My father's bibles

Many years ago, my mother gave me the bible she originally gave to my father when he attended seminary.  It is a simple bible made more useful by my father's hand written notes in the margins and end pages.  Additionally, he had marked up the book in various places with colored lines or letters.  Most of his shorthand notes eluded my understanding of what he was trying to note.  I figured out some of them:  P stood for "priestly code", E for "Elohist", etc.  However, the one thing I could not decipher of his shorthand was his color-coded underlines and margin lines.  Until today.

Several times over the past year, my mother has mentioned one of my father's bibles she has been reluctant to give away.  It is a parallel bible my father acquired.  That, along with the fact it was very old, is all I knew about it.  Hoping it would be more of a polyglot, as asked my mother if I could borrow it for a short period of time.  Sometimes a physical book in front of you is better than electronic text.  She consented and I drove over to her house to pick it up.

It is a large book, many inches thick.  There is a note typed onto a card and taped a couple pages in.  The book was found in the attic of the superintendent's home at Eldridge when Dr. and Mrs. Fred O. Butler retired January 30, 1949.  It is presumed that this bible was moved from Santa Clara to Eldridge when the "HOME" was moved on November 24, 1891.  The card may have been typed up before 1953 because the place was originally called "California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble Minded Children".  In 1909, it changed its name to the "Sonoma State Home".  In 1953, it changed its name again to "Sonoma State Hospital".  As an interesting side note, my research included a quick romp through Wikipedia.  A search there for "Sonoma Development Center" brings up identical information as what is found on the card (names and dates).  It also includes the following line:  "More than 5,000 patients were involuntarily sterilized at this facility during the period 1918 to 1949. The medical director at that time was Frederick Otis Butler, MD."

But I digress.

The book in not a polyglot, but simply a parallel bible between two English bibles.  The title page states it is The Peerless edition of the Holy Bible containing the authorized and revised versions of the old and new testaments arranged in parallel columns; the text conformable to that of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.  It contains a complete concordance and was published by the Historical Publishing Company.  The two bible version it parallels are the Authorized version and the Revised version.  This, to me, is not that impressive.  I suppose, back in 1885 when the book was printed, it was important to show the variations between these two versions.  Personally, today, I'm not that impressed.

The book is not entirely useless.  Before the parallel portion, there is some extensive information.  The materials in this section are diverse and detailed.  Sections include:

• Introductory History of the Holy Bible
• The Earliest Editions of the Bible published in America
• A table of contents of each book of the bible, broken down to title of the story/narrative
• Revisers' Preface with a detailed description of why/how the Bible version was revised.
• Religious Denominations, their history and creeds (including heretical denominations)
• Science and Revelation; or the triumph of the Bible over criticism
• Scripture Difficulties
• List of special prayers
• Valuable Chronological and Miscellaneous Tables (such as empires of biblical times with their kings/rulers)
• Modern chronology from A.D. 102 to 1877.
• Prophetic warnings and promises of our Lord and Saviour
• Analytical Table and Harmony of the Mosaic Law
• Harmony of the four Gospels (identifying each story/event and where they are found in each Gospel)
• Biographical sketches of the translators and reformers and other eminent biblical scholars describing the fate of these learned men who rendered the Bible into the English Language (with woodcuts of each)

The list goes on and on.  There is even a section where the book contains reprints of the first page of each book of the bible: reprinted from an beautifully illustrated Bible.  There are even maps of the holy land and other places of interest.

The "extra" material in this book is beyond extensive.  But the real prize was not printed in this Bible.  Just inside the front cover were some mimeographed pages from my father's June 23 1963 bulletin with the day's order of worship.  Right behind it were four typed pages.  The four stapled pages was my father's syllabus for his six week class on the "Life of Christ: Fiction, Fantasy and Fact".   On the fourth page, at the very bottom was his "Using Gospel Synopsis for Class" where he described his use of color coding and underlining to address specific Gospel issues.

With this description, I finally understand the meaning of the final mystery of my father's shorthand.  I cannot wait to start using my new understanding of my father's research and study.  It is the greatest find I have discovered in many years.  For now, I can clearly understand what my father saw and learned.  I have repeatedly learned how brilliant his mind was.  Now I have the final key to understanding his thoughts.

Lord's Prayer

After listening to the Lord's prayer the other day (and the normal confusion over debt/transgression) and it got me thinking: What is the original words?

The difficulty lies in two areas: translation and time.  Translating any language involves a certain degree of error. There is no one-to-one relationship between words in different languages.  In Europe, the Sami people have hundreds of words that mean snow, each with their own distinct meaning.  English has, in essence, one.  Translating from Sami to English loses meaning in the translation.  The reverse requires the translator to add more to the message than was originally intended.

Time is the other obstacle.  Translators tend to pick words that appeals to their issues of the day.  Translations of translations are like photocopies of photocopies.  Once a translator moves on from the original and translates a translation, the errors increase.  Time allows for translators to add phrases, like the doxology, to the original message.

Jesus, being Jewish, (gasp) relied on Hebrew texts for many of the things he is claimed to have said.  Consequently, I went looking for Hebrew and Aramaic versions of the prayer, in addition to the traditional Greek and Latin.  Based on my findings, and understandings of the languages, as they were used at the time, I think I have an interesting translation which more accurately represents the prayer than most of what I have seen in English.

Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes, who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration.
May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest.
You Heavenly Domain approaches both within and without.
Let Your will come true - in the universe of all, just as on this material world.
Give us the understanding and assistance for our daily need.  Detach the fetters of faults that bind us, like we let go the guilt of others.
Let us not be lost in materialism or common temptations, but let us be freed from that what keeps us from our true purpose.
Amen 


Mind you, in all of the examples of prayer in the Bible, the above prayer is not used.  It is simply used once to teach people how to pray.  This makes me wonder if the exact words are important, or if this is simply a guideline for how to create a prayer (like a template).

My research into the Lord's prayer, included wandering into the Didache again.  In it, I found another example of where time and translation changed early text into something more desired by the translator.  The Didache includes the phrases used in the Eucharist.  The Didache states the phrases as:


Concerning the Eucharist (communion) give thanks like this:
First for the cup:
We give thanks to You, our Father, for Your holy vine of David, Your servant, which You made known to us through Jesus, Your Servant. Glory to You forever.


Concerning the broken bread:
We give thanks to You, our Father, for the life and knowledge that You made known to us through Jesus, Your Servant. Glory to You forever. As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was brought together becoming one, so gather Your Church from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom, for You have all power and glory forever through Jesus Christ.


Do not let anyone eat or drink of your Eucharist meal except the ones who have been baptized into the name of the Lord. For the Lord said concerning this: "do not give that which is holy to the dogs."

I'm intrigued that the breaking of the bread is more in line with the feeding of the five thousand than it does with the cannibalistic eating of Jesus' flesh.  I know, my comment about the five thousand is as accurate as "This is my body broken for you."

Original Sin

Here's a topic that confused me for many years.  The thought is pretty straight forward.  We are taught that man is born with original sin.  Consequently, we are born sinners.  In essence, we are paying the debt for the sins of our forefathers.  Naturally, others have argued this point and the concept was modified to imply that we are born "unsaved".  Since we are devoid of God's grace at the time of our birth, we are sinners.  (My twist on the current justification.)

Leave it to the apostle Paul and later church leaders to add this idea into the collective belief system.

If we were to accept that we are paying for the sins of Adam, then I would simply argue that Jesus claims to have washed away that, and all other, sins.  So, anyone born after the death of Jesus would be cleansed of the original sin.

If we take the more modern definition of original sin being the absence of holiness, I have to ask: Did God create me?  Am I not a son of God?  Are we not all children of God?  What holiness, then, do I lack from my birth/creation?  We are taught that when we are born, God breathed life into us.  How imbued with holiness do I have to have to avoid the state of the "absence of holiness"?

The absence of holiness implies that human nature, in its natural state, is undesirable or somehow deficient.  Man is not a being God gave free will to, but rather something God allowed to be created imperfectly.  This seems illogical to me.  A loving god, filled with compassion, creates an object and withholds God's love and compassion?  This borders on contradiction.

Perhaps "original sin" is something created by Paul to scare people into a moral alignment.  If Paul's implications were insufficient, then Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, pushed this invalid doctrine along further.  Calvin's total depravity caused us all to be condemned to hell before we have a chance of redemption.  What could motivate a person (other than riches and fame) to propose an idea where God places man in hell and expects man to struggle out of it?

Original sin presupposes man is a failure with a chance of redemption.  In the inquiry: Is man inherently good or evil, the proponents of original sin must stand on the side of evil.  I cannot agree with this.  If anything, man's nature is neutral and loved by God.

Christianity without Constantine

(wow, today's been a great day for clearing out my pending folder...)

