The Theology of Semen.

[Deeje]

Amen.

We agree about the simplicity of the truth of scripture. But there are enemies of the simplicity. And they have so distorted things that even well-meaning servants of the Lord are caught up in the shenanigans of the charlatans.

It was foretold that the weeds would be growing alongside the wheat until the harvest time. It was not unexpected, so it was up to Christians themselves to examine their own teachings in the light of God’s word. But the false Christian weeds had been around so long that it never occurred to them that they were in fact teaching falsehoods.....in Christianity, it’s a trust thing.....so sad when that trust is betrayed.

What is particularly important concerning this particular thread, is that the charlatans have literally made asinine falsehoods to be accepted as orthodox truth in both Judaism and Christianity. For instance, Adam absolutely had a female body, not a male body. And yet Judaism and Christianity both teach that adam was originally, rather than only after his body was desecrated in Genesis 2:21, a male body.

I am quite bemused as to why you have come to this conclusion and why it matters so much to you.

This makes the female and afterthought. God allegedly forgot to make the woman from the get-go. Which is asinine and pathetic. The female is not an after-thought. Or even secondary, so far as physical reality is concerned. In physical reality, in truth, the female comes before the ******* flesh of the male.

How does it make females an afterthought? What I see is God educating his first human son for quite some time (I do not accept that the creative “days” were 24 hour periods) and in doing so, prepared Adam to become a husband and eventually a father by giving him a head start. He was given the task of observing the animals with a view to giving them appropriate names and his education would then be shared with his mate who was anything but an afterthought....she was created as a “compliment” of her husband....her qualities combined with his made them “one flesh”, the progenitors of their family unit who would repeat the process and in turn create new families to populate the earth as God instructed.
The humans were endowed with God’s qualities because they were to represent him as caretakers of this planet.

I believe that you have a rather distorted view of what God created and the manner in which it took place. In studying creation as part of his education, Adam recognised that every other creature had a mate except him....that is when God said that it was “not good for the man to continue by himself”. He would then make a mate for him. It clearly states that God created “male and female”, so why do you need to assume that the Bible doesn’t say what it means?

 

[John D. Brey]

I believe that you have a rather distorted view of what God created and the manner in which it took place. In studying creation as part of his education, Adam recognised that every other creature had a mate except him....that is when God said that it was “not good for the man to continue by himself”. He would then make a mate for him. It clearly states that God created “male and female”, so why do you need to assume that the Bible doesn’t say what it means?

. . . Since we agree on the fundamental truths, I don't want to create a stumbling block by going into things that may not be in your particular purview (and may not matter for you). What I study might be a distraction to the way you study. And I don't want my study to be a burden to yours.

Suffice it to say my studies are unorthodox and rely on principals of exegesis that aren't always well understood by many students. . . What the scripture says, or even can say, is dependent on what it's asked. And there's an interchange, or intercourse, between the outer narrative of the text, and what the holy spirit inspires a person to ask of the text. The water of the word has depth many many fathoms below what the majority of exegetes can endure without getting the bends in their knees.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In an earlier thread I noted that ha-adam and Eve are originally, identical twins; Eve is a clone of ha-adam. The novelty of the penis/phallus is that it's the first incarnation of the beguiling serpent who has his way with human history after the rise of the phallus and the fall of the identical nature of nature’s original human twins (ha-adam and Eve). The factuality of this statement, where the Hebrew text of the scripture is concerned, leads to a theological pearl of immeasurable value when we realize it demands that, having come so far as to understand that ha-adam and Eve are female clones, we think about the perceived nature of the original firstborn of creation as he would exist in profound contradistinction to the usurper Cain who’s conceived not by the breath, or blood, of God (the masculine source of ha-adam and Eve's genesis), but by the novel flesh (and the newfangled seed that testifies to its violent, degenerate, genesis), which (the novel flesh), proposes to pose as a new truth created wholesale in Genesis 2:21.

In Genesis 2:21, two novel entities enter into the Garden of Eden, the phallus, manufactured by closing up the petals on ha-adam's tulip (the Hebrew says the two lips of ha-adam's femininity are sutured סגר together to form the first phallus, Midrash Rabbah, Bere****h, XVII, 6), and secondarily, but of equal importance, the testimony come through the novel new flesh: the semen.

