A What Did What in the First Two Verses of Genesis?

How would the most intelligent entity in existence communicate with primitive humans? Let me put it another way -- how would you explain the creation of the Heavens and Earth to a bunch of two-year-olds? I guess we could try reciting tons of complex scientific data. That should keep their attention for about three seconds. Their brains haven’t even developed the capacity to process that kind of information. You will have to turn the points you want to make into a story they can understand. That’s what two-year-old brains are genetically hardwired for – hearing stories. Narratives are the default communications mode of humans of all ages and cultures.

The book of Genesis is treasure chest of some of the most powerful stories ever told. When we began digging into the words of the ancient Hebrew text of Genesis, it was like working on an archaeological dig – we discovered layers of stories linked to those ancient words. One of the amazing things we realized was that embedded in some of those ancient stories are ideas that science did not discover until very recently, hence my opening words about “the most intelligent entity.” Don’t start jumping up and down and shouting that this proves that your God exists yet. Wait until you hear a little more of the story.

Each story in the Bible is made up of mini-stories that teach specific lessons. Today we are going to hear the first-mini story in the book of Genesis. If you want to get the most out of this experience make notes when your BS Alarm goes off (belief system alarm). It will go off when you read or hear something that disagrees with your beliefs. You won’t literally hear it, but you will feel it and your brain will try to go in “defense mode.” The goal now is simply to make things that invisible in your brain visible so you will know what they are so you can examine them. Keep a journal or a notebook handy because it will become a very valuable tool.

Now we are ready to heard the story old by the first two-verses in the Bible (Genesis 1:1-2). I will warn you that our translation will probably set off your BS Alarm multiple times.

When a god began creating the Heavens and the Earth,

the Earth did not exists,

darkness was over the surface of deep waters,

and the ruach of the god hovered above the surface of the deep waters.

I bet “a god” set off a few BS Alarms! It did for Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor and me the first time we saw it. In our Christian and Jewish belief systems there is only “one God,” however as every knows, they have strong disagreements over who that God is.

This story is about an “unnamed god.” No group can claim that it is their God.” We are told nothing about it – what it is, where it came from, what it has done before, etc. We will have to wait for the story to tell us about that entity.

The first thing it tells us is that this entity “creates things,” in this case “the Heavens and the Earth.” Creating those things definitely puts this entity in a class by itself. But before we can really “hear” the story we must understand that to the original ancient Jewish audience the Hebrew word meant “changing things that exist.”

The unnamed god changed things that existed into the Heavens and the Earth.

The next thing the story tells us that when the unnamed god began changing things that exist – the Earth did not exist. Following that we hear what did exist:

● darkness

● deep waters

● the ruach of the unnamed god

Since “darkness and deep waters” existed, along with the unnamed god, they are the things the god has to work with. This will be a story about how an unnamed god change darkness and deep waters into the Heavens and the Earth.

However, the second verse revealed something new about the unnamed god in the phrase “ruach of god.” What is a ruach? When English thinkers consider meanings of words, we view each option in the dictionary as a stand-alone independent option. But, when ancient Hebrew thinkers viewed options for the meaning of ruach, they searched for a common idea all options share. At this point, we have not been given enough information to identify that common idea so we will translate “ruach of god” as the “breath/wind/spirit/presence of god.” As the story unfolds, every time the word god appears thing of it as the “breath/wind/spirit/presence of god.”  Also make sure you know where it is located. It is now “hovering above the surface of the deep waters.”  

So let’s update our translation – “the “breath/wind/spirit/presence of an unnamed god” is hovering above the surface of deep waters in complete darkness preparing to begin changing darkness and deep waters into the Heavens and the Earth.”

Try to picture an environment without the Heavens and the Earth in which there are only deep waters concealed in total darkness and something hovering. Now imagine that you are suddenly dropped into it! What would your chances of survival be? The answer is 0% unless the god does something. This is one of the most deadly environments a human can imagine. This is the opening scene of the first story of the Bible. Think about it. Talk about it. Check back and follow the story in the next blog!

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One Idea Ezra, Jesus and Thomas Jefferson Agreed On!

One idea lays the foundation upon which Judaism, Christianity and the United States of America are built. It acts like the light of a lighthouse to keep individuals and collectives from crashing into unseen dangers. That idea is recorded in documents written by survivors of those crashes and their words are like maps they passed down to their descendants to prevent them from sailing into the same dangerous waters. The first map is in the Torah, the second is in the Synoptic Gospels and the third is in the Declaration of Independence.

The first map was recorded by Ezra, a Jewish Scribe, around 450 BCE in Babylon. He lived there because his ancestors had been brought there after being conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and then, just three years later the Persians conquered the Babylonians. Ezra gathered information from other exiles about his people’s history and nation’s laws and recorded them in the scroll that is now called the Torah. The central idea of his map is this – “all humans are created in the image of God.” This idea established equality based on a shared value of all human lives. 

The second map was spoken into existence by the words of Jesus, who was born around 6 BCE while his family was in Bethlehem being registered by official of the Roman Empire. He was raised in a poor family and trained by Joseph to be a builder. His people lived under the constant watch of Roman soldiers and lines of crosses with dead Jewish people hanging from them along major roads were reminders of could happen to them. Jesus was skilled at putting the ideas from Ezra’s map into the words his generation could understand. The central idea of his map is this – “God only wants us to do one thing; give to our neighbor as we give to ourselves.” This idea also established equality based on a shared value of all human lives.

On June 11, 1776 CE, the Continental Congress created the Committee of Five to develop a formal text of a declaration that will separate the colonies from the rule of the King of Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson was placed at the head of the committee, which consisted of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. They were very familiar with the maps of Ezra and Jesus, as well of those of ancient and contemporary philosophers. They were also creating a new map around this central idea -- Every person must hold sacred the survival and flourishing of the lives of all others. This idea also established equality based on a shared value of all human lives.

