WHERE WE LAST LEFT OFF...

﴾ 5 ﴿

What a midrash! We started with a lectio divina reading of Genesis 2:15-25, which spanned the command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, the creation of Eve, and the final state of being "both naked, but… not ashamed." The lectio method – reading three times and reflecting on images, feelings, and final impressions – helped highlight the contrasting joy in discovering an equal companion with the impending sadness and loss of innocence.

⚖️ WHAT'S IN THE NAME

We discussed how to reconcile the idea of an omnibenevolent God with a temptation that seems deliberately set for failure.

• Adam's Stewardship and Naming as Relationship

The text indicates that God put the man in the garden "to care for it and to maintain it" (or "to tend and watch over it") – terms also applied to the duties of Temple priests. This suggests Adam was the original high priest of the Garden. His naming of the animals was not just taxonomy but an act of stewardship, responsibility, and relationship with the divine.

• The Omission of the Fish and Hidden Meanings

A detail often missed is that Adam is not asked to name the fish. This could have been intentional, given that the deep waters (Tehom) are consistently associated in Hebrew cosmology with the forces of Chaos that God had created from but left Adam uncommanded to engage. The omission could imply a boundary of knowledge and action that Adam was not yet permitted to transgress.

• Death's Abstraction

One of us mentioned that the warning, "If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die", must have been essentially meaningless to Adam, who could have had no concept of death, good, or evil. This rendered the warning merely a communication of seriousness and gravity, not comprehensible moral information. We acknowledged some discomfort with the possible literal interpretation of this command.

⏳ THE MISSED APPOINTMENT, IMPATIENCE, AND THE EGO

We also discussed the tension between God's timing and Adam's action and how one theory suggests seeing the story through the lens of impatience and misplaced focus.

• The Missed Appointment Theory (Theological Time)

This interpretation, arising from ancient Jewish and early Christian traditions, holds that Adam was intended to be given access to both trees, but it just wasn't the right time. He should have waited for the seventh day Sabbath, where Adam, as the first prototype for a Temple priest, was to be consecrated at the Tree of Life. By eating early, Adam displayed impatience and was focused on the Tree of Knowledge (facing eastward), therefore missing the great Sabbath.

[ see "The Missed Appointment Theory" for more ]

• Adam as the Prodigal Son

The impatience is interpreted as the short-cutting of spiritual growth. It's actually paralleled in one of Jesus's midrash –  the Prodigal Son – who demanded his inheritance now. This theme is also taken up in Satan's temptation of Jesus to accept power now instead of enduring the way of the cross.

• Rohr and the Necessary Structure of Rule:

This framework was connected to Richard Rohr’s distinction between the First Half of Life (establishing the rules, boundaries, and ego structure) and the Second Half of Life (the "painful outgrowth" of unlearning these sometimes too-rigid structures and learn moral complexity.

🧭 HEBREW LINGUISTICS: Language of Consciousness

The discussion on both Monday and Tuesday frequently returned to the Hebrew language, not just for etymology, but as a symbolic, pictographic code. This is an important aspect of reading the Bible, as it shows a deliberate density of meaning central to ancient Hebrew thought.

• The Rejection of "Helpmate"

The term "helpmate" was rejected as a horrible translation. The original term for Eve, ezer kenegdo, is a compound of two words conveying profound strength and equality, meaning more like a "powerful ally/defender."

• • 1. Ezer: A military term used exclusively for God in the rest of the Old Testament (e.g., God is the ezer who shields Israel in battle), signifying a defender or ally.

    2. Kenegdo: An architectural term meaning "corresponding to," "counterbalancing," or "perfect correspondence"—a kind of Hebrew yin and yang image of two equally weighted beams perfectly balancing a structure.

[ read more on the "ezer kenegdo" ]

• Symbolic Anatomy and Misogyny

The text's detail that Eve was taken from Adam's "side" or "middle" (not his head or feet) was mentioned as a possible symbolic rejection of both the Greek model of superior intellect (Athena from Zeus's head) and subordination, reinforcing her role as an equal counterpart.

• Adam's First Act of Pride

Adam's triumphant naming of Eve, "This one will be called woman, Isha, for she was taken out of Man, Ish", is a switch in terminology. Up until that point Adam had been referred to as the generic term ha-adam (humanity), not the term he uses at this moment – the term ish, which means a young male/boy, indicating his immaturity. Could this be our first hint of Adam's pride?

💔 BIRTH OF THE EGO: Naked ⇆ Shame ⇆ Cunning

We discussed how in the moment the couple realize their nakedness it marks the point of psychological break and the birth of the ego.

• A Connotative Language

Hebrew operates through connotative wordplay, where the sound and image of letters are intrinsically meaningful, because the entire Hebrew language was understood to be given from God and analogous with "heavenly" language. 

• Having Naked Pun

That helps us understand how the Hebrew word for naked (ārūwm) in Genesis 2:25 – being practically the same as the word for cunning ('‘ārūwm) –  was seen as a kind of "divine coincidence" of wordplay that implied that this knowledge intrinsically came with the immediate realization of vulnerability. This connects the loss of innocence with the immediate development of shrewd self-interest.