This theological semen, i.e., the first instance of semen in the Torah, is so little remarked on in Jewish or Christian theology as to almost defy belief. It's hidden throughout the Tanakh, but in plain sight, so that it almost appears Jews and Christians together, to a man, have made a pact not to notice or think about the most fertile source for unlocking innumerable and fundamental secrets lurking beneath the petals and pages of the Torah text. It's almost as though Jews and Christians share one fundamental theological premonition: fear of the theological semen that might show them to be more symbiotically related than either theology can bear, precisely because it proves that though they may indeed be brothers from another mother, they in truth, and fact, share the same father, and thus the same seminally flawed testemony.

When the Temple was destroyed, its cultic function was partially preserved by the human sexual activity when performed in purity. In fact the association between Temple and paradise as places for sexual bliss and procreation has already been suggested, on the basis of many other sources . . . This transfer of the role of the Temple as the destined place for erotic events . . . the structure of a married couple [. . .] was seemingly facilitated by the existence of a very ancient conception of the Holy of Holies as bedroom . . ..

Professor Moshe Idel, Hebrew University, Kabbalah and Eros, p. 33.​

In the quotation above, Professor Idel references, The Gospel of Phillip. But it should be well-known that the great Rashi himself referred to the Holy of Holies as the nuptial chamber where God and his bride consummate their union such that once the symbolic parallels between the temple and human sexuality are laid bare, so to say, all the significant symbols of the temple can be stripped naked to be viewed by the serious student of the word of God not constrained by romantic sexual mores or puritanical self-righteousness.

Professor Idel delves closer to our subject when he says:

. . . rabbinic discussions continue a biblical emphasis on the importance of procreation and [thus] the sanctity of semen. . . I wonder if this topic does not serve as one of the core concerns of Judaism; I assume that further research in this direction will discover unsuspected ramifications . . ..

Ibid. p. 34.​

How could it be otherwise since if the Holy of Holies is the bedchamber, the nuptial chamber, where holy offspring, souls from the Tree of Life, are conceived, what could be more important than bringing all the naked symbolism to bear (or to term)?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

How could it be otherwise since if the Holy of Holies is the bedchamber, the nuptial chamber, where holy offspring, souls from the Tree of Life, are conceived, what could be more important than bringing all the naked symbolism to bear (or to term)?

. . . And just here we run into the seminal question concerning the theological sanctity, or not, of semen, since we can know with scientific precision that based on the concept of the Holy of Holies as the nuptial chamber in an anthropomorphic-anthropos, the veil in the temple therefore signifies the virginity of the temple-anthropos, and thus is symbolic of the hymenal veil covering up the place where bride and groom meet in the sacred union that produces souls.

Do you see the problem? The veil remains intact even when the high priest brings the divine seed into the womb where divine souls are conceived. The divine offspring is not only conceived through a virgin procedure, one that doesn't tear the veil of sanctity in the conception process, but furthermore, the seed of life doesn't appear to be semen at all, but, a secondary life-fluid produced in the temple symbolism by the blood of the lamb, and in its marriage ceremony analog, by the blood of the limb (brit milah).

Since circumcision (brit milah) is etymologically a wedding ritual, whereby ritually speaking, the limb in the cross-hairs of our deconstructive analysis is being destroyed, or utterly enfeebled (brit milah symbolizes ritual-emasculation), the parallel in temple ritual, whereby the flesh of the divine organ (in ancient symbolism animals represent deity) is sacrificed, and bled, and its blood used in the place of semen, surely stands the test of logic and scientific inquiry. . . And there could hardly be a better place to note that the Jewish sages claim, one and all, that phallic-sex is where mankind is most akin to the animal he should not really be a kin to at all.



John

 

[crossfire]

Cain and Abel are both conceived in the Garden. Cain's conception is the original sin. Abel was conceived by the Lord, though the Masoretic text tells you otherwise.

Abel is virgin conceived. He was in Eve when she was cloned from Adam. Abel was the true firstborn of Eve. Cain is a usurper. He's the first phallically conceived human. His twin brother, Abel, was already in the womb when Cain was being conceived through the original sin of phallic sex.