All three maps repeat the same central idea in different ways. The first two maps, however, were exclusively linked to religions by 1776. But Jefferson and his committee were founding a new nation, not a religion, and it would be governed by institutions that had never existed before. The Committee of Five resolved the problem by using the word “sacred,” a word that has two meanings, religious and secular.

1. made holy by association to a god

2. worthy of reverent protection and celebration

The new government will be American democracy, and successful participation in it by citizens -- as the founding representatives envisioned it – rests on its citizens, in one way or another, finding ways to commit to and hold sacred the survival and flourishing of other lives.” Everything else would be subject to the democratic process.

Dr. Danielle Allen helps us understand the democratic process the Committee of Five used to produce the Declaration of Independence in her book Our Declaration (Liveright Publishers; pp. 136-137). We highly recommend it!

But, in those early days of drafting the Declaration, as the word “sacred” acquired a religious hue, the phrase “We hold these truths sacred and undeniable” gave way, as we have seen, to this one: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” This was a profound change.

To say that truths are self-evident is an epistemological claim, or a claim about how we know the things we know. How do we know that these truths are true? Because they are self-evident. Well, what does “self-evident” mean exactly? It does not mean that the instant you hear a proposition, you recognize it as true.

It means rather that if you look into the proposition, if you entertain it and reflect upon it, you will inevitably come to affirm it. All the evidence you need to judge the proposition for yourself is in the proposition itself. That’s why a proposition can be called self-evident. And to call these truths self-evident is to invite everyone into the process of judging them. This is a very democratic approach to truth.

What would life in a nation of individuals and families from different cultures who have different beliefs be like -- if they were all committed to protecting and celebrating the lives of each other? What if just a majority of the population also believed that this is a divine commandment?

All three maps stress the importance of equality and the shared value of human lives. They also all warn of the danger anything that creates inequality or devalues human lives presents to the entire nation.

Take a hard look at the maps religious and political leaders are guiding their lives by and where they want to take us. Then compare them with the central idea that has been time-tested over the last 2,500 years.

● Ezra was not surrounded by people that viewed and treated everyone else as their equals – creatures created in the image of God.

● Jesus did not live in a place where “everyone gave to their neighbor as they gave to themselves.”

● The Founding Fathers did not “hold sacred the survival and flourishing of the lives of all others” – women, slaves and Native Americans for starters. But they created a map to guide themselves and future American towards that destination.

Keep in mind that maps are used to help people that are lost figure out where they are and to guide people to their intended destination. Three of the maps were written by people at the beginning of their journeys, but now we have a fourth map. It was unknown until the late 20^th century. It reveals another type of equality, but this type is based on the 3 billion letter DNA code that produces human bodies. One of a person’s DNA code came from the male that provided the sperm and the other half from female that provided the egg – and so did their DNA and their parent’s DNA and their grandparent’s DNA, etc. If any of your ancestors had not lived, you wouldn’t be the same genetically. But even with all of that complexity, all humans are 99.9% genetically identical.

Just think how much closer we are now than they were! But just like them we have our challenges too. One of the biggest has been caused by social media. Today, new maps are being created by all kinds of unknown sources and spread across America through smartphones. They are dangerously polarizing and dividing America’s citizens, just as other maps divided people during the lives of Ezra, Jesus and Thomas Jefferson.

Now it’s our generation’s turn to create a new map to guide us through the uncharted waters we are facing. We created the TOV Center to help people engage in the discussions that will be required to do this.  

http://tovcenter.org

Welcome to the Journey!

Who am I?

The Realities Generator (New Module Now Online)

The Identity We All Share:

We are human above all!

(Modules for helping people engage in self-discovery

and understanding their humanness.)

Module 04

The Realities Generator

 The brain has no access to the world outside. Sealed within the dark, silent chamber of the skull, the brain has never directly experienced the external world -- and it never will. Are the realities we are experiencing right now actually what exists outside our skulls?

Click Here for link to this module and the others.

New Free Module Now Online – Critical Periods that Change Brains

The Identity We All Share:

We are human above all!

(Modules for helping people engage in self-discovery

and understanding their humanness.)

Module 03

Critical Periods that Change Brains

Learn about five critical periods that are genetically launched in which the brain goes into a hyper-learning mode and absorbs massive amounts of information. At birth a baby’s neurons are disparate and unconnected, and in the first two years of life they begin connecting up extremely rapidly as they take in sensory information. As many as two million new connections, or synapses, are formed every second in an infant’s brain. By age two, a child has over one hundred trillion synapses, double the number an adult has. Today, most people know very little or nothing about them, especially the people that need to know it the most – parents, family members, teachers, law makers, judges, law enforcement officers, counselors and religious leaders, to name a few. Your critical periods shaped who you are and how you experience life. Click Here for link to this module and the others.

Be sure and share this with friends that are parents or grandparents too!

Free Modules for Healing Fractured Lives and Nation

The Identity We All Share:

We are human above all!

The TOV Center is creating a series of short easy to understand modules to help people understand why their lives and nation have become so fragmented and empower them to reverse the process. The first series of modules focuses on learning about an identity we all share – we are all human above all. The first two modules are now online.

01 Life & Power

02 What Are You?

New modules will be added soon.

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Life & Power

How important is power in our world today? Just think what life would be like if you had the power to do or acquire whatever you wanted. We spend a great deal of our lives thinking about power – getting it, keeping it, losing it, seeking it and wanting it. But even though power is so important to so many, very few people really understand what power is, how it works or know how much power is unknowingly being used against them every day. Inclusive social change requires lots of power! We created the TOV Center to empower individuals to co-create change. Click Here to read complete blog.