↳ Before eating Adam and Eve's speech is sparse and non-self-referential –  Eve uses plurals (“we may eat… you [plural] shall not…,” 3:2), and Adam’s line is a naming poem (“this at last…,” Gen 2:23) but after eating, when God calls, Adam shifts to self-focused “I” statements: “I heard… I was afraid… I was naked… so I hid,” then “she gave me… and I ate." Eve echoes: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

• Shame Fear of Exploitation

The Hebrew term for shame, bosh, conveys fear of exploitation – a defensive posture. This frames the immediate shame not as a sense of inherent "badness" (guilt, which is about doing wrong), but as the fearful self-awareness that they could now be hurt or exploited by the "other." It also implies knowing that others are vulnerable, too, and can also be exploited. Coupled with their post-meal "I" statements this is another indication of the birth of self-consciousness.

• Ego Separation

This psychological insight aligns with modern Jungian depth psychology, specifically Erich Neumann’s The Origin and History of Consciousness, which argues that Genesis is telling the story of the infant consciousness separating from the "maternal uroboric" state (the original unified whole) to form the independent, differentiated ego. The process of differentiation, comparison, and judgment—the difference between liking and disliking—is the initial source of human suffering (the shift from we to I).

God's Lamentation of Loneliness

God's search for Adam, “Where are you, Adam?” isn't a logistical question but a highly emotional one. It's the Hebrew word for lamentation ('êyeka), expressing deep sorrow, loneliness, and disappointment. This connects to the pre-Fall declaration that the only thing "not good" was for ha-adam to be alone. 

﴾ 4 ﴿

⚔️ ANTI-IMPERIAL CREATION 

We discussed how Genesis 1 is theologically revolutionary in its humanistic, anti-imperial stance against Babylon, whose creation story depicts humans created from demon blood to be slaves for the gods. It is a revolution in theological history to see God caring for people personally, not creating us as slaves but to be called out of the slavery of Empire and back towards the sacred as representatives of the God of Creation. 

• The act of naming the sun, moon, and stars as mere "lights in the sky" was a deliberate theological technique to unmask them, not as gods (as commonly understood), but as functionaries of God created to serve humanity as markers of sacred time and festivals.

• The creation is accomplished through speech alone ("God said..."), which contrasts sharply with the violent cosmic battles found in other myths, such as the Babylonian story of the world being created from the slain corpse of the chaos dragon Tiamat. This presents a radically different vision of divine power that does not rely on violence.

[ read more on this in "Anti-Empire Remix" on Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ]

𖡎 CREATION FROM NOTHING? 

The group discussed the concept of "creation from nothing" (ex nihilo), which is a doctrine widely adopted by modern churches, but is not all obvious from reading either Genesis or its ancient Near-East historical context. Genesis 1 depicts God bringing order to a pre-existing chaotic material – the "deep," or Tehom – a Hebrew cognate of Tiamat, the Babylonian Chaos⇆Dragon. This suggests the Hebrew authors' reframing of a familiar ancient narrative more than the "formless and void" (tohu wabohu) of Gen 1:2 in some popular translations. The English "void" is too suggestive of our Big Bang and too unlike the worldview of an ancient Israelite to accurately convey the intentions of Genesis 1.

Its etymology and other biblical usage (Isa 34; 45:18, Jer 4:23) renders tohu wabohu as "desolate wasteland," "uninhabited land" or "wilderness." It has narrative equivalence with the ‘wilderness’ into which Adam and Eve were cast, describing a world unfit for life, not yet ordered with distinct times, spaces, and inhabitants. Robert Alter argues that the term is used to indicate the generally accepted understanding of tohu as “emptiness” or “futility” and the "trackless vacancy of the desert.” These translations are more faithful to the ancient Israelite's worldview.

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo was promoted by Gnostics in the 300s CE who held a dimmer view of Creation than depicted in Genesis. They saw the material world as imperfect, corrupt and separate from God – in fact many Gnostics believed the material world was created by a false, evil god called the "Demiurge." This is quite far from the "very good" that God deems Creation in Genesis 1. The Gnostic proponents of creation ex nihilo, however, suggested that God and humanity were no longer akin. Though this was a doctrine that would have startled any ancient Israelite, a thousand years later the growing Christian church found it theologically useful to counter both Greek philosophy and, ironically, other Gnostic teachings that held even lower views of the material world. Through its articulation by Theophilus, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, it eventually cemented its place as church doctrine.

[ see Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ's section: "Chaos⇆Dragon⇆Serpent" for more ]

🦅 BROODING OVER THE DEEP

The word for the Spirit of God's "hovering" over the chaos waters is also used in Deut 32:11 to describe a mother eagle "brooding" over her young, an image of nurturing potential out of chaos. Both verses use this unique Hebrew word to convey a gentle, protective, fluttering movement full of life and loving supervision. The Syriac cognate term also means “to brood over; to incubate.” God uses this creative wind to drive back the Flood for Noah in Gen 8:1.

