The woman of Rev 17

Pete has left a new comment on your post "Semantics":


A different string . . . I have heard some strongly state that the Catholic Church is synonomous with the Woman on the Beast in Rev' . . . 17 - any comments?
 
I thought it best to make this a new post.

Access as authors

Should I gave access to members as authors so that you are free to start a new thread of thought instead of it getting submerged in another string. I notice that Pete has raised the issue of accountability in the original thread of semantics and inerrancy, and I have also responded there. What to do you think? I think it will be good for all of you to have access.

Trinity and Deuteronomy 6:4

I learned something interesting yesterday while having a discussion with Reni Oommen. He informed me that the word used for "one" in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear O Israel: The LORD (Yahweh) our God, the LORD (Yahweh) is One!” is the Hebrew word “echad” derived from the root “ached” meaning to unify into one. So it carries within itself a meaning of a plurality unified into one.


While in most passages it means the ordinal one i.e. one ox etc. in three passages it just cannot mean one and so is translated in the Bible as “few”. These passages are Genesis 27:44 and 29:20 and Daniel 11:20. It is also translated as “some” meaning more than one in II Samuel 17:9 “Some of them be overthrown” and also as “together” in Ezra 2:64 and 3:9 and Nehemiah 7:66 meaning combing many into one.

Hence there is really no contradiction between the doctrine of Trinity and Deuteronomy 6:4, rather it Deuteronomy 6:4 reinforces the concept of God as a Trinity.

Use of symbols by Jeremiah

In the Taftee class in the Methodist Church the class divided on the interpretation of the symbol of the 'lion' verse Jer 50:44. Who will come like a lion? The destroyer of Babylon? The Messiah? Both views were presented in the debate. (According to hearsay evidence. I was not there.)

Who is the 'them' and 'her' in the phrase 'I will make them suddenly run away from her'? The I refers to Yahweh. The best way of understanding this would be to see 'them' as Israel and 'her' as Babylon. Yahweh would make Israel run away from Babylon - prophesying the return from the exile. In which case the person coming like a lion would refer to the personYahweh has sent to destroy Babylon, the Medo-Persian empire who was the instrument of Yahweh. The term 'flooding of Jordan' is used in Jer 12:5 to signifiy a time of war in contrast to the time of peace in which Jeremiah was living. Hence it may refer to the Persian invasion.

Interestingly the same verse is used against Edom in Jer 49:19 changing the 'them' to 'him'. To make the interpretation above in the case of Edom does not work as Israel was not in captivity to Edom. So how do we understand the 'him' and 'her' in Jer 49:19? Most translations take the 'him' to be Edom and 'her' to be the land. So it means Yahweh will drive Edom from the land.

Applying this to the passage in Jer 50:44 it should mean Yahweh will drive Israel from Babylon back to Israel. So the person coming like a lion is to me best seen as Yahweh using His instrument the Medo-Persian empire.

Semantics

In my last Bible study at Rajbhavan road in Hyderabad, I used a wrong word and that left me sleepless. I wanted to say that the question of "Inerrancy" in the Bible is purely theoretical since we do not have the original texts, and the texts we do have differ from each other. Unfortunately I used the word "infallibilty" instead of "in errancy" which has a totally different connotation and meaning!! I believe in the infallibility of the teachings of the Bible and have no question in my mind on that. The debate on verbal inerrancy is to me inane.