ID 2ndBook ELTB-Jr 01
1. Introduction
As a new Christian I wanted to learn the Bible properly. I read four different books on how to interpret the Bible. As an engineer, I observed that absent from those books was any validation of an interpretation. They advised that you ask God to guide you, but at the end, you didn't know if he had. When multiple people studied the same thing, they had different interpretations with no way to know what was true.
This is one contributing factor as to why there are so many denominations. We solve this by defining a small set of doctrines that we agree on and say they are the fundamentals and are important. This by it's very nature says that other doctrines are not important. This is a problem because 'doctrine' is a word which means 'knowing God'. The few doctrines we agree on give us a basic knowledge of God but we imply it is not important to know God better.
Some of us have relied heavily upon one tradition or another, and teach that particular tradition as doctrine. More recently many people simply see that for what it is but choose the worse path of believing that none of them are right so they may choose their own way.
Surely God did not leave his intended meaning to the whim and will of any and all who may read it or merely pretend to read it. At least some of the scholars and theologians are honest enough to reluctantly confess that they cannot read the Old Testament the way that Jesus and the New Testament authors did. How then can we read it?
The 2ndBook series is dedicated to the exegesis of scripture; both Old and New Testament, according to a first century hermeneutic demonstrated by Jesus and the New Testament authors. There are three primary distinctions from evangelical methods: the genre of the scripture, the understanding of context, and notarikon; an attribute of ancient Hebrew where words get meaning from the letters, which get meaning from the strokes.
- The genre of scripture obtained by observation is that it is not merely literal-historical, but it is prophetic riddle where God has hidden his intended meaning which was unknown to the human authors in the literal-historical record.
- Context is understood to be like a stack of transparencies, each having it's own contextual pericope, but when stacked are aligned by symbol and pattern to reveal a single picture. The grand picture is the context for all to composite pericopes. An example would be that if five different men drank coffee at different times and one had sugar, then they all had sugar. All the men symbolically represent one man as their transparencies are stacked. So if it is recorded that one had sugar, the one man of the conglomerate had sugar.
- This context is not reversible. Just because one literal man has sugar does not mean that the other four literal men had sugar, but that wherever there is a pericope of a man with coffee, the man of the prophetic riddle had sugar.
- Notarikon is an attribute of the language. It is not imposed after the fact. Letters get their meaning from the strokes. One may almost intuit the meaning from a series of letters.
- A commandment ד. A commandment which is not understood ה. A commandment which is understood ח.
- A revelation ר. A revelation to man ב. A revelation completes with a new life returning ת. A revelation that became man כ. Who theמ died and rose again ק and we teach about it ל.
- A prophet פ. A dead prophet ף.
- A judge צ. A dead judge ץ.
- A marriage between the Son כ and his bride ז which was planned above (by the Father) מ, consumated on earth ט, completed according to the law ם and completed in purpose ס.
- Modern Jewish Notarikon is scrambled and will not reveal Christ. The scrambling of it is designed to hide Christ in a similar manner to the addition of vowels to the language around 600 AD, and many myths about the Hebrew language. We use a restored Notarikon derived from an inductive study of the language in context of scripture.
In the interest of not imposing "academic scholarship" upon the inductive process, we have approached scripture as a little child and have made no distinction between Hebrew and Aramaic. The study itself will reveal important distinctions.
We have also desired to understand the New Testament from the perspective of an early church Hebrew. Unfortunately all the Jews were chased out of the church by 400 AD so that when Jerome desired to make a Latin translation from the original Hebrew, he could find no believing Jews in the church to teach him to read it. So we will typically reverse translate the Greek New Testament into plausible Hebrew words in order to correlate and stack New Testament transparencies on Old. The 'Synoptic problem' is solved by this approach and will be addressed elsewhere.
The 2ndBook label will have various series for age groups, and perhaps subject matters. This book is intended for adults and will be re-voiced as an instructional manual for youth.
