It was lunchtime in a café on a hot summer’s day. I reached for the national newspaper after a nice lunch. Browsing to the editorial pages I came across an article from a prominent atheist columnist who devoted an entire piece of text as to why God cannot be all powerful and all good, when the Old Testament Bible says He was a jealous God. This is the God and twofold Jealousy problem in Hebrew language.
My jaw dropped, knowing this biblical quote was not entirely correct. It was amazing that the writer, who was a well known hardcore atheist, seemed to base his entire belief system on this particular eye-opening notion.
I decided to write a letter to him about it in the very near future, but the writer unbelievably passed away beforehand. There was some regret on my part, having not got to that letter sooner, but I have since made it a stock part of my teaching career.
What is the answer to this problem, you may ask?
Two Jealousy Word Hebrew and God Problem
Firstly, you must know what Biblical Concordances are and actually use them!
Secondly, there are two separate words for Jealous in Biblical Hebrew. There is the evil “green-eyed” jealousy we know and there is also a Hebrew word for a Jealousy reserved for God alone. The second is better translated as God is desiring of a loving relationship with you to the exclusion of all others. There is no evil intent ascribed to God’s form of jealously in Hebrew, only to the former human orientated jealousy.
However, we unfortunately translate both words into English as jealousy, causing endless confusion. The Bible is packed full of these translation problems and scholars even debate the base translated meanings.
This journalist had lost his entire faith in God over a simple failure to look up a biblical concordance for the word jealousy. A Concordance, by the way, is a book containing all the Bible’s words, and their Hebrew and Greek translations. It tells you what other meanings these words could possess, or indeed if there were multiple words with similar meanings, but with nuanced differences.
Biblical Concordances and Hebrew
Since that time, I bring a Concordance into every religion class and explain epistemology for biblical studies to students. This really does help students grasp the basics, and I point out how not to lose your religious faith over simple ignorance, and to realise we do not have answers to everything. If we did, we would be in Heaven.
Jesus Christ knew the importance of mystery, parables and puzzles to human learning and humility. So should you. We use them in classrooms every day.
Then of course there is the issue of Hebrew “idioms” which complicates biblical studies further. To handle this one, I use a bit of Australian slang terminology in the classroom to introduce the topic. Here is the dialogue:
Class Dialogue on Hebrew Idioms
Teacher: Does anyone know what the old Australian slang idiom phrase “Stone the Crows” means? Its an old saying used in my childhood.
Students: Dead silence. No adult under fifty will probably even have heard of it.
Teacher: Well, it does not mean “drug the crows” [laughter] or even literally “throw stones at the crows”, but it is a metaphor for expressing your feeling of “I am frustrated”. It relates to the feeling you have when a crow is outside squealing with a constant drone of “ARRRK, ARRRK, ARRRK” in a monotonous manner, and you want to stone it. You know when you trying to sleep in a quiet morning, after a long night.
Teacher: An old Catholic priest scholar once explained to me. We know approx. 75%+ of Old Hebrew, but idioms are a problem. If you do not know “Stone the Crows” in one generation, how would we know all the Old Hebrew idioms without a clear verbal tradition. Here you see the importance of Church Fathers, Bishops and the whole edifice of Church capital “T” Tradition which goes hand in hand with Scripture. Remember the Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church, by Bishops in fact.
Reflection
So much for God and twofold Jealousy. If only that Journalist had learnt about Biblical Concordance translations and idioms in High School. His first name sadly was Patrick. Please pray for his soul!