Sunday, February 26, 2012

Family Tree

A little girl asked her father,
"How did the human race start?"
The father answered,
" God made Adam and Eve and they had children, and so all mankind was made."

Two days later the girl asked her mother the same question. The mother answered,
"Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved."

The confused girl returned to her father and said,
"Dad, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Mom said they developed from monkeys?"
The father answered,
"Well, dear, it is very simple.
I told you about my side of the family and your mother told you about hers."

Friday, February 17, 2012

Behold the Nail, Behold the Hand - Exodus 3:14-15.... "This is my name to remain hidden."

This is very interesting ... Do you speak Aramaic ? Hebrew ?
In Exodus 3:15 God tells Moses that his Name is " יְהֹוָה " ...

The Hebrew letters "Yud-heh-vav-heh"

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים אֶל משֶׁה אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה וַיֹּאמֶר כֹּה תֹאמַר לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶהְיֶה שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם: (Exodus 3:14)

3:14. God said to Moses, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) [I will be what I will be]," and He said, "So shall (אֶהְיֶה) you say to the children of Israel, 'Ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה)[I will be] has sent me to you.'"

וַיֹּאמֶר עוֹד אֱלֹהִים אֶל משֶׁה כֹּה תֹאמַר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵיכֶם אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם זֶה שְּׁמִי לְעֹלָם וְזֶה זִכְרִי לְדֹר דֹּר: (Exodus 3:15)

3:15 And God said further to Moses, "So shall you say to the children of Israel, 'The LORD (יְהֹוָה) God (אֱלֹהֵי) of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is My name forever, and this is how I should be mentioned in every generation.

Exodus 3:14 is usually Translated as "... God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM (אֶהְיֶה) : and he said, Thus shalt (אֶהְיֶה) thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM (אֶהְיֶה) hath sent me unto you."

But we don't actually see the letters "yud-heh-vav-heh" (YHWH) until Exodus 3:15, Where it says "Lord God" .... the word "LORD" is spelled "yud-heh-vav-heh" and this is the sacred NAME that we are to use. The Holy Name in Hebrew letters is spelled yud - heh - vav - heh and looks like this :(read from right to left)











But How is this word spoken in Hebrew ? No one knows because it has not been spoken for 1,940 years.

"As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: 'Adonai,' which means 'Lord.'", However "until almost the year 200 B.C., the divine name was pronounced every morning in the temple in the priestly blessing: 'The Lord bless and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you'" (Numbers 6:24-26)

And it would appear that toward the end of the period of the second temple -- 70 A.D. -- the high priest now only pronounced the word in a whisper. This was explained in a childhood memory of Rabbi Tarphon (1st-2nd centuries), who recalls that even straining to hear, he could not hear the name.

The biblical scholar also noted that the formula of Exodus -- "This is my name forever" (Exodus 3:15) -- through a play of words in Hebrew is interpreted by the Talmud of Jerusalem as "This is my name to remain hidden."

Now, this is where things get interesting .... YHWH , the Tetragrammaton is composed of :


Yod

-Yod or yud was anciently portrayed as a symbol of a hand [yad in Hebrew]. This is the entire hand, or closed hand [in contrast with the letter kaf, which comes from the pictograph of the palm of the hand]. The closed hand denotes power and, figuratively, ownership.
-Yod is masculine. In the sacred name Yahweh, it is representative of the Father.
-Yod is the seminal letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It cannot be divided into component parts, like other letters can. It signifies the oneness of Elohim.
-The yod is the smallest [and most humble] letter. From it, the other letters originate. It is symbolic of creation.

Hey

-The letter hey is feminine, and represents femininity and gentleness. The first hey in the Name is representative of the Mother / Holy Spirit / Eloah.
-Hey means ‘behold’, ‘to show’ or ‘to reveal’.

Vav

-Vav is also masculine in gender.
-Vav signifies a nail, peg, or hook. It also conveys the meaning of being nailed or bound together.
-The numerical value of vav is 6.

They are pronounced, in Hebrew, "Yod Hey Vav Hey," when you read them in the Hebrew manner from right to left.

The four letters in God's name in Hebrew have the following meanings:

Hey = Behold

Vav = Nail

Yod = Closed Hand

When read in English from left to right, it says:

"BEHOLD THE NAIL, BEHOLD THE HAND!" Or, "Behold the nailed hand."

See Ancient Hebrew Letter Meanings : http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/2_alphabet.html






Did Moses hear correctly ? Did the Burning Bush, the Light that burned and was not extinguished say, Look, Behold the nail, Behold the hand ? It is interesting that Y'shuah bar Yosef says the same thing to his brother Yehuda T'oma (Doubting Thomas, The Twin) 1333 years later.....

We are that same Twin sitting here, doubting again.... And the Light in the darkness says, Behold the nail, Behold the hand. This is the name now revealed.


http://communio.stblogs.org/2008/11/why-the-tetragrammaton-yhwh-is.html

What Language did Jesus speak ? Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek ... Phoenician ?






"It is generally agreed that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, perhaps along with some Hebrew and Greek. The towns of Nazareth and Capernaum, where Jesus lived, were primarily Aramaic-speaking communities, although Greek was widely spoken in the major cities of the Eastern Mediterranean such as Antioch and Alexandria. Jesus may have also known enough Hebrew to discuss the Hebrew Bible, and he may have known Koine Greek through commerce in nearby Sepphoris.

Aramaic, as a Semitic language, was a common language of the Eastern Mediterranean during and after the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Empires (722 BC – 330 BC). Aramaic remained a common language of Palestine in the 1st century AD, despite the subsequent Macedonian-Greek (331 BC) and Roman (63 BC) invasions.

Indeed, in spite of the increasing importance of Greek, the use of Aramaic was also expanding, and it would eventually be entirely dominant among Jews both in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East around 200 AD; it would remain so until the Arab conquest in the 7th century. Jesus and his disciples spoke a Galilean dialect clearly distinguishable from that of Jerusalem (see Jewish Palestinian Aramaic).

To give some perspective, in the same time period, the Mishnah was recorded in Hebrew, Josephus wrote in Hebrew, and Philo and Paul of Tarsus wrote in Greek.
Talitha cumi (Aramaic, ‘maiden, arise’), in the Gospel of St. Mark, are the words said by Jesus to the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue as he raised her from the dead. The words are left, and a translation is given, in all the European versions of this Gospel.

Josephus wrote in the preface to The Jewish War:

" I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians; Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work]."

Most of the apostles from the Galilee region also spoke Aramaic. The message of Christianity spread (primarily among Jewish Aramaic-speaking enclaves) throughout Judaea, Syria and Mesopotamia, and even to Kerala, India in Aramaic (or Syriac; Aram is the Hebrew word for Syria). " - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_of_Jesus