[This article has been clicked so often since it was first posted in 2015, so this is not only a repost but an update from its original.—Admin1]
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Image from www.stlucasucc.org
If you’ve clicked our search-aid post titled “YO, searchers, can we help you? “ you will read the day-to-day entries of searchers which we post, including the articles that are intended to address their query. We get a lot of good search terms and a few weird ones we can’t address, perhaps accidentally landing on our website. Occasionally, a searcher keeps repeating his entry: either he keeps landing on this website and not finding the answer, or he did find the answer right here —- we just didn’t know we’ve already provided it and he’s simply coming back for more info. Such a one started like this:
3/20/14 Q: ”origins of prophecy in israel veiled in obscurity discuss”
We answered this post showing a bit of annoyance because of the words “veiled in obscurity”:
A: Think about this: if you were God, YHWH the Revelator on Sinai, the Creator who gave instructions to the first couple, spoke to Cain, Noah, Abraham and others—-would you not make your instructions CLEAR as clear as can be?
YHVH will establish you
to be a people holy to him,
as he swore to you,
when you keep the commandments
of YHVH your God
and walk in his ways.
Now when all the peoples of the earth
see that the name of YHVH
is proclaimed over you,
they will hold you in awe.
The prophecy/revelation is “obscure” only to those —
- with eyes but cannot or refuse to see;
- with ears but closed to more truth that does not agree with their religious orientation;
- with minds but refuse to disengage it from previous drummed-in-doctrine, specifically “progressive revelation”,
- with sound reading comprehension but fail to read IN CONTEXT,
- and choose to lift isolated verses to fit into their theology.
Why not simply read the books on the prophets of Israel with a Hebrew mindset and in the context of Israel instead of looking for justification for futuristic religions totally unrelated to these prophecies!
Religionists misinterpret the declarations of Israel’s prophets because of their religious agenda.
Fortunately, we have posts from the literary perspective, whereby the commentators understand figurative language and stick to simple reading rules applicable to any piece of writing, including the Hebrew Scriptures.
- A Literary Approach to the books of two major prophets: Jeremiah (Yirmeyahuw) and Ezekiel (Yechezqe’l- 1
- A Literary Approach to the books of two major prophets: Jeremiah (Yirmeyahuw) and Ezekiel (Yechezqe’l) – 2
- A Literary Approach to the 12 Prophets
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Surely that would have more than satisfied the searcher, or so we thought . . . but wrong thought, for on 3/27/14, this Q was entered again:
“what were the views that the origins of israel prophecy remains veiled in obscurity”
So, we wrote this A to that second Q:
A: Pasting a previous answer to this same query, this was posted 3/20/14 [and the whole answer was repeated].
Don’t get us wrong, we love PERSISTENT searchers, they remind us of . . . US! We have vowed never to quit searching and studying and learning to our dying day! Surely there is no point in life at which we can say ‘we know it all’ and ‘there is nothing more to learn’ on any subject, but specially on the WORD OF GOD that is applicable to all cultures and all times and has untold wisdom and teaching enough for generations of serious students and true seekers of the One True God!
We certainly can relate to persistent truth-seekers, so we’ve cultivated the virtue of patience in answering the same question as many times as we need to, in different ways, specially if the previous one was not satisfactory. However, the third time around, we discovered it was one of our own sourcebooks that provided this searcher the phrase he kept entering. And so, this was our third round:
3/28/14 Q: ”discuss the view that the origins of lsraelites prophecy remains veiled in obscurity” –
A. This is the third time this search phrase has come up, most likely by the same searcher.
We’ve answered it on two different dates; however, it turns out that the post from which “remains veiled in obscurity” comes from is one of our sourcebooks titled: The Prophets of Israel – Christian Perspective. Ay, ‘there’s the rub’ (as Hamlet would say). What’s the ‘rub’? ”Christian Perspective.”
This is the problem with reading phrases/sentences/verses/texts in isolation, without the context or outside of the context. Certainly the fault was not with this most welcome truth-hungry-persistent-searcher but with us!
Image from amazon.com
In the context where the phrase is embedded, it is understandable that Curt Kuhl the author of the recommended book explains that at his time of writing his book, his sources were limited– [highlighted and reformatted for emphasis]:
The lack of precise data for the dating of individual prophets, and still more for the dating of the many isolated utterances, has rendered our task all the more difficult. On the other hand the defective nature of what has come down to us has become all the more perceptible.
For long periods of time, sources are lacking. There are thus entire ages of which we have no knowledge.
The origin of Israelite prophecy remains veiled in obscurity.
All the information we possess on many a prophet (especially in the earlier monarchy) consists either in brief utterances or in narratives of a legendary nature which are insufficient to give us a true picture of the prophet and his work.
