In this week’s lesson we read the two final Torah readings of the Book of Exodus.  It is also the special Sabbath or HaKodesh.  The special reading from the Torah is Exodus 12:1-20.  Tuesday night begins the Hebrew New Year according to the “religious” calendar.  The barley has been found in the fields of Israel and so the month of Nisan will commence with the expected sighting of the New moon on Tuesday night.

The two main points that I teach on in this week’s lesson are: 1) The anointing and the anointed and 2) The Old Testament “church”.

The introduction contains a wonderful song performed by two of our congregants, Sherry Cole and John Carlson.  John wrote the music to this song which features the words of Psalm 130 and he and Sherry sang beautifully to John’s guitar.  What better way to start the Biblical new year than with the singing of this Psalm!

The Anointing of Aaron is described in Psalm 133 as well as in our Torah reading today (see Exodus 40:12-15). Psalm 45:6-7 and Isaiah 61:1ff (see also Luke 4:14-21) describe a “prophetic figure” spoken of as being anointed.  I talk about these texts in this week’s lesson.

I also commented on what I termed, “The Old Testament Church”.  The New Testament translation of the word “church” causes people to draw a strict line of differentiation between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.  For, in most translations the word church appears numerous times in the NT, but appears nowhere in the Hebrew Bible.  This makes people believe that the “church” is not found in the Old Testament.  Is this the case?  In this week’s lesson I show that the choice of English words for the original Hebrew and Greek may lead the student down a path that the original authors did not intend.

I begin in Exodus 35:1, the beginning of this week’s torah reading.  There we read that Moses “assembled the congregation”.  Qahal is the Hebrew word that is translated as assembled.  It is frequently used throughout the Hebrew Bible as a noun for the “assembly” of Israel, referring to the entire people of Israel - the people of God.

When the “Old Testament” was translated into Greek via the Septuagint, the Hebrew word Qahal was rendered by the Greek word ekklesia.  This word, when it occured in the NT was rarely translated into English as “assembly” but was rather rendered as “church”.

The Hebrew word translated as “congregation” is the word eidah. When this word was translated into Greek it was represented by the word sunagogay.

Why the translators chose, for whatever reason to translate these terms differently, I leave you to decide.  A study of these terms is most instructive though in any attempt to show the continuity between the Hebrew Bible and the formative “Christian Church”.

Enjoy the lesson and let us know what you think of the service. Until next week, shalom and blessings - Ross

 

 
icon for podpress  Vayyakhel/Pekudei Intro and Reading [57:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Vayyakhel/Pekudei Comments [26:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download