Site for researching all meanings of Hebrew Bible.

Faith and technology of Bible study

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Most modern theologians believe that Bible should be interpreted accordingly the culture of the nation which first received it.

I will now not discuss so called "liberal theologians", that is students of Bible which don't believe in Bible inspiration and may not even believe in God's existence. I will tell about theologians which like me believe in biblical inspiration.

Even if they believe that Bible is inspired by God, their revelation is partial, as it is limited by understanding of ancient Jewish culture: Such things as planes, atomic energy, Big Bang, etc. cannot enter into their revelations. So they have just a half (and probably worst half) of biblical revelation.

The author of this blog post, as you have probably already guessed is in the "literalist" camp. We believe that Bible (being word of God) should be interpreted by its literal sense even in the case if the human author of this Bible fragment meant somethings other (an allegory, for example). Well, I am both in the camp of literalists and these who believe that Bible has also spiritual meaning. In this camp, we expect that God may mean something other that the human author meant, and moreover a human author may be wrong while God is always right.

Thus I call you to dismiss following human traditions in interpretation of Bible and instead search what God may mean for you, a 21st century person.

Jesus himself critiqued modern theologians, saying: (Mark. 7:9) "He said to them, “Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition“". See also (Col. 2:8) "Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ."

However, I should note that we cannot dimiss human tradition altogether, because dictionaries are a part of a tradition and Bible original means nothing to us without a dictionary. I would recommend to dismiss as much tradition as you can dismiss, to get access to the "core" that is the God's intended meaning.

(Mat. 11:25) "At that time, Jesus answered, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.“" (Luk 10:21) "“I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in your sight.”" Ask any child: Does that Bible is God's word mean that it should be taken literally? I think almost every child would answer "yes". These are professional theologians who fail to give the right answer to this question.

If not tradition, then how should we determine which interpretation of Bible is right and which is wrong? It is a difficult question and the author confesses that he does not have a full answer about this issue. An obvious thing is that our translation of a Bible verse should make sense (not be a nonsense). However, if it happens that a Bible verse translation is logical and it does not seem contradictory, does this mean that we should accept this particular translation? I do not know, yet. We need to receive multiple confirmations before submitting ourselves to believe a particular revelation. However, there is one specific principle about this which Bible itself reveals: (1Cor. 12:13) "Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things." This means that if in a Bible fragment we consider one word in spiritual sense, then all other words of this fragments should also switch into spiritual "mode" (so that we compare spiritual things with spiritual things, not with literal things).

Note that our understanding of sound combinations of words may extend over time. For an example (not from Hebrew Bible, but from New Testament): One old commentary (sadly I do not remember which one) said that because the literal meaning of (Rev. 8:8) "The second angel sounded, and something like a great burning mountain was thrown into the sea." is impossible, it is spiritual sense. You can read my free ebook, where it is explained from positions of modern science as a comet falling to the Earth, quite literally.

These sciences (despite of being good by themselves) became a veil before the eyes of theologians. So now God calls everyone to study Bible using this my new technology of Bible study. I am also not a theologian (at the time of writing this, I earn money as a computer programmer, I also do mathematical research in my free time).

Now it is nothing more than pride of the "wise people", these "wise people" feel: I studied all these "exegesis", "hermeneutic", etc. sciences and so I will use all of them to build my interpretation of Bible. Their minds are bound to use all this, instead of simple interpretation. This way these "wise people" fall of seeing of simple literal meaning of Bible.

This site presents the technology specifically crafted for literalist's Bible study. First it dismisses vowels in Hebrew Bible, because these vowels are clearly a part of human tradition (they were written down only in Middle Ages, long after Jesus testified that He believes into Hebrew Bible). So we should deal with vowels just like any other human tradition in Bible interpretation: consider it as a guide and then dismiss.

This site is the technology perfectly suited for this mode of Bible study: We study meanings of words of Bible without vowels (for every declension form of a word, we will create a separate dictionary entry). So we build our own dictionary of declined words. The text of Hebrew Bible presented at our site is hyperlinked to meaining of words. So you can translate every word and easily use translations of words made by other users for your own translation of any Bible verse.

The technology for this site follows faith. It is for Bible study, just like as Wikipedia is for general collection of knowledge. (Even site engine is the same as one used in Wikipedia, this is the reason why this site looks so similar to Wikipedia.) So we are going to collect all Bible interpretations!

Difficult rules about vowels of ancient Hebrew grammar were a hard "cross" which only highly educated and smart theologians and linguists were able to bear. Now the grammar of Hebrew Bible is available without vowels, so that anybody can join this project. Please become a translator, even if you are not a professional linguist. I am neither, this project is not associated with a theological college, you can become a translator without a scientific degree.