“Oops, I slept with my daughter-in-law” by Stephen M. Miller Bible blog of award-winning bestselling
Christian author, Stephen M. Miller. for Sunday, 28 February 2016
“Oops, I slept with my daughter-in-law”By Stephen M. Miller
Judah got his daughter-in-law pregnant accidentally. He’s the father of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. But he became the father of twins because he didn’t recognize his daughter-in-law. “He thought she was a prostitute” (Genesis 38:15). She hid her face with a veil. A Visual Walk Through Genesis, page 150.
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“Oops, I slept with my daughter-in-law”By Stephen M. Miller
Judah got his daughter-in-law pregnant accidentally. He’s the father of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. But he became the father of twins because he didn’t recognize his daughter-in-law. “He thought she was a prostitute” (Genesis 38:15). She hid her face with a veil. A Visual Walk Through Genesis, page 150.
The post “Oops, I slept with my daughter-in-law” appeared first on Stephen M. Miller.
Recent Articles:
- King Hezekiah’s name in a trash can
- Forgive ’em, forget ’em, move on
- Don’t say “sun” or “moon”
- Two men who created women
"King Hezekiah’s name in a trash can" by Stephen M. Miller Bible blog of award-winning bestsellingChristian author, Stephen M. Miller. for Thursday, 25 February 2016
"King Hezekiah’s name in a trash can" by Stephen M. Miller
KING IN THE TRASH. A plug of clay with a seal impression that archaeologists say probably came from the signet ring of King Hezekiah got itself dug up some 2700 years later in an ancient dump near what used to be a royal building in Jerusalem. The ring is a composite of two images, to show what it might have looked like: Egyptian ring with Hezekiah's clay seal Photoshopped onto the front. Photo of Jerusalem by Godot13, Wikimedia, CC2; signet ring by Ashley Van Haeften, flickr, CC2; Photo of Hezekiah seal impression, Wikimedia.
WHAT’S NOT NEWS is that someone found evidence of Jewish King Hezekiah (reigned about 715-687 BC). What’s new is that this evidence probably wasn’t faked.
That’s always a worry. Evidence shows up in the hands of some shepherd or antiquities dealer. Then everyone wonders if it’s a fake, intended to make a shekel.
But an archaeologist found this by wet-sifting dirt from the ruins of an ancient dump on the southeast side of Old Jerusalem.
Dr. Eilat Mazar, director of excavations at the City of David’s hilltop, said the impression reads:
“Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz, king of Judah.”
The picture in the middle is a winged sun beside an ankh symbol that represents life.
This dried plug of clay probably sealed a scroll or some other royal document. In ancient times, people would tie a string around the scroll and press a plug of clay or wax into the string. Then they would press their seal into the soft plug – a way of signing their name.
The seal might have been a signet ring or a tiny cylinder.
Hezekiah’s seal impression is about half an inch wide (1 cm), a fine size for the head of a signet ring.
Hezekiah, identified in the Bible as the son of King Ahaz, was famous for outlasting a siege by an Assyrian king from what is now Iraq.
As the Bible writers rated kings, Hezekiah was one of the pitifully few good ones:
“Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him” (2 Kings 18:5).
For more about Hezekiah
- Complete Guide to the Bible, pages 115-116
- A Quick Guided Tour Through the Bible, pages 120-122
- Who’s Who and Where’s Where in the Bible 2.0, pages 188-192
- Illustrated Bible Dictionary, page 214
- I got stoned in Jerusalem, with a Bible prof
Charles Addison, Jr
Matt Zimmer
The post King Hezekiah’s name in a trash can appeared first on Stephen M. Miller.
Recent Articles:
- Forgive ’em, forget ’em, move on
- Don’t say “sun” or “moon”
- Two men who created women
- For folks who don’t read Bibles
"Forgive ’em, forget ’em, move on" by Stephen M. Miller Bible blog of award-winning bestselling Christian author, Stephen M. Miller. for Tuesday, 23 February 2016"Forgive ’em, forget ’em, move on" by Stephen M. Miller
WE CAN’T ALWAYS RECONCILE. When someone does us dirt, sometimes the Christian thing to do is shake their dust off our feet, get gone, and stay gone. Yep, it’s in the Bible. After “forgive them 490 times,” keep reading. Drawing by N.C. Mallory, flickr, CC2.DIFFICULT PEOPLE MESS WITH US. We get fed up. Sometimes angry. Even clinically depressed if it goes on too long.
What’s a Christian to do?
As a general rule, I recommend ignoring the advice of well-meaning friends who try to impose their life experience onto your life experience. Which is pretty much what I’m doing to you right now; so feel free to ignore me if what I say doesn’t make sense.