They don't teach this in Sunday school, or at synagogue. Rome and Jerusalem are still conspiring to keep simple truths hidden even if that requires some violence be done to the living word of God.



John

If you want to look at the parable of the wheat and the tares in the context of semen rather than seed, I could go along with that. (The spermatic word as described by Carl Jung.)

 

[John D. Brey]

If you want to look at the parable of the wheat and the tares in the context of semen rather than seed, I could go along with that. (The spermatic word as described by Carl Jung.)

. . . Can you lay the parable out for us in its new context? I think you have something there but my brain is jumbled up with other reference.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

. . . And just here we run into the seminal question concerning the theological sanctity, or not, of semen, since we can know with scientific precision that based on the concept of the Holy of Holies as the nuptial chamber in an anthropomorphic-anthropos, the veil in the temple therefore signifies the virginity of the temple-anthropos, and thus is symbolic of the hymenal veil covering up the place where bride and groom meet in the sacred union that produces souls.

The concept of the temple as an anthropomorphic-anthropos sanctified by an intact veil lends itself, though it must be returned, to the threads in this forum discussing the feminine body of ha-adam until the desecration that takes place in Genesis 2:21. Which is to say that the temple, as anthropos, has a hymen, just as ha-adam had a hymen. Neither (temple nor ha-adam) are gendered women (since there's no male or male flesh to create the dualistic distinction associated with genital differentiation).

This is to point out that the temple is a representation of the great mother, the original anthropos, who was, ironically, not a phallic male.

Which segues, too nicely, into the symbolism currently under discussion since, as pointed out in numerous threads on the female nature of ha-adam, we know that the masculine element of the original anthropos was not only not semen, since God creates ha-adam without using semen, but blood: God's blood. Ergo the name א–דם, the blood דם, of the divine bull א.

Not only does the name "adam" spell out the "blood" dam, of the bull, the alef, but the blood that goes into ha-adam doesn't go in through the intact veil associated with temple ritual, but through the mouth per the analogue of human sexuality whereby the last of three symbols related to an orthodox brit milah, ritual circumcision, is metzitzah, where the blood of the divine organ, come, so to say, from the animal flesh on the human body, is symbolically ingested in a Jewish ritual that more than one anthropologist, and more than one rabbi, has bristled to say looks peculiarly similar to the Eucharist:

The third stage of the circumcision procedure is called metzitzah, or "sucking." The mohel briefly extracts blood from the child's wound, traditionally using his mouth. He then expectorates the blood into a goblet, which, as I discuss shortly, the boy and his parents sip.

Professor Eric Kline Silverman, From Abraham to America: A history of Jewish Circumcision.

Several new practices placed special emphasis on bloodshed. After performing metsitsah, sucking blood from the circumcised penis, the mohel would spit some blood into the cup of wine from which he would place drops on the child's lips.

Leonard B. Glick, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America, p. 63.

The justification for this rabbinic custom of metzitzah was generally medical: it was believed that sucking the blood would prevent infection. However, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that something more ritualistic was at stake. These Jewish practices might be called the mirror image of the Eucharist. In both cases, blood appears to be consumed, although in fact it is not.

David Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians, p. 98-99.​

John

 

[crossfire]

. . . Can you lay the parable out for us in its new context? I think you have something there but my brain is jumbled up with other reference.



John

Replace the word "semen" for the word "seed" in Matthew 13.

 

[Deeje]

. . . Since we agree on the fundamental truths, I don't want to create a stumbling block by going into things that may not be in your particular purview (and may not matter for you). What I study might be a distraction to the way you study. And I don't want my study to be a burden to yours.

Does it strike you as strange that God, by his spirit, could bring different people to completely different conclusions about the same text? Isn’t this what creates division? Is it God who wants his worshippers confused and divided.....or is it his adversary?

Who wins if those who seek God are directed down rabbit holes?

Suffice it to say my studies are unorthodox and rely on principals of exegesis that aren't always well understood by many students. . . What the scripture says, or even can say, is dependent on what it's asked.