⚖️ GOOD & EVIL

Reading the first day of creation sparked a conversation about the nature of good and evil. We noticed that God calls the light "good," but does not say the same of the darkness, which is merely separated. This led to a debate about whether darkness is inherently evil.

The idea that evil infiltrates a creation deemed "good" is resistant to simple explanation. There is still scholarly debate over whether Genesis should be framed with an emphasis on "evil" at all. On its face, there doesn't seem to be a singular answer to the question of the origin of evil in Genesis. The scripture offers the possibility of different explanations. If what we see in the serpent is evil incarnate, then it's significant that it emerges within Creation. 

• The consensus leaned toward seeing darkness as having a proper, necessary place rather than being evil itself. The Jewish day begins at sunset, for example, a tradition that originates in Israel's experience of slavery in Egypt. This is why the scripture repeatedly says "there was evening and there was morning" – a counterintuitive flipping of our sense of time that embeds the importance of rest and life beyond work into the very rhythm of Creation. One's true life begins with time for family and community after the day's labor is done.

• Isaiah 45:7 was mentioned ("I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil") as a suggestion that in a strictly monotheistic worldview, God is ultimately responsible for both poles of existence.

• We entertained the possibility that this duality – light and dark, good and bad – might be what allows for moral freedom. Without something to push against, humanity would be mere "automatons."

We'll return to this incredibly important theme next time. "Good and evil" is, of course, the name of that second tree in the Garden of Eden. 

[ see Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ section on "Satan & Evil" for more ]

🤔 DIVINE LONELINESS

The question of God's motivation for creation was raised at "Let us make humanity in our image." The only thing in the entire creation account that God declares "not good" is "to be alone." This could suggest a deeply relational aspect to God's character.

[see Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ section on "Adam & Eve" for more ]

🏁 WRAP-UP 

We concluded with discussing how the new format worked: beginning with names and interests in being here, with the lectio divina on Genesis 1:27-31, followed by my short overview of the text which then led into our discussion.

There seemed to be strong agreement that starting with the lectio divina was a positive grounding that should be continued in the future. After reading aloud three times, noticing words, images, feelings, and what we were left with on reflection, folks had noted:

• The sense of stewardship implied by the word "dominion." This may have struck some as counterintuitive, but this Hebrew verb radah ("have dominion," "rule" or "govern") is elsewhere used for priestly functions and shepherds caring for their sheep. The Hebrew-related Syriac ("rada") and Akkadian ("radu") carry the meaning of “tending the flock,” “caring for,” and “being responsible for,” and it's also a favored metaphor for kingship in Israel. This "dominion" is later modeled in biblical usage by the shepherd king of Ezekiel 34, contrasted by anti-shepherds who misuse God's imperative to rule. And this is later reiterated and embodied in Jesus's ruling-as-serving "good shepherd" who "lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11).

• It evoked the image of God as a proud father, like he just built a tree house for his kids and was pleased and satisfied in deeming it all "very good."

• The original creation as vegetarian, prompting a feeling of sadness about what was lost, as this primordial vegetarianism changes after the Flood.

• The phrase "fruit with seed in it," highlighting the infinite, self-sustaining nature of life that provides for all creatures, not just humanity.

The group agreed on returning to Genesis 1-3 for the next meeting. I would also encourage you to add Chapter 4 to that as well. Even if you we don't cover everything next time there are still patterns that repeat in the story of Cain and Abel that are significant for revealing some deeper meaning(s) to be discussed in chapters 1-3.

📜 Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ

I've distilled around 40 Genesis commentaries into the Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ site – what I hope can be a useful primer for our group. There are sections on symbolism, history, various theories about what these scriptures mean, and other really interesting stuff. Send me any gems you find and I'll add them! And if you don't have all the time in the world I think the most useful sections could be Western vs. Eastern Thinking and Biblical Symbols. Other useful ones:

⌯ Chaos ⇆ Dragon ⇆ Serpent 

⌯ Good and evil = will?

⌯ a Glossary of key terms

⌯ a Timeline for historical context

🗃️ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ◦ Ᵽʀᴀx⚲📖ꜱᴛᴜᴅʏ

Please add whatever you'd like to our growing resource library, and feel free to download anything you want. Some new additions:

⌯ Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong

Walter Ong was an influential cultural historian whose work fundamentally shaped our understanding of how the shift from orality to literacy changed human consciousness, culture, and society. He explored the differences between oral and literate cultures, arguing that the development of writing and print not only transformed the ways information is preserved and communicated but also restructured the very nature of human thought. He introduced the concept of the “technologizing of the word” – that writing dramatically alters social structures, memory, and cognition. This is his seminal work, examining how oral cultures rely on strategies like proverbs and epic poetry, while literate cultures develop more linear, abstract, and individualized forms of reasoning.

⌯ The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha

This latest 2018 edition has new introductions and essays for the books of the Apocrypha, written by leading experts who give historical, literary, and theological context.

