Categories
genesis

Analysis of A Lie

I had posted a version of this a while back as part of my Genesis series, but I wanted to re-post it here (since it comes up often enough) just from the view to examining Satan’s lies. I personally don’t think the Devil can read our thoughts, but I think he’s subtle enough that he doesn’t have to. The Serpent in Genesis 3 is introduced as being craftier than any beast of the field which the Ruling Lord Creator God had made. This is an important textual point notifying the reader to attention; ensuring that the reader examines the subtleties of the text.

Categories
dispensationalism genesis hermeneutics

Hermeneutics and Judah’s Scepter

Let me bring some of our tools (you know, all that good stuff we’ve said so long ago) to bear on this small portion as an example of my unifying principle at work.

Categories
christ genesis reviews

The Melchizedek Tradition by Horton

The Point of the book: Horton went into this critical examination to prove that there was a connection between the Qumran Community and the Book of Hebrews in regards to the Melchizedek Tradition. Wanting to show the point of overlap and perhaps their dependence on source material, he traces the development of Melchizedekian thought from the Genesis account, through Psalms, over to Qumran, through the early Church and Rabbinical sources and finally the Gnostics before heading back to the book of Hebrews. What’s great about the book is that when he gets to the end, his point was negatively proven. Not only did he not establish a connection between Qumran and Hebrews but he reversed his position to show that the author of Hebrews cares very little for Melchizedek at all.

The Good: The book deals with the material fairly and whenever there is a question as to the author’s reconstruction, he sagely points out the fact that his conclusion is possible but maybe not probable. The Author deals with each of the sources as they stand (for example examining the Genesis account on its own and seeing how a possible interpretation is that Abraham received tithes from Melchizedek). There are a ton of footnotes and the bibliography section is extensive to allow further personal research.

The Bad: It’s difficult to place any of the book in a Bad category on account that its bad for a person who doesn’t have the technical know-how of a more scholarly professional. For example, there are many sections of the book that delve into untranslated Greek, Hebrew, German, Latin and Coptic. Dealing with those sections requires lots of contextual reading but sometimes he really doesn’t aim to enforce the meaning of those words with the context. But that, like I said, is not necessarily bad since you don’t want to spend a lot of time establishing the contextual meaning of relatively easy Greek concepts like kurios and kosmos. The Hebrew is a bit more difficult on account that, well its Hebrews.

The Ugly: The footnotes in the 1976 edition are a mess, condensing several footnotes onto one line to save page space and I guess page count.

Conclusion: The book is a good read for folks who want to see how the Melchizedekian thought progresses through the first five centuries; it’s helpful for the Biblical scholar and finally its extremely helpful for a person who wants a solid backing for Christ’s own Priesthood: but more info on that on my detailed overview of the book below.

Overview (or the part you don’t have to read):

Categories
apologetics genesis history human rey's a point text/language

Do The Evolution

Evolution is a funny word that gets bandied about. Saying it in different context evokes different responses, sometimes laughter and sometimes justified anger. In fact, I’ve been in conversations where a person is using evolution in one sense and me in a completely different sense and both of us have gotten riled up until we pinned down our terms.

Categories
genesis study

Series on Genesis

Links to the Genesis series.