Is it the wrong questions being asked? Is it looking for things that don’t really exist? Is it making something simple into something unnecessarily complex? Jehovah is not a God of disorder or disunity. He has provided his word as a guide to the human race, the majority of whom are not scholars. So where does that leave us? Rabbit holes lead to other rabbit holes.....it’s not a good idea to go down them when they lead to unsubstantiated conclusions and tantalising possibilities that detract from its simple truth.

The Bible’s basic story is not that complicated......what we lost in Eden is given back to us via a redemption arrangement that accords with God’s perfect justice. So.....what is it that he we get back exactly? (Revelation 21:2-3)

What I see you suggesting is way beyond anything that the Bible itself says. Reading obscure things into scripture is a pointless exercise IMO.
The Temple arrangement for example.....
Paul refers to the temple as an earthly “shadow” of the heavenly arrangement. What does that mean? Isn’t it that the earthly Temple is only a reflection of a much grander spiritual arrangement in heaven?

The priesthood were only gathered from a single family, designated by God. The priests could enter the Holy compartment to carry out their duties, but the High Priest was the only one allowed to enter the Most Holy compartment of the Temple, and only once a year on the Day of Atonement. Blood was required to atone for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 9:1-3; 6-7)

So we know who the earthly priesthood were, and who the High Priests were officiating in the earthly Temple arrangement, but who are they in the heavenly arrangement?

In trying to associate holy things in heaven with earthly things and nuptial chambers, seems to be adding an element to the sacred that does not really exist.

Sexual conduct was strictly controlled by Israel’s laws because the transmission of life was a sacred act. Humans are creating other humans. To use their procreative organs for the mere pleasure of the flesh incurred God’s great displeasure. It was a restricted activity, only for committed marriage in order to raise a family in the security and sanctity of that God ordained arrangement. This intimate act was an expression of committed love, not to be confused with lust, a mere desire of the flesh.

And there's an interchange, or intercourse, between the outer narrative of the text, and what the holy spirit inspires a person to ask of the text. The water of the word has depth many many fathoms below what the majority of exegetes can endure without getting the bends in their knees.

Be careful not to wade in past your depth....especially if it only leads to imagined conclusions. Ask yourself, who shares your conclusions?
Who led you down that rabbit hole?....and more importantly, why?

It cannot be that we are alone in reaching our conclusions. God does not work like that. His people have never been mainstream, but as a “nation” they were all taught the same things by those appointed by God to guide the rest. So, because Jesus was going to appoint a “faithful and discreet slave” who would “feed” his fellow slaves “their food at the proper time” we cannot eat from a different table and still have the truth. (Matthew 24:45)

According to Paul, there are only two tables where spiritual food is served....
1 Corinthians 10:21....
“You cannot be drinking the cup of Jehovah and the cup of demons; you cannot be partaking of “the table of Jehovah” and the table of demons.”

The great deceiver is serving “food” to his misled worshippers too, and the “food” looks good and is appetising....but it is spiritual poison.

We have to have our wits about us. What are we “eating” and who is “feeding” us? We need to ask those questions and also know that we can’t feed alone......we need a brotherhood. If we don’t have one who demonstrate genuine love for their fellow Christians and who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ to the letter, then I believe that we need to rethink our position.

 

[John D. Brey]

Replace the word "semen" for the word "seed" in Matthew 13.

. . . It works well if you start with verse 36.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Does it strike you as strange that God, by his spirit, could bring different people to completely different conclusions about the same text? Isn’t this what creates division? Is it God who wants his worshippers confused and divided.....or is it his adversary?

Who wins if those who seek God are directed down rabbit holes?

Great questions.

In Rabbi Jacob Neusner's book, A Rabbi Speaks with Jesus, he acknowledges that Jesus is a great Torah scholar, perhaps the best of his day (which is an amazing concession from a Jewish scholar and Rabbi in itself). But he then says even so he would not follow Jesus as a disciple. And his reason? Because, as he states it, Jesus looked individuals in the eye and told them to follow him, while, according to Rabbi Neusner, Moses mediated between God and the community of Israel, and not individuals per se.