Think about it.  After the crucifixion of Jesus, Christianity spread to new areas.  Over time, the people directly associated to Jesus died off.  The message, however, did not.  In a culture steeped in oral-tradition methodology, the stories of Jesus were preserved.  Like twelve blind men trying to describe what an elephant is, based on their reference point, the word of God was transmitted to the dispersed congregation.  All of the messengers described the elephant, but emphasized those portions most important to the audience the message was spread to.

As a result, Christianity had Jews in Judea seeing Christianity as Judaism with an enhancement.  Many of them continued to practice Jewish customs, but incorporated Christian thought into their lives.  Gentiles in Europe who were taught God’s message is for everyone, not just for the Jews.  The learned that God’s love did not require conforming to Jewish customs.  In all cases, God’s message was foundational.  The extra tidbits were there to help the locals digest the message.

Hence, it is reasonable to see how, over the years, numerous writings were made to put to paper, that which had been transmitted by oral tradition and how the writings, while very similar (they were skilled oral traditions), would have regional variations.

Jump forward a few centuries.  The year: 325. The place: Nicea.  Constantine wanted to unify the Holy Roman Empire.  He wanted peace within his borders and wanted to be the head of all important things within his empire.  He sees various diverse groups of Christians and says to himself: “Self, I need unity in my land and these Christians are not unified.”  So, what does he do?  He calls a council of “all” church leaders to unify the religion.  Of the hundreds of church leaders, a vast majority came from lands held within the Holy Roman Empire.

In the years preceding the council, different Christian groups held differing opinions on the deity of Jesus.  The Romans were Trinitarians.  Ethiopians held that Jesus was purely god with not human aspect.  In Alexandria, Jesus was seen as purely human, albeit divinely inspired and in perfect lock-step with God’s will.

So, when Constantine assembled the church leaders, he loaded the group with Roman church leaders.  His reasoning, I presume, is he was more concerned with unifying his empire and his empire’s Christian groups than he was about the religion itself.  Hence, bring in the congregations within the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and get them to agree to a single version of Christianity.  Oh, and bring in a handful of outsiders who seem to take an opposing stance on a topic of the day.  Opposing, meaning they did not agree with the Roman Christianity perspective.

The Arian question remained alive, despite the creation of the Nicean Creed.  Arius was invited back into the Christian fold.  Christian groups outside the Holy Roman Empire continued to believe in non-Trinitarian beliefs.  There are still, to this day, people who consider themselves Christian without accepting the Trinitarian solution.

Does not accepting the Trinitarian solution make these people something other than Christian?  Is God’s message to us is we are to believe in three (and only three) beings all homoousian?  Was Constantine motivated by God to draw Trinitarian leaders to confirm the deification of Jesus, or was he simply unifying his lands?

If Constantine had not brought together the council, what would Christianity be like today?  Would we have agreed to disagree on issues of the deification of Jesus and concentrated on the message of love and compassion?  Or would we have broken down into internal squabbles and have God’s message lost to the history of time?  Can a person be a Christian without buying into a consubstantial theory?

To me, the point is the message.  The message is God’s love.  If a group is living and transmitting God’s message, does it matter what other stuff is mixed into their belief system?  I say it doesn’t matter, provided God’s message is clear and is provided center stage in the theatrics called a church service.  

Compassion: The preface

I want to write an epistle on compassion.  First I need to clear my head of all the confusion generated by my verification of my sources.  So, here goes.

Compassion: (n) a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

This made me wonder if sympathy is the right word.  I always thought sympathy was a disconnected understanding of another's feelings, while empathy was an understanding from a mutual experience.  Shouldn't the better word be empathy?  Unfortunately, while researching the differences between sympathy and empathy, I discovered every person seems to have a different understanding of the two words.  How then, can I understand compassion if I cannot understand the definition?

My research seemed to come to a stand still.  So what happens when I don't learn what God wants me to learn?  God increases the volume of the message.  I'm standing in line with my wife, waiting for a Master Chef audition, and we meet another contestant.  Her name, in her language, means "compassion".  Then we go wandering into various stores in search of Christmas presents and my wife points out a small version of the Mandala of compassion.  I believe when we don't learn the lessons before us, God presses the point.

So, back to my study.

I once challenged myself to find the fewest words to wrap up everything God wants us to know.  Is there one word to define everything?  I started with the golden rule.  Jesus was asked about the most important commandment.  Love God.  But Jesus doesn't stop there.  He goes on to talk about how we are to interact with one another.  Perhaps "love" is all we need.