⌯ The Mystery of Numbers by Annemarie Schimmel

An exploration of how numbers have acquired deep symbolic meanings throughout human history, particularly within religious, philosophical, and mystical traditions.

﴾ 3 ﴿

🗃️ ʟɪʙʀᴀʀʏ◦ Ᵽʀᴀx⚲📖ꜱᴛᴜᴅʏ

I'll continue to add to our resource library when interesting books, shows, documents or other interesting rabbit holes come up. You can add to this too, as well as edit, upload and download anything you want. Over the break I've added several dozen new items, including:

⌯ The Chosen (now updated with season 5)

⌯ The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade (1957)

⌯ The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis by Matthieu Pageau (2018)

𞠑 A simplified, highly recommended version of Eliade

⌯ The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God by G.K. Beale (2004

⌯ Thinking Biblically (1998) and Essays on Biblical Interpretation (1980) by Paul Ricoeur

⌯ What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? by Ziony Zevit (2013)

𝄆   RECAP

💭 WAYS TO READ

Several of us expressed the desire to understand the Bible's modern relevance and the different ways its texts can be interpreted, so I've updated the  the Ṣᴄɾᴏɭɭ𓐇ᑮ𝖺𝗍ɾᴏɭ sitewith a section on this → Ways to Read Scripture. 

🧭 WESTERN VS. EASTERN

This led into mentioning the important difference between Western and Hebrew ways of reading the Bible. Western (Greek) thinkers have long favored precise logical definition but Hebrew (Eastern) thinkers employ fundamentally different mechanisms for conveying truth and meaning: connected imagery, narratives, poetry and symbolic representations. The Bible combines this precise Western (Greek) language in transmitting evocative, connected and connotative (Eastern) Hebrew ideas. In this world a fish, serpent, and sea are all connotatively linked to the larger concept of Chaos. This is one reason translations are so important:

⌯ Verse-by-Verse Translation Comparison | BibleGateway

⌯ Etymologies | Blue Letter Bible

⌯ Verse-by-Verse Commentaries | BibleHub

Even speaking in Hebrew differs from spoken Greek: the sound of the original words can carry two different meanings. Ancient scripture lives in the world of oral tradition where long speeches were regularly repeated verbatim so that every word mattered and required a close ear and open mind to properly understand.This felt sense of the scripture is important to remember, especially in such compressed stories like those in Genesis.  Hebrew scripture presents truth through connective imagery rather than systematic theological definition. The Hebrew mind was trained to perceive intrinsic associations and visualize connections between the physical world and the eternal world. This should always be kept in mind when reading the Bible, especially considering the fact that Jesus explicitly points this out to his mixed Greco-Judaen audience, repeatedly reminding them he's speaking figuratively and pointing to deeper meanings with these parables.

All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them. 

Matthew 13:34

The imagistic connections aren't random or arbitrary. Scripture is an art form, not hallucinatory word association. The art of the Bible can be recognized when one finds the treasure maps that locate its meanings. One such map is the ancient literary device known as the chiasm: a story built in a mirrored A-B-C-B-A pattern, with the central point (C) holding the primary intended meaning. In rabbinical schools teachers would often have students literally count the words and divide by 2 in order to find these central points where C marks the meaning. But chiasms don't just apply to words: there are mini-chiasms and macro-chiasms that litter the biblical canon. 

The creation account in Genesis 1 is a good example, where days 1-3 correspond to days 4-6 with the central point of Day 4 marking the creation of "sacred times" – the treasure in the map: the Sabbath, which frames one crucial aspect of the entire creation story as being (amongst many other things) the importance of knowing when to stop – they had, of course, just been slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. The Sabbath announces that the world will not disintegrate if we stop our efforts, and that we have to learn how to break with every effort to achieve, to secure ourselves, and to make the world into our image according to our purposes. This establishes a theme echoed in the story of Adam and Eve's failure to respect limits. The Sabbath is the key to understanding much more of the entire biblical story as well, including Jesus's mission. 

↩️ THERE AND BACK AGAIN  

There was discussion about how the Old Testament tells a similar kind of story over and over: a cyclical pattern of starting in a paradise or "heavenly state" (the Garden of Eden), a movement of Exile away from the Garden and a subsequent movement back towards it. This is a pattern throughout Israel's history – and, coincidentally enough, correlates to the hero's journey pattern each of us experiences when changing any meaningful thing about our lives. 

This is a good framework with which to understand the Old Testament without getting lost in some of its dense legal and historical texts. Don't worry: just because we're starting with Genesis doesn't mean we're reading the whole Bible chronologically. 

📚 GROUP READING OUT LOUD

At Doug's suggestion, we decided to ground the discussion by reading the text aloud. This was a great idea. We took turns reading slowly and deliberatively and the immediate reaction was an indication that this should be something we do. Thank you, Doug, for doing the thing and being a great teacher. 