You and I are probably extremely close, true members of the same family, in a communal, foundational, doctrine of faith, kind of sense. But Jesus speaks to individuals. And he does so for the express reason that only a singular entity, like Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus himself, Paul, or Peter, can choose, of their own freewill, to follow the Lord down a path it would be foolhardy to expect more than one or two people in any given generation to have the courage and endurance to trod.

Paul is a great brother to all Christians. And yet he knows things very very few of his brothers and sisters know about the identity and deeper purposes God purposed in Christ.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Is it the wrong questions being asked? Is it looking for things that don’t really exist? Is it making something simple into something unnecessarily complex? Jehovah is not a God of disorder or disunity. He has provided his word as a guide to the human race, the majority of whom are not scholars. So where does that leave us? Rabbit holes lead to other rabbit holes.....it’s not a good idea to go down them when they lead to unsubstantiated conclusions and tantalising possibilities that detract from its simple truth.

Again we agree. God is not a God of disorder. And if you're looking for things that don't exist you're part and parcel of the problem. But there are things that do exist, that the community, or the majority, don't, can't, know or accept. When you ask me who agrees with me, or why everyone doesn't know what I do, you're privileging the community over the rare individual just like Rabbi Neusner did as an excuse not to follow Jesus.

There is not one single doctrinal point in this thread that I couldn't prove to you using sound, logical, exegesis, that in the end you would likely agree with.

The problem is that the foundational stuff for what I'm interested in now, is itself considered unknown, mystical, and unjustified by the majority.

It's not. And I'd be willing to prove it, for the sake of your edification, even though it will detract from the spirit of this particular thread.

Take, if you're interested, what you consider the most outrageous, unjustified, statement in this thread, and I wills start a new thread where I will show you that I've exegeted it, using the greatest scholars of all time, and the best translations from the original languages, such that though to the orthodox crowd (the KJV crowd) it appears crazy, it is in fact, and truth, based on sound teaching and proper exegesis of the original langauges.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

What I see you suggesting is way beyond anything that the Bible itself says. Reading obscure things into scripture is a pointless exercise IMO.

Very few people read and understand Ludwig Wittgenstein, or Martin Heidegger. For most people their language, and their pursuits, are obscure, at best.

But the obscurity is part and parcel of education, and study, and understanding. For those who understand Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, there's nothing obscure about them.

I quoted Peter saying Paul was considered obscure, or hard to understand, by many folk. And truth be known, it's likely even Peter didn't understand some of even the simple concepts Paul was teaching. To understand Paul a person has to have a Jewish education well beyond Peter's as the very context for understanding what Paul is saying.

It's dangerous, even perhaps blasphemous, to use one's own educational prism (broad or slender) as the source of truth, and the barrier, beyond which anything else is pointless and heretical.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

So we know who the earthly priesthood were, and who the High Priests were officiating in the earthly Temple arrangement, but who are they in the heavenly arrangement?

It's important to know that the Levitical priesthood is according to sin. It's not God's original intent. It is a stop-gap measure because of Israel's failure at Sinai.

All of Israel were supposed to be priests. Which, technically, would make none of them priests, except to the Gentiles, since if every Jew is a priest, there's no distinction between a priestly Jew and a non-priestly Jew, since the latter doesn't exist in a universal priesthood of Jews.

The Church is a universal priesthood. Which means there are no priests in the Church, since there's no non-priestly member of the Church (to create the distinction). Therefore the priesthood of the Church can only be as mediators for those who are not members of the Body of Christ.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In trying to associate holy things in heaven with earthly things and nuptial chambers, seems to be adding an element to the sacred that does not really exist.

The "temple" is not the "thing-in-itself." In other words, a temple is not some holy building where holiness dwells. It is a symbol of something it is only symbolic concerning.

The temple is symbolic of a spiritual body, a house, a home, of God. And since God lived in ha-adam, and our Lord, in the flesh, it's not outrageous or undoctrinal to understand that the temple represents ha-adam, and our Lord, in the flesh, in that representation that is still in stone.

Ezekiel rightly claims that eventually God replaces the heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

For too many that transformation is eschatological. Too many still have a heart of stone, as Bob Dylan remarked, and are not fully the property of Jesus, as Dylan also remarked.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Sexual conduct was strictly controlled by Israel’s laws because the transmission of life was a sacred act. Humans are creating other humans.

