Tag: Different names of God in the Bible

Categories
General My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew

Present-Day Ultimate Replay of Sin of Adam and Eve

In this post I show that at present-day and age we witness a replay of the biblical sin of Adam and Eve.

We, as humans, entertain free will. This is made possible since our submission to the Law-of-Nature is not total. There are isolated islands in our lives where randomness prevails, allowing us to do whatever our heart desires, with apparently no moral consequences and no penalty due to violating some punishable law.

For example, we cannot decide to jump out of the window of a fifteenth floor of a high-rise because penalty would be immediate and ultimately catastrophic to our very survival. No free will here. Conversely, we may decide whether we wish (or wish not) to join a certain group of people for a shared activity with seemingly no devastating consequence, irrespective of which course of action we may have decided to pursue.

In summary, without ever so defined, our lives comprise two worlds intermingled with one another and generally indistinguishable from one another: The world of the “Law of Nature” and the world of “Randomness”. Our ability to exercise free will is conditioned on the existence of the latter; however we are prevented from exercising free will within the confines of the former.

Let us rephrase this assertion in biblical terms. The two seemingly unrelated and independent worlds, that of “Randomness” and that of “Law of Nature”, both originate in one source, which the Bible relates to as “Jehovah-Elohim”. Jehovah is source of the law of morality that prevails in the world of randomness. Elohim is source of physical creation and of Law-of-nature, within whose confines creation conducts itself since the beginning of time, at the Big Bang.

From its inception, humankind has aspired to be like God. But in what sense?

As the sin of Adam and Eve is described in the third chapter of Genesis, the serpent seduces Eve, explaining to her why it would have been beneficial to eat of the “Fruit of Knowledge”:

“For Elohim knows that on the day that you eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and bad” (Genesis 3:5).

In other words: Gaining knowledge, by eating of the Fruit-of-Knowledge, aims at becoming like Elohim, knowing the Law-of-Nature that would grant us knowhow of that which is beneficial to us (“Good”) and that which is not (“Bad”). The burning desire is dominance over nature (including dominance over other human beings), but not the study of Law-of-Morality, which prevails in the “World of Randomness”, concealed from us so that we may exercise free will.

For that sin, the sin of wishing to know Elohim (source of Law-of-Nature), and not Jehovah-Elohim (the complete and all-encompassing manifestation of God’s leadership of his world, which is also the only name for God used by the “objective” narrator), Adam and Eve are subject to expulsion from the Garden-of-Eden.

Knowing Elohim with the objective of being Elohim-like implies knowing Law-of-Nature and gaining dominance over nature and people. Murdering another human being is the ultimate expression of dominance over nature as a result of the desire to be as powerful (and as “Great”) as Elohim.

An individual calling “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is greatest”), while taking someone else’s life in an act of murder, commits the exact same sin as that of Adam and Eve, only taken to the extreme:

“I know Elohim (since I know Law-of-Nature)” → “Therefore I have gained dominance over nature” → “Therefore I am Elohim-like” → “Therefore I have Elohim’s privilege to take your life away”.

All wrong!! And on many counts.

The privilege to take away one’s life does not belong to Elohim but to Jehovah Elohim. Alone.

And no amount of knowledge of Elohim, supposedly leading to a state of being God-like, provides complete knowledge unless complemented by the knowledge of Jehovah and his law:

“And now, Israel, what does Jehovah, your Elohim, requires of you but to fear Jehovah, your Elohim, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve Jehovah, your Elohim, with all thy heart and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 10:12).

The history of the human race is marked by committing, over and over again, the exact same sin of Adam and Eve: Gaining knowledge about Law-of-Nature, originating in Elohim, with utter lack of interest in knowing Law-of-Morality, originating in Jehovah.

The stated mission, indeed the role, of the Jewish nation in the world is to declare in the public square:

“The free will that you experience in the “World of Randomness” is an illusion. As there is Law-of-Nature there is also Law-of-Morality. These are not two separate worlds, one governed by Law-of-nature and another  governed by.. nothing.”

And days are coming, when all will know, and aspire to know, not only Elohim but also Jehovah:

“Behold, days are coming, says Jehovah, when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Yehudah”,…, “and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know Jehovah; for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says Jehovah” (Jeremiah 31:30-33).

“Allahu Akbar”, followed by murder, is present-day ultimate replay of the ancient sin of Adam and Eve. The latter have produced first human attempt at separating Elohim from Jehovah, learning the ways of the former (leading by Law-of-Nature), while ignoring, and neglecting to learn, the ways of the latter (leading by Law-of-Morality).

Days are coming, prophesizes prophet Jeremiah, when this artificial separation of the two worlds will be no more.

**********************************************************

This post may also be read at Times-of-Israel:

Present-day Replay of the Sin of Adam and Eve

 

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew

“Good and Bad” and “Good and Evil” – Recording of meeting with Rav Ginsburgh and Rav Yaniv (Hebrew)

On a meeting that took place at Rav Yitzchak Ginsburgh residence (Kfar Chabad; June 12th 2015), a discussion evolved of the meaning of “Tov ve-Rah”, as alluded to in the sin of eating of the fruit of “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9). The discussion focused on whether “Tov ve-Rah” implies “good and bad” in the utilitarian sense or in the moral (ethical) sense (as appearing in most English translations).

Participants to this meeting were, besides Rav Ginsburgh, Rav Samuel Yaniv, Mr. Pesach Melamed, Mr. Oren Evron and me.

A recording of part of the meeting (in Hebrew), addressing “Tov ve-Rah” in the Hebrew Bible and much more, is linked below (with permission):

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew

The Two Books of the Divine and Their Scientific Linkage

What do we mean by “Two books of the Divine” and their “Scientific Linkage”? In this post, I discuss the significance of my research about the Jewish Hebrew Bible and biblical Hebrew.

Since my research findings were first published in a book (Shore, 2007) and later, when these findings had become more widely spread due to Oren Evron’s movie (Evron, 2014, 2015), I have received mixed responses, extending from complete apathy, to attempts to explain away the findings by attributing them to ancient Earthly civilizations that somehow possessed modern scientific knowledge, up to sincere and true appreciation of the implications of the findings as alluding to the divine origin of biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew Torah.

In all these responses, one element seems to have been missing, and that is the inevitable conclusion emerging from the new discoveries:

The two books of the Divine are scientifically linked.

What do we mean by “the two books”?

Since its primary inception at the historic event of receiving the Ten Commandments by Moses at Mount Sinai, Judaism has consistently emphasized the two aspects of the Divine, as experienced by humans: God as creator of the cosmos and Law of Nature (Genesis 1:14, 8:22), and God as source of morality and its dictates.

Those two percepts of the Divine correspond to our own personal experience as concurrently living in two worlds:

* “The World of Law of Nature”, where free will is not feasible since violating law of nature results in immediate, apparent and non-miraculous penalty;

* “The World of Randomness”, where apparently no law exists with adverse consequence for its violation, wherefore we are free to act as we please.

Example for the first world (“Law of Nature”) is jumping from the 100th floor of a high-rise, where ignoring (“violating”) gravity results in immediate unambiguous “penalty”; An example for the second world (“Randomness”) is responding to a beggar’s plea for money, where we exercise free will on how to react, with seemingly no apparent consequence and no implication to our own personal destiny (irrespective of how we have responded).

The Ten Commandments, relevant only to the “World of Randomness”, where free will can be exercised, convey to us the “news”:

By word of the Creator, you are not completely free to act as you please.

Our own personal experience of the world as allowing free will, however only to a confined degree, namely, only in “The world of randomness”, this personal experience is expressed in biblical Hebrew in two concepts of the Divine, as creator and as source of morality. These concepts are epitomized in two names for the Divine, which repeatedly appear throughout the Hebrew Jewish Bible:

Elohim and Jehovah

(Please relate to my talk with Avi Ben-Morechai, accessible on this blog).

Prophet Isiah explicitly reference these two names and what they stand for:

“For thus says Jehovah that created the heavens, Elohim himself that formed Earth and made it, he has established it, not a wasteland created He it .. I am Jehovah and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:18).

The two books of the Divine, corresponding to these two names, are the physical cosmos, subject of investigation by modern physics, and Hebrew Torah. These two books have heretofore been perceived as unrelated to one another (at least not scientifically). For example: To this day, well known physical constants, like the speed of light or the electromagnetic charge of an electron, are accepted by modern physics as given. Furthermore, it is accepted that there is no scientifically established theory to determine these constants, apart from stating that if these constants were minutely changed the cosmos as we know it would not have been in existence (see lengthy discussion of this issue, for example, in Wikipedia, entry “Fine-tuned Universe” and references therein).

Obviously, no one ever linked these physical constants to biblical Hebrew.

The scientific new discoveries have changed this perception. They lead unavoidably to the conclusion that numerical values of biblical Hebrew words represent quantitative values of major physical properties of objects that the words stand for. For example, Eretz (Earth in Hebrew) represents Earth’s geometrical properties (like diameter and surface area) but also Earth’s mass, all of which are major physical properties of Earth. The scientifically unexplainable nature of the physical constants, alluded to earlier, become explainable in light of the new scientifically established discoveries: The speed of light (a physical constant) is what it is because light in Hebrew is Or, with a numerical value of 207 (which, by proper change of scale, converts into the physical speed of light).

By establishing the deep significance of the numerical values of Hebrew words, namely, their relationships to actual physical properties observed in the cosmos, the two worlds experienced in our lives, the “World of Law of Nature” and the “World of Randomness” (where apparently no law prevails unless one regards the Ten Commandments and their derivatives), these two worlds are scientifically unified and experienced as originating in one source. At the same time, the two books of the Divine, “Law of Nature” and “Law of Morality”, Elohim and Jehovah, respectively, no longer are experienced as separate “entities”: One subject to scientific enquiry; the other existing as a controvertible article of faith.

Rather, physical reality and morality are experienced as stemming from a single source.

With this, an ancient prophecy starts to begin to have its imprint on the annals of human history:

“..On that day Jehovah will be one and his name One” (Zechariah 14:9).

********************************************

Comment: Above post may be downloaded as a PDF file:

THE TWO BOOKS OF THE DIVINE_Haim Shore_April 2015

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew

“And God spoke to Moses and said to him: I am God”

“And Elohim spoke to Moses and said to him: I am Jehovah” (Exodus 6:2). I consider this bizarre verse, with two names for God, one of the most important verses in the Torah. In this blog entry, I explain why.

The exact verse, as it appears in common English translations, is:

“And God spoke to Moses and said to him: I am the Lord” (Exodus 6:2).

As seen above, the original Hebrew indeed uses two different names for God: Elohim and Jehovah. Why use in this short verse two different names and how is this significant?

The linked article below addresses this question.

Haim Shore_God spoke to Moses and said to him I am God_April 2014