It’s not that I’m opposed to the advice of a friend. It’s just that friends don’t always know what the heck they’re talking about.
It could be that the difficult person in your friend’s life is just a red pimple on their nose, while your difficult person is a poisonous viper on your neck.
I’ve found that the humans best equipped to advise me have been Christians who have had to wear the same viper I did.
Jesus is quoted as giving advice on that subject, too. But he seems to give mixed messages.
When Peter asked him how many times a good and godly person should forgive a viper who spits poison on you every time they open their godforsaken mouth, Jesus said, “Seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).
That would be good news for some of us because it’s only 490 times. And for those folks who can’t get away from their viper, it wouldn’t take long to hit that limit.
But many Bible experts say Jesus didn’t mean 490 times. He meant until the last loogie flies.
On the other hand, Jesus told his followers that when they come into a town of inhospitable people who treat them like dirt:
“Shake its dust from your feet as you leave to show that you have abandoned those people to their fate” (Luke 9:5).
Paul put it another way:
“Throw this man out and hand him over to Satan,” (1 Corinthians 5:5).
That sounds fun, reasonable, and good enough for the viper.
As Christians, we usually get the message that we’re supposed to forgive the vipers among us.
We’re condemned as hypocrites if we don’t…or if forgiveness takes longer than our critics think is reasonable.
We don’t often get the message that putting distance between us and the viper can be another healthy Christian response.
- It puts us in a safer place.
- It gives the viper one less target, which may produce a calming effect…wishful thinking, I know.
- It abandons them to the consequences of their actions, to reflection on the matter, and perhaps even to regret and repentance. More wishful thinking?
Forgive the person. Forget the person.
It sounds harsh to folks who don’t know what it’s like to deal with a snake in the shirt. But some snakes need their own space.
Jesus and Paul both sound as though they would recommend giving it to them.
I’ve mentioned this topic before. Forgive me for repeating myself. But as I talk with others, it sure seems as though plenty of people are dealing with snakes, on the one hand, and Christian critics on the other.
This is a shout out the them: Run!
For more about dealing with difficult people
Free review books
If you haven’t gotten a free copy of a book from me before, I have some review copies of my newest release A Quick, Guided Tour Through the Bible.
Send me a note and if you’re Stateside I’ll send you one at no cost to you, for as long as my stockpile lasts.
I get author copies of books from my publishers, and I don’t sell them. I give them away to help get people into the Bible who might not otherwise go there.
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"Two men who created women" by Stephen M. Miller Bible blog of award-winning bestselling Christian author, Stephen M. Miller. for Thursday, 18 February 2016
"Two men who created women" by Stephen M. Miller
FIRST COUPLE. Adam and Eve rest in the Garden of Eden after God creates Eve from Adam’s side. There’s another person in the Bible whose side produced a woman, so to speak. Painting by Lothar von Seebach, Wikimedia.IT’S A MISTAKE to believe that God created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, according to some Bible experts.
Hold onto your hats, this is going to get a bit rank.
A new theory is that the Genesis writer intended his readers to understand that God made Eve from Adam’s penis bone.
The technical word for the body part is baculum, a bone found in the penis of many mammals born with placentas. But not in humans.
Gorillas have it. So do chimpanzees. Men do not.
I hesitate to write about this theory because it feels like a perfect topic for a “Saturday Night Live” routine about what goes on in Bible colleges and seminaries. There are so many jokes that pop up.
But it’s no joke to Bible scholars. You can read about this theory in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April, 2016, in an article titled “Creating Women,” by Mary Joan Winn Leith, chair of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts.
The problem Bible scholars say they have with the word “rib,” is that no one used that word to describe Adam’s body part until a group of Jews translated their Hebrew Bible into Greek, the international language of the day in Roman times.
In the original Hebrew language, the writer says God took “one of the man’s tselaot” (Genesis 2:21). Nowhere else in the Bible is the tesela (singular version of pluralteslaot) a rib. Instead, it describes the “side” of a building or the “side” of a hill.
As the argument goes, “side” is a polite way of referring to a man’s whatchamacallit. In other words, it’s a euphemism. Most scholars agree there are several other euphemisms in the Bible that refer to a man’s youknowwhat.
The most common is the word “thigh.” Instead of swearing an oath on the Bible, which didn’t exist at the time, men would swear an oath on each other’s thingamajig.
That’s what many Old Testament Bible experts say Adam required from his trusted servant, whom he sent on a mission to find a wife for his son Isaac:
“Abraham said to his oldest servant, the man in charge of his household, ‘Take an oath by putting your hand under my thigh’” (Genesis 24:2).
