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God Admits Humans Not Most Impressive Creation

Jul 18

God’s reasons why humans are inferior to mountains:

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This entry was posted on July 18, 2012, 9:33 am and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Comments

#1 by Ann Riggs on July 18, 2012 - 9:48 am

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Love the Onion! Their tongue-in-cheek humor often carries a serious point, often something we are uncomfortable acknowledging.
This one makes me wonder how many practicing Christians truly believe that ALL human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, and that the second Great Commandment really is like — “homoi,” I think the Greek is — the First; that loving the neighbor really is a reflection, an image, of loving God.

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#2 by Jack Rakosky on July 18, 2012 - 10:43 am

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Well, I guess many of us have suspected this all along. Temples have often been built on high places, and the LORD had Moses go up to Mt. Sinai. The LORD was also very careful to keep others away from even the base of the mountain.

But from the sound of this interview, it may be that Mt.Sion is not the Divine Being’s favorite mountain after all. Maybe Christians, Jews and Moslems will have less reason to fight over it? Maybe Mt. Sion is just a diversion so that we don’t get interested in the real favorite mountains.

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#3 by Tom Kostrzewa on July 18, 2012 - 11:37 pm

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Jack – I’m a bit out of the loop, but I was wondering why you refer to Mt. Zion as Mt. Sion? I’ve noticed that the New Revised Grail version of the psalms does as well, but I’m clueless as to why. Can you say a bit about the difference between the “S” and the “Z”? Thanks a bunch – Tom K.

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#4 by Jack Rakosky on July 20, 2012 - 4:14 pm

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@Tom Kostrzewa – comment #3:

Well I briefly asked myself your question (Sion or Zion) and since it was humor just took my preference.

Looking in my Bibleworks at Psalm 2:6

the Vulgate, Douay-Rheims, Ralf’ Septuagint, the French Jerusalem Bible, use Sion

the Jewish Publication Society, the King James, NAB, NIV, New Jerusalem Bible all use Zion.

The Greek capital sigma for Sion looks like a Z. I don’t know Hebrew so I don’t know what letter of the alphabet it is in Hebrew.

I have a social scientist’s approach to the Bible. I don’t think we really know in many cases exactly what the original text was, or that we can easily reconstruct what it meant to the people who first heard or read it. (Although many people make their livings trying to do one of the other).

I see the Hebrew Bible as the primary Bible of the Jewish people; I see the Greek Bible as the primary Bible of Early and Eastern Christianity; I see the Vulgate as the primary Bible of Western Christianity.

I always begin looking at the Greek Text to see how it was understood by early Christianity. Then I look at how the Vulgate translated it. Ralf Septuagint and the Douay-Rheims give me two rather “literal translations” of the Greek and Latin texts.

So you might call me a Biblical Traditionalist because I am interested to see how the Greek and Latin traditions experienced the Biblical text.

The whole idea that Christians through modern historical study of the Hebrew text might have a better understanding of the Hebrew text than Jews seems a little strange. If I was a better student of languages I would go to the local Jewish college and study the Hebrew Bible with them. I do the next best thing by taking OT courses in the local ecumenical institute taught by a Jewish Rabbi who has a very good understanding of Christianity and modern Biblical scholarship.

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