Off I went to look up the meaning of love.  I will not waste your time with the waste of time I spent looking for a clear definition. There are too many meanings for the word and simply using the word love without a back story for the word would create more confusion than clarity. To simply say “Love one another” leaves too much to interpretation.  I thought “Show compassion to one another” would be clearer.

Unfortunately, most definitions of compassion presuppose the object of one’s compassion is somehow suffering.  Besides, the use of the word sympathy has almost as many meanings as love.  What is needed is a cleaner definition of God’s desire for us.  Something like “Show compassion to one another” without the need for the recipient to be suffering or the giver to have any form of sorrow for the recipient.  More like: Take the time to understand the needs, fears, and desires of one another.  Then make the effort to help them achieve their goals.

Naturally, my mind spins off into various gyrations of this statement.  Are we to fulfill one another’s fantasies or whims?  What about conflicting goals of different people?  What about people who want another person to suffer?  It seems even my simple statement generates its own issues and lack of clarity.

Now I know why this is taking so long to sort out.  I will have to mull on this more.

Omnipresent

I enjoy mental gymnastics and conundrums. George Carlin once asked: If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so large that even he cannot lift it?  Questions like this spur me to thinking.  I know many people who simply scoff at such absurdities.  Not me.  I use them as springboards to further inquiry.

God and the three omni

We are taught God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.  Take the last one.  If God is omnipotent, can he cast a person so far away that he person is out of his presence?  Better yet, if God is omnipresent, is God in hell?

If we accept the above attributes of God, then we must re-evaluate other normally assumed beliefs held by us.  If God is compassionate, does his compassion for us end when we die in a state less than the grace we believe we need?  Is this life the only chance we have of making a good impression on God?  The god of the bible appears to be both compassionate and willing to negotiate.  Why, then, are we told that if we die a sinner, we must rot in hell for eternity?

I am reminded of an old zen story about a young monk asking a great zen master where he would go when he dies.  The zen master looked at the young monk and replied: “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to hell.”  The young monk stood there dumbfounded and asked how that could be so.  The master, patient as always, told him someone had to go there to help all those people and their suffering.

For some reason, the master’s story rings true to me.  God has such compassion.  God seeks out the lost lamb and welcomes home the wayward son.  Why wouldn’t God be in hell, helping the lost and wayward creations.  We are never cast so far from God’s grace that we are outside God’s sphere of forgiveness.

50th Anniversary

I drove an hour to attend church last Sunday.  Driving an hour each way to attend a service, while not uncommon for me, is not the norm. 

It all started fifty years ago when my father gathered to himself a small congregation of believers into his house and offered them fellowship, service, and a sense of purpose.  My father routinely invited people into our house.  We had people come to our house to meet privately with my father. We had noteworthy and memorable guests for dinner.  We even had the occasional house guest stay with us for extended periods.  Our house’s guests ranged from new-born babies to old, from ordinary blind people to extraordinary dignitaries, and any number of people suffering or otherwise needing help.  So, a gathering of people wanting to form a church was nothing unusual for my household.

My father was up to the task.  Amongst his many skills and professions, my father was an ordained minister.  With the help of his house guests, my father started a church.  My father took no income from the church and instead insisted the money raised be divided in half between missionary work both in the community and around the world and the other half for bills and other expenses.  Expenses like a mortgage on a carriage house and stables.  The church was growing and needed more room than our home’s living room.

Fifty years later, the church celebrated the anniversary of its founding.  I drove there to meet my mother and siblings, and to see how the church was getting on.  I felt the gentle tug of sadness over the loss of the original buildings to the accidental fire years before.  There was the joy of seeing the resilience of the congregation to indebt themselves in another mortgage, rebuilding the building into another beautiful building.  I loved seeing the simplicity retained over the years and was overjoyed to discover the church still values missionary outreach as strong as it did when it began.

Fifty years has passed.  The church is strong.  The core values remain.  What a blessing to see a small seed blossom into such a great, living tree.  The congregation looks for people in need and look to fulfill them.  Boys and Girls clubs, school systems, and victims of crimes (including the innocent children of convicted felons): all are causes the church has given time, knowledge and money to support and improve.

I drove an hour to attend church last Sunday.  What was the sermon about?  How grace is more than simply a one-on-one relationship with God.  It extends to both sides as we emulate the same relationship with have with God to our fellow man. “Love God with all your heart and with all your soul. The second rule is to love your neighbor in a like manner.”