Tag: story

The ICB Chronological Charts

Badgerholt inkpotThe ICB is divided up into a series of chronological charts. The originals have one line (at a minimum) for every year from ICB 0000 (-A3990 A.C.) to (ICB 490 (100 A.D.)  ICB 0000 is the year before Adam’s life age count begins in the Masoretic Genesis 5 genealogical table. Each chart lists all events given in Scripture related to the time span it covers (except for Genesis One).  Beginning with the Babylonian Captivity, the charts include other nation events.

However, since Scripture frequently leaves long time gaps between events when nothing is recorded, the charts posted here are a condensing of the original charts that contain a lot of blank lines. The charts will be posted on the ICB Menu as they are finished.

There are two versions for each chart up until the Babylonian Captivity.  The Life Years Chart lists all events mentioned in Scripture related to the chart’s time span using only the life years of those involved.  The Calendar Chart adds a column for the Western calendar dates based on the accepted synchronized dates between the Bible and the Western calendar.

Starting with the earliest synchronized event, the fifth year of Rechoboam, the chart assigns one Western calendar year to each ICB year in both time directions and lets the years fall where they may within the life/reign year dates of Biblical events.

However, the charts use the Astronomical Calendar (A.C.) with a year zero instead of the original Gregorian calendar, which did not have a year zero.  Therefore, 925 B.C. (the earliest synchronized date) is the equivalent of -V924 A.C. in the chart.

The Calendar Chart helps to relate the events to a time scale understandable to most readers.  After all, Abram leaving for Canaan in T075 Abr or ICB 2114 doesn’t mean anything in the Western chronology; Abram leaving for Canaan in  -V1875 A.C. (Astronomical Calendar) gives the reader an idea of when Abram lived.

This link ICB Menu  will take you to the charts and essays related to the Internal Chronology of the Bible.

Grace & peace to you,

Dori

 

Filling the Gap:  The Four Generations

Badgerholt inkpotThe  conclusion that the 430 years refers to the time between Abram entering Canaan and the Exodus, and that the 400 years counts from the birth of Isaac to the Exodus, still leaves the Chronology at 307 years. Extending the chart to 430 years leaves a 123 year gap between the year Levi died and the Exodus. The next step is filling the gap, starting with plugging Moses’ and Aaron’s life dates into the Chronology.

There is also the question of YHWH telling Abram that his descendents would return to Canaan in the fourth generation (Genesis 15.16).  Four generations spread over a couple of hundred years.  How did that work?

This link Filling the Gap: The Four Generations will take you to an essay discussing that question. Once again, the tables, even with the plug-in, do not post well on the blog.

Grace and peace to you,

Dori

 

ICB: A Question in Genesis

Badgerholt inkpotHow old was Jacob when he first met Rachel?

The story of Jacob and Rachel in Genesis is one of the great love stories in Scripture.  Jacob apparently fell in love with Rachel at first sight. But Scripture doesn’t state an age for Jacob when he first met Rachel. Although Esau was 40 years old when he married, Jacob was not. So, how old was Jacob when he first met Rachel?

Through finding the answer to this question, Rûãch @Élöhîm led me to compile the Internal Chronology of the Bible and everything else that followed in my pursuit of the truth of His Story and my appreciation of His artistry as an expression of who He is.

This link to A Question in Genesis will take you to the essay discussing this question.  Because of the extensive tables, it is not practical to post the essay directly in the blog.

Grace and peace to you,

Dori

 

Side Trip: YHWH ‘s Promise to David

Badgerholt inkpotHow YHWH @Élöhîm (LORD God) Kept His Promise to David

 

The Promise (2 Sam 7:12-17)

12When your days are fulfilled, and you lie with your fathers, then I shall raise up your seed after you, who shall come out from your bowels, and I shall establish his kingdom.  13He shall build a house for My Name, and I shall establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I shall be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me. When he sins, then I will chasten him with a rod of men, and with strokes of the sons of men.  15But My mercy shall not be taken from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.  16And your house shall be established, and your kingdom before you forever. Your throne shall be established forever.  17According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so Näthän spoke to David.

The Obstacle (Jeremiah) 22:28-30)

28Is this man Coniah a despised, broken jar, or a vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they hurled, he and his seed, and are cast into the land which they do not know?  29O earth, earth, earth! Hear the Word of YHWH!  30So says YHWH, Write this man childless, a man who will not prosper in his days. For not one from his seed will succeed, a man sitting on the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah.

YHWH promised David that a son of his loins would sit on the throne of the kingdom forever.  The legal claim to the throne ran through Solomon’s line, and that line ran through Jeconiah son of Jehoikim, the last living king of Judah. This is the same Coniah whose line YHWH debarred from the throne, as He decreed through Jeremiah.  So, how could a son of David legally sit on the throne without being descended from Coniah?

YHWH Elohim follows His own rules, and His pronouncement against Coniah presented a genuine legal obstacle to keeping His promise to David. So, how did He fulfill His legal requirements while keeping His promise to David that one of His blood would sit on the throne forever?

The Claimant

I believe Jesus of Nazareth is who He claims to be – the uniquely generated Son of God, the Messiah, the Son of David who will sit on the throne forever, a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.  I believe the Gospels truly record His life and the genealogy of His mother Mary and His supposed father Joseph. It is in the genealogies of Jesus as recorded by Matthew and Luke that one finds the answer to this conundrum.

The Solution, Part 1:  The Blood Claim

Now Jesus, making His appearance at about age thirty – being, as was supposed, a son of Joseph – was Himself descended of Heli, of Matthat . . . of Nathan, of David . . .  of Judah . . . (Luke 3:23,31,33) [JM Cheney, The Life of Christ in Stereo], pp.18[1]

In his Gospel, Luke records the genealogy of Jesus, showing his descent from Heli of the tribe of Judah.  So, who was Heli?  Heli was the father of Mary, Jesus’ mother.  Thus Jesus was descended from him.

Heli was descended from the collateral line of Nathan, a son of David who was a full brother of Solomon’s (their mother was Bathsheba [1 Chronicles 3.5]).  Not being descended from Solomon, Heli had no legal claim to the throne, but he did have a blood claim. He passed this blood claim on to his children, including his daughter Mary, who, in turn, passed it on to her sons, including her firstborn, Jesus.

So, Jesus had a blood claim to the throne of David through His mother Mary. Through her, He was descended from the seed of David, from the bloodline of David. However, He was hardly unique in that. After a thousand years, probably many families would have had a blood claim to the throne of David, but only one line had the legal claim—the line of Solomon.

The Solution, Part 2:  The Legal Claim

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham. . . And Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom (Greek pronoun ‘es’, clearly refers to Mary) was born Jesus, the One called Christ.  (Matt 1:1,16)

Matthew records the genealogy of Jesus as the Son of David, the Messiah, the One with a legal claim to the throne of David. However, the last line of the genealogy clearly lists Joseph, the husband of Mary who bore Jesus, but not Jesus directly as his son.  It does not list Joseph as fathering Jesus because, of course, he didn’t.  So, how then is this the genealogy of Jesus if Joseph was not His birth father?

It’s the genealogy of Jesus because He was the eldest acknowledged son of Joseph, even though He was not fathered by Joseph. Therefore, Jesus legally inherited the claims of the eldest son, which in this case included Joseph’s legal claim to the throne. But then again, after a thousand years, others probably also had a legal claim to the throne.

But here is where Jesus might differ from all the other legal claimants: did Joseph have a unique claim to the throne, in that he was the legal heir to the throne of David, descended from father to son down through the generations?

In Joseph’s dream (Matthew 1), the angel addresses him as ‘Joseph, son of David.’  There doesn’t seem to be discussion in mainstream scholarship of ‘son of David’ as a commonly used title for any man descended from David.  By the first century, ‘son of David’ had become a Messianic title.[2]  Did the angel refer to Joseph as ‘son of David’ just to remind him of his heritage? Or, might Joseph have had a unique claim to the title?  Not a Messianic claim, but rather a claim as the legal heir to the throne of Solomon, descended father to son from Jeconiah.

However, even if  Joseph was the legal heir to the throne of David, he could not sit on the throne because he was descended from Jeconiah and thus debarred from that position.  If this is the case, then Joseph passed on to Jesus not merely a legal claim, but THE legal heirship to the throne of David through the line of Solomon.

None of the sons that Joseph and Mary had together could have sat on the throne because they were descended from Jeconiah through Joseph.  Only Jesus, not being physically descended from Joseph, was not debarred from legally claiming the position held by His legal father—a position to which He also had a blood claim through His mother Mary.  Thus He was declared King of the Jews from His birth.

It’s also possible that all Joseph had was a simple legal claim to the throne because he was descended from the line of Solomon through Jeconiah (the same as possibly several others).  However, all of the descendants of Jeconiah were debarred from the throne and none of their blood descendants could ever claim the throne of David.  So, either way, when Joseph passed on his legal claim to Jesus as his eldest acknowledged son but not his blood son, and Jesus had a blood claim through his mother Mary, Jesus became the King of the Jews from His birth.

A Question

Did YHWH @Élöhîm keep His promise to David by arranging for the legal heir to the throne of David, Joseph, to marry Mary, the daughter of a collateral bloodline of David (and one descended from a full brother of Solomon’s)?  Given how YHWH works in His Story, that is a distinct probability.

How wonderful is the plan of YHWH in setting up the circumstances leading to Mary’s firstborn Son Jesus being declared ‘King of the Jews’ from the moment of His birth, the only son of David who fulfilled both the legal claim (but bypassing the debarment) and the blood claim to the throne of David.

Grace and peace to you,

Dori

Essay under Side Trips menu

[1]  Cheney, Johnston M. The Life of Christ in Stereo. Portland, OR: Western Conservative Baptist Seminary. 1969, 275pp.

Note 16a: This rendering departs from the traditional but inconsistent “Joseph, the son of Heli.” Though never before proposed to our knowledge, this rendering is grammatically sound and clarifies the true intent of the passage. It only involves the addition of two commas in the Greek, (which had no punctuation in the original) and a proper recognition of the significance of the initial pronoun, which stands in the place of emphasis. Using English punctuation for modern clarity, the literal rendering would be: “Now Himself was Jesus, beginning at about age thirty–being a son, as was supposed, of Joseph–descended from Heli, son of Matthat, . . . “ His point is that Jesus descended, not from Joseph but from Heli through Mary. That Luke intended this meaning is suggested by the arrangement in the two oldest extant authorities, where Heli, not Joseph, heads the single-column listing of Jesus’ human forbears back to Adam. [This rendering was presented to and well received by the Evangelical Theological Society, as well as by other competent Greek scholars–Ed.]

[2] Bromiley, Geoffrey W., et.al.  The International Standard Bible Encylopedia, vol. 1 (A-D), revised 1956.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.  “Messiah.”

To God be the glory!

 

Premise and Perspective

The premise and perspective underlying my thinking and writing

Badgerholt inkpotI think it’s important to state the premise underlying all my writings and the perspective I take in thinking about things and analyzing them.  Readers may not agree with either the premise or the perspective, but at least you will know where I’m coming from and where my reasoning starts.  Or, more accurately, where Rûãch @Élöhîm (Spirit of God) has shown me that my reasoning must start, especially as I’m depending on Him to guide my thoughts into the truth.

The reverential fear of YHWH is the beginning of wisdom ~  
    And knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.  #  Proverbs 9.10

Premise

My initial premise – the premise underlying all my writings:

    YHWH @Élöhîm (LORD ,
     the @Élöhîm of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
               is Who He says He is, and
         has done what He says He has done
                   through Yeshûãø HamMashîãch (Jesus Christ)
      as recorded in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

That’s it.  That’s the premise from which I start looking at what is, how it came to be, where it’s been, and where it’s going.  Another way to describe it is the premise is the universal that explains all the particulars, the holy grail of philosophy and science.

The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures (the Bible) are where YHWH @Élöhîm clearly states His claims about who He is and what He has done, is doing, and will do.  I believe Rûách @Élöhîm inspired men to write the Scriptures as infallible in the original writings, including editing prior to the closing of the canon.  I acknowledge that down through the millennia, copyist errors have crept in, in spite of the care taken in copying the Scriptures by both Jews and Christians.  However, I believe any copyist errors are minor and do not affect YHWH @Élöhîm’s claims in any way.  His written word remains authoritative and definitive for those who believe Him.