. . . That's the problem. Semen allegedly creating the life that only blood can truly create. Jesus said you must drink his blood, not his semen, if you want to be born into his family.

Semen creates a shell, a chimera, a temple. But the blood of the sacrifice must be brought into the temple if true life is ever going to exist there.


John

 

[Deeje]

In Rabbi Jacob Neusner's book, A Rabbi Speaks with Jesus, he acknowledges that Jesus is a great Torah scholar, perhaps the best of his day (which is an amazing concession from a Jewish scholar and Rabbi in itself). But he then says even so he would not follow Jesus as a disciple. And his reason? Because, as he states it, Jesus looked individuals in the eye and told them to follow him, while, according to Rabbi Neusner, Moses mediated between God and the community of Israel, and not individuals per se.

I find it incredible that this is a basis to reject Jesus Christ, who had indeed told 'the lost sheep' to follow him out of a corrupt pen where the shepherds were more concerned about themselves and neglectful of the sheep....and into a new pen with a Fine Shepherd to care for them.

It is true that Moses was the Mediator of the old Covenant, but Jesus was the son of God, Moses was not. Jesus was definitely the "prophet like Moses" who was foretold, and he was Mediator of the new covenant, but he was also unlike Moses in many ways.

You and I are probably extremely close, true members of the same family, in a communal, foundational, doctrine of faith, kind of sense. But Jesus speaks to individuals. And he does so for the express reason that only a singular entity, like Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus himself, Paul, or Peter, can choose, of their own freewill, to follow the Lord down a path it would be foolhardy to expect more than one or two people in any given generation to have the courage and endurance to trod.

I am not sure I understand your reasoning here. Abraham was the progenitor of the nation of Israel....Moses was an Israelite, despite being raised in Pharaoh's household.....David and Isaiah were also part of God's nation, as were Jesus and his apostles. Who were these "individuals" who operated apart from that nation? All were guided by the same holy spirit....powerfully demonstrated on all of them to carry out the will of God.

Paul is a great brother to all Christians. And yet he knows things very very few of his brothers and sisters know about the identity and deeper purposes God purposed in Christ.

Paul was a special case.....the only apostle to be a former Pharisee and educated at the feet of Gamaliel. His education would ensure that his discussions with the Greek philosophers, (such as at the Areopʹagus, Acts 17:22-23) were those of a man with an education. The humble fishermen who made up the majority of the twelve would perhaps have been out of their depth in that setting.

Paul was assigned as "an apostle to the nations", taking Christ's message to the Gentiles whom he once despised.....but not as much as he despised the Christians. It is interesting to note that Paul did not receive his education in Christianity from the other apostles...he was taught directly by the resurrected Christ who had tapped him on the shoulder on his way to persecute more Christians.

Again we agree. God is not a God of disorder. And if you're looking for things that don't exist you're part and parcel of the problem. But there are things that do exist, that the community, or the majority, don't, can't, know or accept. When you ask me who agrees with me, or why everyone doesn't know what I do, you're privileging the community over the rare individual just like Rabbi Neusner did as an excuse not to follow Jesus.

What makes you think this man is onto something?...especially since knowing what he knows didn't lead him to Jesus? What things exist that God has not revealed to his own? He reveals nothing to those who are undeserving of his truths. There are no 'pearls cast before swine'.
It was Jesus who told us about a "faithful and discreet slave" whom he would appoint to feed his fellow slaves, so how does what you are suggesting even tie in with that? Why would you take notice of "a rare individual" who has rejected Christ? That doesn't really add up...does it?

I don't believe that the "faithful slave" is a single individual, but a composite man, like his 12 apostles formed the foundations of the kingdom. Each a contributor in his own way....yet we know so little about most of them as individuals. How many of the twelve even wrote contributions to scripture...most never rated a mention except as a collective.

There is not one single doctrinal point in this thread that I couldn't prove to you using sound, logical, exegesis, that in the end you would likely agree with.

