Tidbits
Every now and then I learn some interesting (sometimes pointless) tidbits of information. I thought I might start to blog some every now and then, so here is College tidbit #1 "Jehovah":
Most of the Old Testament is written in an ancient form of the Hebrew language. While the spoken language has many vowels sounds, these vowels sounds are omitted from the written word; ie. they only write the consonants - like some peoples text messages. I guess this is okay if you grew up with the language, but it makes it very difficult to read Hebrew for someone new to the language as many words could be any number of things; and the pronunciation... ?
So... going back a few thousand years (give or take) scholars began 'pointing' the text - adding in little dots to indicate what the vowel sounds should be. When they came to the word Yahweh however, they did something strange. Yahweh, the most holy name for God, was considered too holy by the ancient scribes, even to read out. When they came across "Yahweh" in the text then, they would just say "Adonay", which means my Lord. So... the scholars pointing the text took the vowels from "Adonay" and placed them under "Yahweh", the idea being whenever you saw this you would be reminded to read out "Adonay" in stead of "Yahweh".
Ok, bear with me caus this is where it gets interesting. Fast-forward to the reformation period around 1500's. The protestant church begins to emerge and protestant scholars with their newfound zeal to discover for themselves what scripture is really saying begin to translate it for themselves. When they came across "Yahweh" however, they obviously did not understand what had happened with the pointing and so read it literally. The resultant form when you combine the consonants of Yahweh, and the vowels of Adonay, comes out something like Yehovah. As they could not pronounce the "Y", they would say "J"... = "Jehovah". So that is where the name Jehovah comes from! How funny... someone should tell the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Living on
The end of holidays and the start of a new semester. It is so true that holidays are always a week too short, but truthfully I'll be glad to get back into it. This also means that there is some life around campus again. It has been a bit of a graveyard here for much of the holidays, but people are beginning to return again. I never thought I'd say it, but it is so nice just to have the noise of lots of people around again! I've decided that living on campus at a bible college is one of the best things you can do. The constant contact with people, support and prayer, sparring in the halls, jamming with friends, cooking together, table tennis at midnight, and deep and meaningfuls to the small hours of the morning are the things I think I'll smile about when I sit on the porch in my rocking chair, 60 years from now.
God of War?
My final essay for last semester was on the Canaanite genocide in Deuteronomy and Joshua. This is certainly a dividing topic - I don't think I've read so many scholars passionately disagreeing on a theological issue before - and this just among Christian scholars.
A little while before doing this essay I watched the movie, 'Kingdom of Heaven'. I found it really interesting and it had a lot of insightful one-liners. While the creator/director of the movie was probably coming from a different perspective than myself, it was in many ways it was quite a clever movie with the message it portrayed - particularly how both of the conflicting groups manipulated their understandings of God to justify their own desires and wars against each other. "God wills it!"
This brings me back to my questions: Can anyone ever kill in God's name and how do we reconcile the picture of God revealed in Jesus with the picture of a God of war and genocide? I have posted my essay on the
Brown Blog (yes there will once again be activity on this blog) if you want to read it. I'd be interested to read your thoughts.
Exams
What a great feeling it is to finish exams! Just three exams this semester - NT, OT, and Hebrew - and I wasn't too stressed about them, but it is so nice to have them finished. They were all fairly easy exams too which I was very happy about! I have just arrived back in Sydney after my first week of holidays in Ballarat. It was a bit of a quick and busy visit, but it was great to catch up with a lot of people caus I probably won't get back there untill the end of the year.
