Every day new surprises.
A book has come to my custody which I find remarkable. It is Jack J. Blanco's The Clear Word. This book explains so much, just through a few pages' exposure.
I have often wondered where some Christians get their odd notions. I will address a couple of these momentarily. It turns out that some of them may come from something called a "Bible paraphrase". That is, the Bible rewritten in vernacular. The Clear Word is "an expanded paraphrase to build faith and nurture spiritual growth."
From Genesis:
And, just to keep the dog pound entertained, we might ask, whence came space?
Of curious interest to me is Genesis 3:
? TCW: God said to His Son, "Man was like us, but he has changed. He now knows good and evil, so he's infected with sin. If we leave him in the garden and he continues to eat from the Tree of Life, he will never die, and he and his descendants will live in sin forever. We can't let this happen."
? NAB: Then the LORD God said: "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever."
It would seem that Mr. Blanco, in his "paraphrase", does some considerable spinning and polishing. What reads something akin to fear in every English-language translation of the Bible is here paraphrased as a certain brand of mercy.
And yet I've always wondered, for some have asserted to me that it was, indeed, the Son to whom God spoke in Genesis 3.23, what that indicates. For I have long asserted that God, without whose will nothing happens, whose Knowledge is asserted to complete and total, and whose Will is said to be immutable, planned the fall of Man as an essential part of His plan. That is, God knew before creation that Man would fall, and deigned to forge ahead, anyway.
This would seem to shed some critical light on the notion of mercy; God is merciful--you might kowtow and redeem yourselves for the very inadequacy He has willed. Such it would seem to be.
And these are the problems of careless, propagandous theology. It might suit the feel-good segment, but such determination to make a thing meet one's prior expectations really does nothing more than affirm a priori one's own internal determination and cloak it in a projected externalization in order to exonerate oneself from moral responsibility.
It would seem that God did, indeed, have a plan to save Adam, and it was perhaps drawn up before the Fall.
Is it that God couldn't see it coming, or didn't?
And what the heck is with these paraphrases? I'm wondering how popular these things actually are; it would go a long way to explain some of the absolutely ridiculous Christianity I've heard asserted in my day.
Christ on a pony, indeed.
For the record, Blanco got Leviticus 21.16-ff mostly right. God is just as offensive a bastard as ever in his scorn toward the handicapped, who we might recall would not exist as such were it not for His will.
God is starting to sound all too human. And this thanks to a handy paraphrase of the Bible.
Maybe we can get some holy blurbs for the next great paraphrase. "One Hell of a good read!--The Prophet Elijah" ....
But these paraphrases seem as dangerous to new faith as a Chick tract. Do Christians really go for these things? Is the word of God so badly flawed that it has to be rewritten to make us feel better?
thanx,
Tiassa
A book has come to my custody which I find remarkable. It is Jack J. Blanco's The Clear Word. This book explains so much, just through a few pages' exposure.
I have often wondered where some Christians get their odd notions. I will address a couple of these momentarily. It turns out that some of them may come from something called a "Bible paraphrase". That is, the Bible rewritten in vernacular. The Clear Word is "an expanded paraphrase to build faith and nurture spiritual growth."
From Genesis:
It really is a good editorial summary. Genesis 1 seems more a lesson in how to read creation into pabulum.
And, just to keep the dog pound entertained, we might ask, whence came space?
Of curious interest to me is Genesis 3:
This passage is intriguing to me because I used to ask, "Who was God talking? Who's this 'us'?"
Furthermore, The Clear Word seems to present a distortion. There is nothing in the Bible that says God had a plan to save them. Furthermore, let us examine what God says in each account:
? TCW: God said to His Son, "Man was like us, but he has changed. He now knows good and evil, so he's infected with sin. If we leave him in the garden and he continues to eat from the Tree of Life, he will never die, and he and his descendants will live in sin forever. We can't let this happen."
? NAB: Then the LORD God said: "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever."
It would seem that Mr. Blanco, in his "paraphrase", does some considerable spinning and polishing. What reads something akin to fear in every English-language translation of the Bible is here paraphrased as a certain brand of mercy.
And yet I've always wondered, for some have asserted to me that it was, indeed, the Son to whom God spoke in Genesis 3.23, what that indicates. For I have long asserted that God, without whose will nothing happens, whose Knowledge is asserted to complete and total, and whose Will is said to be immutable, planned the fall of Man as an essential part of His plan. That is, God knew before creation that Man would fall, and deigned to forge ahead, anyway.
This would seem to shed some critical light on the notion of mercy; God is merciful--you might kowtow and redeem yourselves for the very inadequacy He has willed. Such it would seem to be.
And these are the problems of careless, propagandous theology. It might suit the feel-good segment, but such determination to make a thing meet one's prior expectations really does nothing more than affirm a priori one's own internal determination and cloak it in a projected externalization in order to exonerate oneself from moral responsibility.
It would seem that God did, indeed, have a plan to save Adam, and it was perhaps drawn up before the Fall.
Is it that God couldn't see it coming, or didn't?
And what the heck is with these paraphrases? I'm wondering how popular these things actually are; it would go a long way to explain some of the absolutely ridiculous Christianity I've heard asserted in my day.
Christ on a pony, indeed.
For the record, Blanco got Leviticus 21.16-ff mostly right. God is just as offensive a bastard as ever in his scorn toward the handicapped, who we might recall would not exist as such were it not for His will.
God is starting to sound all too human. And this thanks to a handy paraphrase of the Bible.
Maybe we can get some holy blurbs for the next great paraphrase. "One Hell of a good read!--The Prophet Elijah" ....
But these paraphrases seem as dangerous to new faith as a Chick tract. Do Christians really go for these things? Is the word of God so badly flawed that it has to be rewritten to make us feel better?
thanx,
Tiassa