that, in God’s Kingdom, the gentle and submissive will rule the world. There’s some good theological truth to that, but it doesn’t cover everything.
The Greek word for “meek” is one of those with many possible meanings. It can mean “gentle,” but another translation could be, “Blessed are those who know how to control their strength.”
In short, the meekness Jesus blesses means showing power without unnecessary harshness.
Expressing power through manipulation and control is not the way of Jesus. Let that sink in.
This is why weird verses are the best
I enjoy finding ways to read the Bible with fresh eyes. Sometimes you can see things one way for so long, you can lose your sense of wonder. It’s difficult to look at it from a different angle. When you do, it can change your faith.
The ability to read the Bible from different perspectives is how you grow in your faith. Reading the Bible with fresh eyes can breathe life into faith that has grown too stale and routine.
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