Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tooozday

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Spontaneous supper with my Max. At A & W because I have no food in my house and I was on my way to Trinity. But still. I had supper with a son. Yay me.

2. I picked up a set of BBC DVD's  ("The Romance Collection - Special Edition)  from Andrea - and can hardly wait to start watching them. Pride and Predjudice, Emma, Jane Eyre, Victoria and Albert, The Scarlet Pimpernel... etc

(Wed night at my place. Come on over.)

3. Received a cute little white Mac Book today at work. Apparently it'll be a piece of cake being a graphic artist now. But I've had it for 9 hours already and haven't even got the guts to turn it on. This'll be a slow climb up that slipperly learning curve.

4. I'm thankful for smart people who research things and then are committed to sharing their knowledge in such a way that unlearned blonde people can understand. I joined some friends at TWU this evening to hear Rabbi Adolfo Roitman, Phd talk about the the snake and serpent in paradise. He is the curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and whoa. He stretched my thinking on preconceived notions regarding Genesis 3. He said, we all know Genesis 3 so we think we understand it - but really it is a difficult passage. And then he went on to point out so many things... So. Many. Things.

Truly fascinating.
I loved how he built his case slowly, methodically and with many references to historical literature (Apostle of Abraham, Apostle of Moses, etc) to shed light on our Bible and how it would have been originally interpreted.

At the end of the evening, he closed by pleading with us to understand that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not dead. They are alive. And their significance is one of faith and dialogue... evil is real. Suffering is real. Rabbis and church fathers must consider that the issues of long ago are still issues today. And these ancient texts are still relevant in our context and in our world.

5. Glee.

Shalom,

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jane,

Yeah, fascinating things out of the lecture last night about literature and art which backed up his case. And yet...

There has to be a reason (the Holy Spirit, I believe) why the Apocrypha and gnostic gospels weren't included when our Bible was being put together. So as fascinating as the information was, I don't think we can give it equal weight to what Scripture says or we might as well believe the Da Vinci Code!

And as much as I'm a fan of higher education and love the insights & stretching that come with that, I think there's a danger that one can get so caught up in the academia/scholarship of issues that it never touches your heart and changes you.

Just some thoughts the day after...thanks for posting this.

Carolyn

Jane said...

I was talking about the evening with one of my kids and their comment was, "So the Dead Sea Scrolls are the missing pieces to the Bible?"

And I replied, no. Our Bible is complete. It has been put together by God and we can trust it to have everything we need in it.

These other ancient documents are fascinating and shed light on historical times and maybe help us understand how the Holy scriptures would have been interpreted in the olden days... but they are NOT God's word.