👑 PLURAL GOD

Using the plural "Let us make humankind in our image" in a text from a monotheistic tradition was brought up. This plural form is an echo of a much older, pre-monotheistic phase of a more ancient Judaism where there was a divine counsel under a Most High God (El Elyon) who delegated Yahweh as the god of Israel. Yahweh and all the other divine beings under El Elyon were called – very suggestively – "sons of God." Other figures, like The Satan (a title, not a name) were also part of this same divine council. Although Elohim is plural, it is consistently (but not always) paired with singular verbs, creating an image of a multiplicity that acts as a unified one. 

However it has been suggested by some scholars that this may be evidence of a later editing out of a pre-Genesis Judaism with different conceptions of God(s). In this view, Genesis's final editing likely occurred after returning from the Babylonian Exile, when the religion was reformed to be much more monotheistic and much more focused on repudiating the violent creation stories of their Babylonian colonizers. Babylon's creation story featured a world created with the split pieces of the slain Chaos dragon Tiamat. The Hebrew word for "the deep" (the sea of Chaos) is Tehom, a direct linguistic link to Tiamat, which suggests the Genesis author was intentionally saying "our God is so powerful that, unlike yours, his order doesn't require violence and can be accomplished by speech alone." This was a theological revolution at the time and would over a long period of its intellectual evolution become a crucial precursor to protecting the right of free speech.

🕍 JERUSALEM TEMPLE

The Temple was designed as a symbolic, miniature Garden of Eden, with its elements corresponding to creation. The three sections of the Temple represented the earth (outer court), the Sea (inner court), and heaven (Holy of Holies). The seven-branched arboreal lampstand of Solomon's Temple represented the Tree of Life and center of the universe, at the place where heaven and earth converge. The bronze ‘Sea’ basin ("laver") in the Temple courtyard was an artificial replica of the Sea, symbolizing the forces of Chaos subdued by God. Its East Gate was particularly significant, as it was the gate from which Adam and Eve were exiled and was the same gate through which Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem: symbolically reversing the Exile.

😔 LONELINESS

God's declaration that "it is not good that the man should be alone" can be interpreted as the first thematic hint of Exile – a scriptural indication that the Exile is to be understood as having more profound significance than simply a historical event. It can also be understood as a state of separation from that which one corresponds to. 

God bringing the animals to Adam to be named can likewise be seen as Adam's journey of realizing that he is not simply another animal – that he doesn't correspond to them. His inability to find a suitable companion among the animals is a crucial step in defining what it means to be human and separate from the animal world. This is integral to understanding the serpent. It is also a helpful reminder of the relational nature of God, who creates Eve out of empathy for Adam's loneliness. Does God's relational nature, reflected in having created humanity for relationship, mean that God experiences loneliness without humanity?

♀️ EVE

She is the only living being created from living tissue – not clay. The location of her creation is important. Because of the way the ancients interpreted cosmic correspondences, it is significant that Eve wasn't taken from Adam's head – that's where Athena sprang out of Zeus, and it meant she had superior wisdom. It wasn't from Adam's feet, either – which would have implied subordination and inferiority. Eve comes from Adam's middle ("rib"/ "side" / or "life force" if it's one of the Babylonian words the Genesis author often borrows). Because the head was the "higher" principle and the feet the "lower," Eve is to be understood as Adam's equal. This is reinforced by her description as Adam's ezer (a word applied to God in allying with and defending Israel in battle) and his kenegdo (meaning "counterbalancing" / "corresponding").

😏 PRIDE

The first time Adam distinguishes himself as an ish ("individual male") rather than an Adam (a "humanity") is when Adam first sees Eve and shouts, "This one shall be called Woman (isha), for she was taken out of Man (ish)." Joy aside, this can be interpreted as the scripture's foreshadowing, introductory hint of human pride. Reveling in his new differentiated, self-designated identity, Adam focuses on his own role in Eve's creation ("she was taken out of me") rather than acknowledging God's primary role.

🏁 WRAP-UP

As we wound down there was strong consensus that Doug's suggestion to read the text aloud was helpful and effective and should be done earlier in future meetings. Dave also suggested the possibility of reading the text and then sitting with it in silence for a period of meditation. Sarah plans to facilitate a lectio divina – a contemplative reading of a short passage – at the start of the next meeting to help ground the gathering. The group agreed to continue its study of Genesis by returning again next time to chapters 1-3 to allow for a deeper reading.

﴾ 2 ﴿

“I was His delight, day by day… rejoicing before Him at all times.” - Proverbs 8

🎼 HEARING THE SCRIPTURES SUNG, AS THEY ORIGINALLY WERE, IN THEIR ORIGINAL LANGUAGES – Dave K expressed interest in this, how they would have sounded in Jesus's day. I tracked down some audio recordings:

Hebrew:

• • The Yemenite Jewish Music playlist includes Psalms chanted with nasalized vowels and rhythmic drumming, reflecting pre-exilic Levitical practices.

  • The Tiberian Masoretes (6th–10th centuries CE) preserved a reading tradition rooted in Second Temple Galilee. Here's a Tiberian Hebrew reconstruction of Genesis 1:1-13.