I am not so sure. Its not the scripture, but the interpretation that I would be at odds with.
Exegesis is only as good as the one providing it. I prefer to allow the Bible to speak plainly for itself. Why does it need to have hidden secrets? What purpose would that serve?

The problem is that the foundational stuff for what I'm interested in now, is itself considered unknown, mystical, and unjustified by the majority.

It's not. And I'd be willing to prove it, for the sake of your edification, even though it will detract from the spirit of this particular thread.

What are you trying to prove? I really don't know where you are going with all this strange interpretation of things, that do not require interpretation IMO. What's the good of it?

Take, if you're interested, what you consider the most outrageous, unjustified, statement in this thread, and I wills start a new thread where I will show you that I've exegeted it, using the greatest scholars of all time, and the best translations from the original languages, such that though to the orthodox crowd (the KJV crowd) it appears crazy, it is in fact, and truth, based on sound teaching and proper exegesis of the original langauges.

For starters, how about the female twins....? Where on earth did that come from?...with one of them pregnant at her creation?

Exegesis can be skewed by many things.....IMO, imagination should play no part in any of it.

 

[crossfire]

If you want to look at the parable of the wheat and the tares in the context of semen rather than seed, I could go along with that. (The spermatic word as described by Carl Jung.)

. . . It works well if you start with verse 36.



John

In the context of the "spermatic word/utterances," the heart/mind is considered to be the womb. Therefore, the spermatic word is the small things that influence the mind on a primarily unconscious level--local customs, oral traditions, advertisements, memes, scriptures, gossip, symbolism, etc. The serpent "tempting" Eve in the Garden of Eden would fit this, and would fit into the Jewish tradition that the serpent wanted to mate with Eve.

 

[John D. Brey]

I prefer to allow the Bible to speak plainly for itself. Why does it need to have hidden secrets? What purpose would that serve?

The written word never speaks for itself. Exegesis requires, at all times, eisegesis.

Take ten people, to include a ten year old, a teenager, an adult, and a bible scholar who's been studying the scripture for forty years in the original languages. Now give them all a sentence or two from the Bible (how about the first two verses in Genesis) and tell them to write a five page essay based on their best interpretation of what the Author is saying.

If the text speaks for itself, all ten essays will be very similar since all ten people are hearing the same voice of the text.

Shall we try the experiment out right here? Anyone reading this should feel free to write a few paragraphs (or whatever you like) on what the text of the first two verses in Genesis are saying plainly and such that nothing is hidden. Let us see if we all agree, if we all hear the same voice, or if, in fact, things are hidden so deep that only an exegete with a sharp pick and an exegetical shovel can get down to the diamonds?



John

 

[Deeje]

Shall we try the experiment out right here? Anyone reading this should feel free to write a few paragraphs (or whatever you like) on what the text of the first two verses in Genesis are saying plainly and such that nothing is hidden. Let us see if we all agree, if we all hear the same voice, or if, in fact, things are hidden so deep that only an exegete with a sharp pick and an exegetical shovel can get down to the diamonds?

Just the first two verses? IMO....from the viewpoint of the Hebrew speakers who read it.....and their complete lack of scientific knowledge at that time, I believe it conveyed a fairly simple explanation of a very complex event.

So......

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and desolate, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters.”

OK....from what we know now, the first verse of Genesis 1 is basically the “Big Bang”. One monumental act of creation as the starting point of what was to follow....preparation of a primitive and lifeless planet for the life that would be created on it. The surface of planet Earth was then completely immersed in water.....and covered with a thick cloud layer since all the light sources were already in existence, but no light was as yet penetrating the darkness. (Job 38:8-11)

There is no timeframe between verse 1 and verse 2 so the creation event could have been millions of years before God selected this one planet to receive habitation. His spirit was operating from the beginning to bring about the first stages of his preparation, and all that followed was in logical sequence.

Verses 1 & 2 are not part of the creative “days” which were periods of undetermined length according to the Hebrew “yohm” which is again used in Genesis 2:4 to describe the whole creative process. For each “day” God allocated specific activities and expressed his satisfaction at the close of each “day” with his progress thus far.

I could go on for pages about the rest, but you asked for paragraphs.

That is how I read Genesis 1:1-2. How about you?