And, while I think some translations do a better job than others of translating the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into English (my native language and the only one I am qualified to comment on), I do not believe Rûách @Élöhîm designated any particular translation as the only one His believers should use, especially given that a certain amount of interpretation is inherent in the action of translating.  In fact,  and especially when doing a Bible study delving into the layers of the Word, I think it’s best to look at several translations plus the original languages in order to hear the what the Spirit is saying in the depths of His written word of truth.

Ultimately, the question is whether or not one believes YHWH @Élöhîm.  I believe Him.  I believe that He is who He says He is and that He has done what He says He’s done through His Word Incarnate, Yeshûãø hamMashîãch (Jesus Christ).

Who is YHWH @Élöhîm?

YHWH @Élöhîm is the Most High God, the Creator of heaven and earth.  He is the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, the only omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-present God who exists, the @Élöhîm of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Perspective

The perspective Rûách @Élöhîm directed me to take is that of the Storyteller. I look at history as an interactive, dramatic production playing out on the stage of the earth in the theatre of the universe, written, produced, and directed by YHWH @Élöhîm with input by the characters.

I view the flow of events as YHWH @Élöhîm telling His Story in order to accomplish His purpose. I look for the through line, themes, plot devices, plot structure, motifs, patterns, chief characters, foreshadowing, scene divisions, etc., used in telling stories. I find that history makes more sense when viewed from this perspective.

As part of this assignment, YHWH @Élöhîm gave me a great love of story and puzzle-solving as well as a delight in discovering how an author crafted his/her story in the telling of it.

So, there you are – my premise and my perspective.  I believe YHWH @ÉlöhÎm is who He says He is and that ‘history’ is ‘His Story.’  (And yes, I believe the pun is deliberate on YHWH’s part.  I’ve noticed that He’s fond of word plays.)

May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be will you all.

Dori

 

Welcome to Badgerholt 2.0

Badgerholt inkpot

Hello!

My name is Dori, and I am a scholar/artist in service to YHWH @Élöhîm, a fan of His storytelling and creative artistry.  All glory be to God!

When I was 40 years old, YHWH @Élöhîm called me to be a scholar/artist. Although I had already lived 40 years, in many ways, this call was the beginning of my journey. All that had gone before was training and prep to do this task, this good work, which He had created me to do. It took a few years before I understood how to describe this task, but ultimately, it came down to this.

A scholar/artist in pursuit of the knowledge of God (daøath @élöhîm) with a focus on YHWH @Élöhîm as a Creative Artist, pursuing the truth of His Story and appreciating the beauty of His artistry as an expression of the goodness of Who He is.

It’s been an interesting journey over the past 20 years, and it’s not over yet.

Badgerholt 2.0 is a place to share through pages and blog posts what YHWH @Élöhîm has taught me about His Story, His through line, and who He is, to the praise of His holy Name.  I invite you to read my writings in the hopes that what you read will enhance your worship of the Most High God, YHWH @Élöhîm, Maker of heaven and earth, for so He says He is in His written word, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures called The Bible.

May the grace and peace of the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Dori

“I will remember the deeds of Yäh ~         
    Surely I will meditate on Your wonders of old #
and I will ponder on all Your historical acts ~   
    and on Your deeds I will muse #
@Élöhîm, in the holiness [is] Your way ~     
    who [is] a great @ël like @Élöhîm? #
You, the @Ël who does wonders ~       
    You make known among the people Your strength #
You redeemed with strength Your people ~     
    the sons of Jacob and Joseph  Seläh ” #          
                     Psalms 77.12-15  (my literal translation)

 

 

Patterns: Who Wrote Genesis?: Genesis 2.4b – 5.1a

In Section One, I discussed my hypothesis on who wrote Genesis as applied toBadgerholt inkpot the first section: The book of the proceedings of the heavens and the earth, or Genesis One.

In the second section I apply my hypothesis to the book of the proceedings of Adam.  In particular, I note the identical construction in the Hebrew of Genesis 1.1 and Genesis 2.4b. I think this repetitive element  supports the idea that Genesis 2.4 should be divided between the two parts of the sentence and translated as the signature statement of the first section and the title of the next story, “How YHWH @Élöhîm fashioned hä@ädhäm (the man) and his wife.”

Click here for  Section Two.

Grace and peace,

Dori