  • The French musicologist Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura became famous for decoding the music of the Hebrew scriptures, and her work has inspired performances on replica lyres, as can be heard here. 

  • Meanwhile, Mechon Mamre’s Audio Bible has chapter-by-chapter readings in modern Hebrew. Here's Genesis 1 with the audio recording. 

Koine Greek, of the New Testament:

• • KoineGreek.com offers audio readings, including from the Greek translation (Septuagint) of Genesis. This Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (published around 250 years before Jesus) would have been the translation Jews living in the Greek world were familiar with. After so many years in Exile, many of them had forgotten Hebrew and only had access to their Bible through this Greek translation. 

  • The Global Bible Initiative has a huge list of crowdsourcesd New Testament recordings in regional Koine variants.

🧘‍♂️ Several of us underscored a desire to occasionally MOVE BEYOND MERE INTELLECTUAL DISCUSSION TO FOCUS MORE ON SPIRITUAL RECEPTIVITY TO THE SCRIPTURES and, specificaly, incorporating something like Centering Prayer into our time together, or Lectio Divina, the ancient Christian practice of reflective and prayerful scripture reading. Sarah has since offered to open the next meeting with a lectio from Genesis.

💬 The group reaffirmed its commitment to fostering a space where INTERPRETIVE FREEDOM IS ENCOURAGED. Given our diverse theological backgrounds, disagreement is both natural and necessary and it sounds like we all want everyone to feel comfortable sharing their ideas – even when they differ – so that thoughts can coexist in a safe, imaginative environment that values exploration over dogma.

🤔 We questioned whether Jesus’s unique relationship with God made him essentially closer to God, or if his intimate term for God (“Abba”) points to a universal closeness available to all. Jesus’s statement, “You will do greater things than I do” (John 14:12), suggests the possibility of a divine spark in everyone. This raised the question: CAN HUMANS EVER SAY “I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE” AS JESUS DID? Participation through the Trinity was considered: if the Holy Spirit dwells in us and we're made in God’s image, then perhaps this deep unity with God is, in some sense, accessible?

📝 I shared how NOT ONLY THE WORDS BUT THE LITERARY FORMS OF SCRIPTURE SHED LIGHT ON THEIR DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE – such as the “chiasm” in Genesis, where the meaning of the text is revealed at its structural center. Recognizing these forms allows for richer interpretation beyond the literal text. Jesus and the Gospel writers used familiar cultural structures to communicate profound truths. 

😨 SARAH SHARED A VIVID CHILDHOOD MEMORY OF CONTEMPLATING HER OWN NON-EXISTENCE, the subsequent cause of non-negligible amounts of childhood anxiety. This led naturally to the question of whether or not remembering non-existence could imply the presence of the soul even in a state of perceived nothingness. This made me think of the famous case from 1935 of Shanti Devi, a young girl from Delhi who claimed detailed memories of a previous life – and whose claims attracted the attention not only of the entire country but Mahatma Gandhi, who took a personal interest and established a commission to investigate her claims – one that would travel with her to where she claimed to recognize family members and recall specific details about her alleged past life and would eventually conclude that she was indeed the reincarnation of a woman named Lugdi Devi who had died in childbirth seven years earlier.

🦉 I think this notion of pre-existence is how we got to Sophia, the Greek word for "wisdom," personified in Proverbs 8 and presented as being with God before creation. This was the most interesting part of the conversation, for me. Matt immediately zeroed in on Paul’s engagement with Greek philosophy, highlighting Paul's contrast of worldly wisdom that focused so much on knowledge (gnosis) with the paradoxical, divinely revealed wisdom of the crucified Christ, which positions Jesus as both divine wisdom and a rejection of conventional philosophical wisdom. 

This is a great example of the LAYERED, INTERCONNECTED NATURE OF BIBLICAL TEXTS, WHERE A SINGLE TERM CAN REVEAL DEEP INTERPRETIVE TRADITIONS. Paul refers to Christ as both the power and wisdom (Sophia) of God in 1 Corinthians 1:24, which is another of his alignments of Jesus with Sophia that employs feminine imagery, such as creation’s “birth pains.” Scholars like Borg and Crossan would agree – they've written a book about how Paul supported greater inclusion of women in the early church, even giving women the honor of delivering and reading his letters to the early churches – a non-trivial matter at the time (The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon). Paul blends the concepts of Logos (masculine Greek noun) and Sophia (feminine Greek noun), challenging strict gendered theology and advocating divine inclusivity, ala his statements about how the Jew/Greek, male/female distinctions no longer apply (Galatians 3:28). 

Sophia's self-identification in Proverbs’ as wisdom being a “master craftsman” is the same Greek word (tekton) as “carpenter” for Jesus, links Jesus and Sophia again in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55. The Gospel of John’s opening also connects Jesus-as-Logos with the personified divine principle active before creation. Jesus’ teaching “seek and you shall find” is also echoed in Proverbs, further strengthening this typological link – a connection especially meaningful to early Gnostic Christians, who expanded on the relationship between Logos and Sophia in their theologies and new creation stories.

