The Jewish Background to Vulcan Culture

Did you know that the Vulcan hand sign, "Live long and prosper" was based on the Jewish character,

which Leonard Nimoy saw used as a blessing in orthodox synagogues as a boy?  Well you do now!

Brueggemann on the Hebrew Text of Scripture

I think i've come across this quote or one like it a few times before, but just found it again and thought it well worth sharing.

The text, in its very utterance, in its ways of putting things together, is completely unfamiliar to us.  The utterance of the primitive God of scripture is an utterance that is in unfamiliar mode.  Let me say what I mean.

Hebrew, even for those who know it much better than I do, is endlessly imprecise and unclear.  It lacks the connecting words; it denotes rather than connnotes; it points and opens and suggests, but it does not conclude or define.  This means it is a wondrous vehicle for what is suggested but hidden, what is filled with imprecision and inference and inuendo, a vehicle for contradiction, hyperbole, incongruity, disputation.  Now the reason this may be important is that in a society of technological control and precision, we are seduced into thinking that if we know the codes, we can pin down all meaning, get all mysteries right and have our own way, without surprise, without deception, without amazement . . . without anything that signals mystery or risk.

from Walter Brueggemann, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope, 2000, p3

The first word of the Bible

Thanks to Tim for this link to a fascinating Jewish commentary on the first word of the Bible.

In short the Hebrew word often translated "in the beggining" (B'reishit)has a number of unusual gramattical features. The commentary argues that probably the most accurate translation is not "in the beggining God created" but actually reading it as the first of a long series of subordinate clauses, e.g. "When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light." (JPS trans). Thus grammatically, "God said..." is in fact the first proper sentence of the Bible.

However, the gramatical peculiarities have also opened up the possibility for some Rabbinic interpreters to find quite different meanings for that first word. Suggesting instead of "in the beggining" we could actually read "For the sake of Torah" or "For the sake of Israel."

So, my thought is, if we understand God created the heavens and the earth for the sake of his word (Torah) and the sake of his elect (Israel), the Christian could equally well say, "For the sake of Christ," who is the fulfillment and antitype of both!