Students of the Bible who support this new theory argue that if God had created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, men would have one rib less than the women do. But they don’t. Men are however missing a penis bone.
Now folks, you are probably not going to talk about this in your Sunday school class. But if you do, you won’t be quite as shocked then as you are now.
If it helps, New Testament writers played up the idea of creation from Adam’s rib. They said they saw a connection between Adam’s rib and Jesus’s side, which a Roman soldier pierced with a spear during the crucifixion (John 19:34).
Bishop John Chrysostom (AD 347-407) described the connection this way:
“As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to create a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to create the church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death” (Baptismal Instruction 3.17).
Throughout the New Testament, writers describe the church as a woman: “Husbands…love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
So it seems that some of these early scholars believed that just as Adam gave birth to a woman from his side, Jesus gave birth to a woman from his.
Blog subscribers who win books this week
Angela Dur
Jouaquin Carlos Banawa
I give away free books each week.
Randomly selected subscribers to this free blog or to my free quarterly newsletter get the option of choosing my newest book: A Quick Guided Tour Through the Bible – among about half a dozen other titles.
The post Two men who created women appeared first on Stephen M. Miller.
Recent Articles:
"Two men who created women" by Stephen M. Miller Bible blog of award-winning bestselling Christian author, Stephen M. Miller. for Thursday, 18 February 2016"Two men who created women" by Stephen M. Miller
FIRST COUPLE. Adam and Eve rest in the Garden of Eden after God creates Eve from Adam’s side. There’s another person in the Bible whose side produced a woman, so to speak. Painting by Lothar von Seebach, Wikimedia.IT’S A MISTAKE to believe that God created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, according to some Bible experts.
Hold onto your hats, this is going to get a bit rank.
A new theory is that the Genesis writer intended his readers to understand that God made Eve from Adam’s penis bone.
The technical word for the body part is baculum, a bone found in the penis of many mammals born with placentas. But not in humans.
Gorillas have it. So do chimpanzees. Men do not.
I hesitate to write about this theory because it feels like a perfect topic for a “Saturday Night Live” routine about what goes on in Bible colleges and seminaries. There are so many jokes that pop up.
But it’s no joke to Bible scholars. You can read about this theory in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April, 2016, in an article titled “Creating Women,” by Mary Joan Winn Leith, chair of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts.
The problem Bible scholars say they have with the word “rib,” is that no one used that word to describe Adam’s body part until a group of Jews translated their Hebrew Bible into Greek, the international language of the day in Roman times.
In the original Hebrew language, the writer says God took “one of the man’s tselaot” (Genesis 2:21). Nowhere else in the Bible is the tesela (singular version of pluralteslaot) a rib. Instead, it describes the “side” of a building or the “side” of a hill.
As the argument goes, “side” is a polite way of referring to a man’s whatchamacallit. In other words, it’s a euphemism. Most scholars agree there are several other euphemisms in the Bible that refer to a man’s youknowwhat.
The most common is the word “thigh.” Instead of swearing an oath on the Bible, which didn’t exist at the time, men would swear an oath on each other’s thingamajig.
That’s what many Old Testament Bible experts say Adam required from his trusted servant, whom he sent on a mission to find a wife for his son Isaac:
“Abraham said to his oldest servant, the man in charge of his household, ‘Take an oath by putting your hand under my thigh’” (Genesis 24:2).
Students of the Bible who support this new theory argue that if God had created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, men would have one rib less than the women do. But they don’t. Men are however missing a penis bone.
Now folks, you are probably not going to talk about this in your Sunday school class. But if you do, you won’t be quite as shocked then as you are now.
If it helps, New Testament writers played up the idea of creation from Adam’s rib. They said they saw a connection between Adam’s rib and Jesus’s side, which a Roman soldier pierced with a spear during the crucifixion (John 19:34).
Bishop John Chrysostom (AD 347-407) described the connection this way:
“As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to create a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to create the church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death” (Baptismal Instruction 3.17).
Throughout the New Testament, writers describe the church as a woman: “Husbands…love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
So it seems that some of these early scholars believed that just as Adam gave birth to a woman from his side, Jesus gave birth to a woman from his.
Blog subscribers who win books this week
Angela Dur
Jouaquin Carlos Banawa
I give away free books each week.
Randomly selected subscribers to this free blog or to my free quarterly newsletter get the option of choosing my newest book: A Quick Guided Tour Through the Bible – among about half a dozen other titles.
The post Two men who created women appeared first on Stephen M. Miller.
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