👫 In Gnostic cosmology, Sophia is often depicted as the lowest "Aeon" (spiritual entity that emanates from God) whose fall leads to the creation of the world. Christ, as the higher, divine savior Aeon, descends to assist Sophia and ultimately redeem the sparks of divine light lost in creation. The relationship between Christ and Sophia is sometimes described as a "syzygy" (paired male and female aspects), with Christ as the bridegroom and Sophia as the bride. Their union is symbolic of the restoration of divine wholeness. In some texts, Sophia is also associated with the Holy Spirit and is viewed as the spiritual principle of life in creation, while Christ is the redeemer who brings gnosis ("knowledge") and liberation. Several Gnostic texts from the early centuries of Christianity focus on Sophia and Christ, exploring their relationship and roles in the creation, fall, and redemption:

• Eugnostos the Blessed (late 00s to early 100s CE) - Closely related to Sophia of Jesus Christ, this discusses the emanation of divine beings, including the Christ-Sophia pair.

• Sophia of Jesus Christ (late 100s to early 200s CE) - A dialogue in which the risen Jesus imparts secret wisdom to his disciples. It discusses the cosmic order, the emanation of divine beings (Aeons), and the relationship between Christ and Sophia. The text presents the Son of Man and his consort Sophia as together manifesting a great, androgynous light whose masculine aspect is called "Savior, Begetter of All Things," and feminine aspect is "Sophia, All Begetress."

• The Apocryphon of John (mid to late 100s CE) - Sophia plays a key role in the creation of the world and the need for redemption through Christ.

• Pistis Sophia (200s to 300s CE) - Details the fall, repentance, and redemption of Sophia. Describes how Sophia, seeking the higher light, falls into chaos and is tormented by the "Archons" (evil spiritual powers responsible for the worldly governance and who serve the Demiurge – an evil subordinate deity who created the world). Through a series of penitential prayers, she is gradually assisted and redeemed by Christ, who acts as her savior and guide back toward the divine realm.

⚖️ The CONTRASTS BETWEEN GREEK AND HEBREW MEANING-MAKING TRADITIONS were also discussed: Greeks being more concerned with precise definitions—a legacy that has shaped much of Western thought, while Hebrews, in contrast (reflecting Eastern thought) use imagery, evocation and connotative links and "types" rather than the rigid boundaries of strict definitions. For them, deep understanding comes through by engaging with one's imaginal space, where scriptural phrases become memory or meditations – a large part of the Jewish story always plays with memory. This mode of interpretation allows those hearing Scripture aloud to engage dynamically with the text and draw emotional and spiritual connections from it. This part of the discussion led to my own lamentations about how the Greek way of interpretation merged with Hebrew symbolism via increasingly Greek majorities in the early Christian churches, which led to the institutionalisation of more and more dogmatic orthodoxies by the second century. The book on that, if you're interested in its how and why, is Spong's Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy (2016). 

🌱 Eventually we came to a consensus about STUDYING PARTS OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS next, it being not just foundational to the Bible but crucial for understanding Jesus: especially through the lens of the Gospel of John, which would make a great follow-up reading. Just the first three chapters for next time, but feel free to read on. Genesis has so much depth it might not be possible to plumb it all: (1) key archetypes – Jesus as the new Adam-Moses-Dave, (2) the possibility that it was written by a woman in Solomon’s court, (3) its counter-narrative to Babylonian myths – especially depicting God mastering chaos not with violence but through speech, (4) the cross understood as the Tree of Knowledge — the list goes on and on and these intertextual links were deeply debated amongst early Christians for centuries. They are vital to grasping what Jesus was about.

⚒ TOOLS FOR BIBLE STUDY: One more thing – some you have asked about tools for Bible study. Here are three of my favorites. Whenever I get a bee in my bonnet I immediately go to these three (Jeremiah 29:13's the example I used below):

𓃋 Translation Comparisons | BibleGateway

    This is probably the best way to access the NET Bible (my favorite translation) because you can access their 60,000 footnotes – they simply pop-up in-window without you having to leave the page. However, if you wanted a copy for yourself, here you go. They also have their own page.

𓃋 Etymologies | Blue Letter Bible

    Hit the Tools button on each verse to get the Greek and Hebrew etymologies (in the column labeled "Strong's")

𓃋 Verse-by-Verse Commentary | BibleHub

    An excellent collection of biblical commentaries from multiple perspective, all on one page, ranging from Barnes to Benson to BI  to Calvin to Cambridge to Clarke to Darby to Ellicott to Expositor's to Exp Dct to Gaebelein to GSB to Gill to Gray to Guzik to Haydock to Hastings to Homiletics to JFB to KD to Kelly to King to Lange to MacLaren to MHC to MHCW to Parker to Poole to Pulpit to Sermon to SCO to TTB to WES to TSK.

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We had a fantastic first discussion around the fire. Personally? Exactly what I'm looking for. I'm very much looking forward to future meet-ups.

