Biblical Minutiae

Yod (י, y) is the "smallest letter of the law," i.e., the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The "smallest part of the letter" include, of course, the heavy strokes in such letters as the aleph (א), the first letter. The dots that accompany the consonants actually indicate the vowels.

The Hebrew language is read from right to left, like Arabic.

Br'shith (מישארב, read be-re-shith) is the first word of the Hebrew Bible, meaning "In the beginning".

The Saturday-night anticipated Mass is based on the traditional Jewish calculation of the start and end of a day - from sundown to sundown, so technically, Saturday by sunset is already Sunday. Our own version of Sunday is called by the Jews as "the Lord's Day."

There are a total of 613 laws - from the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), the Torah (first five books of the Bible or the Pentateuch), and the Old and New Testaments.

Among the world's languages, only the Hebrew language features a word that points at the object of a verb.

When the Hebrew juxtaposes two extremes, it means everything in between is included: "good and evil," "heaven and earth."

The English translations of the Bible from the original Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek are sometimes poor translations. Look at the word 'anger' in Mt. 5:21-48 on forbidden anger. In the Greek, there are two kinds of anger, thymos, the anger that passes and orgē (ē is eta, not epsilon, so it's a long e), the anger that remains. It is orgē that is forbidden by God, not thymos, which is but a natural reflex. Interesting, St. Paul would say later, "Don't let the sun set down on your anger…"

(Reflexes are of course not bad in themselves; these are natural and neutral like fire and water which have the potential for both good and bad.)

The Sanhedrin is the Supreme Court of the Jews, not a local court.

"Gehenna" has this etymology: It comes from Hinnon Valley, the valley lying below Jerusalem. It was the Smokey Mountain (Tondo) of the Jews in the olden times, a dumpsite where there's always fire and smoke, hence, an apt metaphor for hell.

Matthew's Beatitudes ("Blessed are the poor in spirit, etc.") does not refer to different kinds of person, but to a single person, i.e., one who is 'poor in spirit.' This is a Semitic way of thinking where thoughts occur in ripples, i.e., there is a general thought or a core statement, followed by succeeding sentences that elaborate on the lead sentence ('those who mourn,' 'those who are meek,' 'those who are merciful').

Then there's the Semitic concept of circularity: When a writer begins and ends with roughly the same thought, the write-up is meant to be read as one whole unit.

Jesus upset the existing worldview of the Jews in terms of the meaning of earthly wealth. Consider these conflicting passages:

"It's better for a camel to enter the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the heaven." Or "If you want to enter heaven, sell everything you have and follow me." Both of which contradict passages with a promise like this: "…and your barns will be full, etc."

Jesus is not telling them (or us) to indeed sell everything we have or that being reasonably wealthy in this life is sinful. He was just exposing the ancient Jews' motivation for following the law. The Jews have this long-standing belief that if you follow the laws of the Lord or His will in your life, you will get materially rich in consequence. Jesus was simply telling them (and us) that justice and holiness should be based on our love for the Father, not on any other motivation. We obey the law because of our love for God and not of our love (or fear) of the law. We should love the Lord (the giver) of the gifts not the gifts of the Lord. The measure of love is to love without measure.

The ancient Jews didn't get the message. Hope we do.

8.21.2003

Nota bene: For all of Jesus' criticisms of the Pharisees ("Woe to you scribes and Pharisees…"), he still considered them righteous when He said in the New Testament passage, "Your righteousness should exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees."