I sent you a lengthy reply regarding Christ, the Pharisees and “oral tradition” but now don’t see it. What happened?
Funny I was just talking about this on another site’s forum. I’ll try to edit it to fit here better.
for example let’s try these verses.
Psalm 74:13-14
New American Standard Bible
13 You divided the sea by Your strength;
You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
That’s poetic. That’s mythological. It’s not historical and it’s not prophecy. It’s narrative is not literal. Yahweh was not like Thor battling Jörmungandr.
Its fantasy. It’s horror. It’s hyperlinking a theme. Do you know what the theme is? Chaotic waters and it’s monstrous beasts. You may or may not be up to date on the work of scholars teasing this stuff out but I’ll toss a bit in. How does this horror scene connect to the Bible?
well it begins in [genesis 1 in multiple places.
“ And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
Now the words in Hebrew here for formless is “ tohu “ and it means chaos as in a confused unreality and “ bohu “ which means nothing ot emptiness. It’s also ancient Mesopotamian symbolism based on their understanding of cosmology. It’s a nightmare world of watery darkness that’s counterproductive to all life. This chaos is brought back up several verses later in verse 21.
“So God created the great creatures of the sea…”
in Hebrew this is again something very interesting.
The words for great sea creatures often is translated sea monsters because in Hebrew it’s “ tannin “ which means sea dragon. It’s a serpent like monster. It’s the same serpent like monster brought up in [psalms 74) which means it’s about the Leviathan of Job. A giant multi headed fire breathing sea dragon. In these horror fantasies we see water, serpent and dragon used repeatedly to indicate terrifying and confusing events that should not exist.
We see the serpent like dragon with some special power mentioned many times throughout the stories.
- the leviathan I just mentioned.
- the serpent in the garden.
- Even Goliath is connected to this. In 1 samuel 17 Goliaths armor is described as “mail” or scale like. It’s specifically scales like a fish ( giant sea creature with scales is the hyperlink ). It’s qasqeseth. Same type of scales as for fish and snakes in the Bible. So it’s giant man covered in scales hyperlinking back to this giant sea dragon covered in scales which was a manifestation of the chaos of the sea. In how was the chaos of the sea overcome? By land appearing. Like a large rock ( dry land ) defeating the chaos of the water and its monsters. How was this giant scaly man defeated? By rocks ( dry land) plucked up from the water.
[1 samuel 17
40 Then he took his staff in his hand and chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in the shepherd’s bag which he had, that is, in his shepherd’s pouch, and his sling was in his hand; and he approached the Philistine.
We see this story echoing in other places as well. This water and dry land. This proto symbolism of baptism. Where the waters are murderous but we are brought safely though them. We kill our old self and are reborn like land coming up out of the oceans.
That’s why in the story of Noah’s flood we see the waters washing away evil but Yahweh preserving his chosen through the ark.
We see baby Moses placed into the dangerous crocodile infested Nile and brought safely through it all in his mini reed ark.
it’s why we see the Hebrews moving through the parted sea ( using his staff just like David picked up along with the stones ) while the sea washed away the Egyptians.
All of culminates in revelation in story of restoration. “ The sea gave up its dead “. The dragon “ old serpent “ ( serpent like dragon that makes its home in the dark wet chaotic ocean ) is tossed into a lake but this lake is not of water, it’s fire. It’s also why we we this seemingly random verse in revelation.
[Revelation 21:1]
The New Heaven and Earth
21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.
“ no longer any sea “ . It’s symbolism for the end of the reign of chaos and it’s monsters.
we even see this story played out with Paul.
Acts 9:18
18 And immediately something like fish scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized;
Paul was the enemy. He was confusion and hate and murder. But he repented and those scales feel from his eyes. He was no longer a scaly son of the serpent but a born again “ blind will see ( ehh ) “ man who was brought safely though the waters of baptism.
so we can see a lot of literary techniques used in the Bible. A lot of it touches on horror. All he stories I just shared , regardless if it’s poetry, history, symbolism, or mythological are all written as horror stories
You sent the same comment twice Alexandria…
Greetings and welcome!
Can you clarify the reasons for accepting numerology (I think some call it gematriya)? Thanks
Yes, its called Gematria. I’m not a follower of Kabbalah. I’ve been studying numerous sacred texts of Judaism to learn what they really believe. My discoveries have convinced me that they are not what they claim to be or what they have led the world to believe they are. Christ was spot on when he told the Pharisees that their father was the devil.
I’m still a little confused about the gematria/numerology but they add up the numerical value of each word in the Torah and apply that value to a mystical meaning of texts. Gematria becomes of greater mystical value in the Sephiroth, the 14 letters of God’s name, 70 names of God and 620 steps (commandments) and 6000 degrees of ascending to attain unity with God. It all gets a little bizarre the more you read to discover that the sun and moon (Hochma and Bina) are actually their gods, that the Creator (Zeir Anpin) and creation (Malchut) have to sexually unite, that God planned for the world to be ruled by darkness and evil and that Bina, the female God is Gods dark side from which “mercy” comes.
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The possibility of various fossil bones influencing ancient ideas of more or less mythological creatures has been discussed by a few authors. Giant pterosaur bones have been found in what is now Jordan, for example.
In Job, the descriptions on the one hand seem to suggest that they are intended as known actual animals (crocodile being perhaps the best match for Leviathan) but also drawing some highly poetic imagery from mythological creatures. This is perhaps analogous to the way that Rahab can be a primordial chaos monster but also a generally derogatory nickname for Egypt. (Although parents of small children might find the idea of their being named for a chaos monster appropriate, Rahab of Jericho is not the same Hebrew original as Rahab the chaos monster.)
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Gematria Is not the same as numerology.
Gamatria is about the Jewish alphabet and numerical system being connected sort of like a-1, b-2 and so on. Numerology is about how numbers have magical or spiritual attachments and can be used to understand the future and so on. Kind of like astrology.
Is there a problem with the Bible talking about a mythical creature? Does the fact that the Bible talks about it mean it cannot be a mythical creature? Such things tend to become a part of the culture and even the language in various idioms. It doesn’t mean that people believe that such a thing even exists.
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Unfortunately, the cultural existence of mythical creatures, is not sufficient for certain groups of hyper-literalists. We now enter a speculative reality, which is treated as another apologetic:
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