Two weeks ago we discussed what we wanted to get out of this group and what we're most interested in . I think these discussions should continue as we continue and new folks show up: they were very helpful and gave me a lot of insight into how many rich avenues of the personal and theological we could find ourselves on. 

From what I gathered (and correct me where needed) we're more or less interested in:

  Deepening Knowledge:

• Moving beyond surface-level understanding of "the hits" played out in so many churches and learning deeper meanings of scripture

• Learning from each other's backgrounds and drawing upon them to drive our spiritual inquiries 

• Consensus to avoid apologetics (defenses of Christian doctrine)

• Historical & Contextual Understanding:

  • Learning  multiple perspectives of scriptural interpretation (Jewish midrash example)

    • The link leads to a Wiki page where you can see an image, referenced in our conversation, of a typical Talmudic "boxes within boxes" page of rabbinical interpretation) 

• Importance of checking original language (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic).

• Understanding symbols and metaphors within their original context (ex: Jewish context for Matthew).

• Learning the history behind some of the concepts mentioned:

  • Logos - its history and pre-Christian understanding; philosopher Heraclitus's "divine reason" and belief that "everything flows"

    • I have a reference book called the Dictionary of Untranslatables, and its entry on Logos is absolutely fascinating. If you don't have time to read the whole thing I've highlighted the best parts . In the final pages it gives the best definition of Logos I've ever read, from, of all people, Martin Heidegger: "the laying-down and laying-before which gathers itself and others... to lay oneself down in the gathering of rest."

  • Original Sin - Not an early Jewish or Christian concept; Genesis was understood by early Christians as a story of moral freedom and responsibility, not inherent corruption; originates in a 4th century mistranslation by Augustine; a hotly contested idea even in his own lifetime; adopted by an imperial church that appreciated theological justification to rule over inherently corrupt humanity:

"Augustine came to read the story of Adam and Eve very differently than had the majority of his Jewish and Christian predecessors ... [his] theory of original sin proved politically expedient , since it persuaded many of his contemporaries that human beings universally need external government — which meant, in their case, both a Christian state and an imperially supported church ... During Augustine's own lifetime various Christians objected to his radical theory, and others bitterly contested it...  a young Christian bishop, Julian of Eclanum, attacked and criticized his theory of original sin not only as an abrupt departure from orthodox Christian thought but as Manichaean heresy ... several scholars have pointed out that Augustine often interprets scriptural passages by ignoring fine points — or even grammar — in the texts. Augustine  attempts to rest his case concerning original sin, for example, upon the evidence of one prepositional phrase in Romans 5:12, insisting that Paul said that death came upon all humanity because of Adam, "in whom all sinned." But Augustine misreads and  mistranslates this phrase (which others translate "in that [i.e., because] all sinned") and  then proceeds to defend his errors ad infinitum, presumably because his own version makes intuitive sense of his own experience. When Julian accused him of having invented this view of original sin, Augustine indignantly replied that he was only repeating what Paul had said before him." - from Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve & The Serpent

• Hell/Gehenna (Gehenna was Jesus's word for hell, and, curiously, also a local location: the valley south-west of and adjacent to Jerusalem's city walls)

• Recognizing scriptures were originally sung/chanted (Karen Armstrong).

• Historical progression from Pharisees -> Roman-exiled Rabbinical tradition -> Modern Judaism

• Atonement (what the cross means) - multiple theories

• God's presence beyond a physical Temple (Jewish historical experience).

• Symbols reveal the story (ex: Jonah is a re-telling of Adam/Eve and the Flood in reverse)

  Bible Translations (Dave G was looking for a good translation)

• BibleGateway lets you read different translations side-by-side

• Important differences in translations (Message, NKJV, NRSV, NET).

• I argued for the NKJV (it maintains original concepts without imposing modern jargon) but since then can make a strong case for the NET, the latest modern top-to-bottom re-translation with 60,000 translator footnotes (!!)°°°°𓊆Nerd!𓊇

• "Red Letter" editions are cool

 Combinations of brain/heart/body in connecting with the scriptures

• Learning about routines, rituals & practices

  • Daily reading (Northumbria Celtic Spirituality - 3 scriptures/day).

  • Lectio Divina

  • Thomas Keating's Centering Prayer

  Good to disagree on interpretations

• We all agreed that it was important to be able to disagree

• Believing what you believe, sharing perspectives.

• Hearing everyone, "open-handedness," wrestling with things together.

  Books and resources mentioned ( not necessarily recommended) :

• Josh McDowell's "More Than a Carpenter"

• Karen Armstrong's "The Lost Art of Scripture" and "A History of God"

• Elaine Pagels' "Adam, Eve & The Serpent"

• Greg Gorsuch's "Jacob and the Night of Faith: Analogia spiritus"

  • A local neighbor and one of the world's foremost scholars on the Trinity (perichoresis).

• C.S. Lewis

• John MacArthur

• Charles Stanley

⸮      QUESTIONS

What is at stake in learning scripture, for you?