Yet the greatness of the prophets of Israel and their significance for religion and spiritual life does not lie in these prophecies but in the lofty and exceptional knowledge of God that the best of them possessed. Their call and their other mysterious spiritual experiences bring them to the knowledge of God as a living powerful Person, the One whose almighty will rules in righteousness and love over the lives and destinies of nations and men. His holiness and majesty bring home to man what a vast distance separates him from God.
It is true that the prophets were unable to save their people from downfall and could not prevent its religion from degenerating into cultic religiosity and legalism. [S6K: “Legalism” is a Christian misperception resulting from their NT writers].
Yet they preserved the faith of their people during and after the Exile. Form of worship, moral action and social sensibility–the particular expression of these is not fundamental.
What is authoritative and decisive is a new vision and knowledge of God leading the nation and men one by one into a new spiritual attitude to Him which must then be expressed in their life and their faith.
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This is Sinai 6000’s position on Prophecy:
It is our understanding and reading of the Prophetic books — Neviim —that —
- there was no “new” vision and knowledge of God by the time of the Prophets—
- rather, there was a reiteration of all that the God on Sinai had already revealed to the first generation of Israelites and gentiles mixed among them,
- and reiterated to the 2nd generation that entered the Land.
What might have been “new” are the judgments that were to fall on Israel and Judah if they refused to obey . . . and worse, if they did not repent:
- judgments of being overtaken by gentile powers
- and being exiled to lands that practiced idolatry.
- In effect, ‘give them what they want’, the gods of the nations, but at what cost!
And it is not as though these warnings were not already embedded in the five books of Moses, reiterated just before the 2nd generation born in the wilderness were about to enter and conquer the Land with Joshua and Caleb, all repeated in Deuteronomy with new applications relating to living in the Land.
YHWH had revealed Himself and His Way of Life to Israel and repeatedly emphasized the importance of their keeping the Covenant and obeying His Torah.
For what? to keep this way of life and the Name of their God exclusively to themselves? No, on the contrary . . .
- to start the Torah movement . . .
- a way of living,
- YHWH’s guidelines for Israel and the nations.
But in His wisdom and knowing clueless humanity that was prone to worshipping man-made gods, He had to start with —
- an identifiable people
- who will be different,
- be ‘other’,
- be His ‘servant’,
- His ‘son’,
- be His model community
- where individuals are ‘other’-centered instead of ‘self’-centered.
And most of all, direct all nations to Himself, the One True God, the Self-revealing God on Sinai. That is the objective and purpose of having a ‘chosen’ among vast humanity.
Deuteronomy 28:9-10
YHWH will establish you to be a people holy to him,
as he swore to you,
when you keep the commandments of YHWH your God and walk in his ways.
10 And when all the peoples of the earth see
that the name of YHWH is proclaimed over you,
they will hold you in awe.
. . . 12 and by blessing all the doings of your hand;
you will lend to many nations.
After their dismal track record of repeated disobedience as their own Historical-Scriptures/Kings-Chronicles attest to, Israel’s Prophets were merely sent to redirect them back to YHWH and His Torah.
Like a firstborn son, Israel was taught from the start but unfortunately learned the hard way through disobedience and resulting judgment, “curses for disobedience”. Eventually, to recover and retain their Covenant legacy after they had lost their Land and Temple though not their God and His Torah, the religious remnant of Israel started over with a strict religion “Judaism.” Indeed the pendulum had swung the other way, perhaps to an extreme but indeed, ‘better safe than sorry’.
Deuteronomy 30:17-19
17 Now if your heart should face-about, and you do not hearken and you thrust-yourself-away and prostrate yourselves to other gods, and serve them,
18 I announce to you today
that perish you will perish,
you will not prolong days on the soil that you are crossing the Jordan to enter, to possess.
19 I call as witness against you today the heavens and the earth:
life and death I place before you blessing and curse;
now choose life, in order that you may stay alive, you and your seed,
20 by loving YHWH your God,
by hearkening to his voice and by cleaving to him,
for he is your life and the length of your days,
to be settled on the soil
that YHWH swore to your fathers, to Avraham, to Yitzhak and to Yaakov,
to give them!
Why do Christians call Israel’s strict observance of YHWH’s Torah as “legalism”? Because the Torah was “done away with”, as in they are “under grace and not law”? Really? Obedience to Torah is “legalism”? Is YHWH’s Torah a “burden,” a “load,” a “yoke” around one’s neck?
To the Christian, yes, because their NT scriptures had declared it thus. The culprit? ‘Thus saith Paul of Tarsus’ whose teachings in his epistles dominate Christian theology.
Where can one find ‘Thus Saith the LORD YHWH?’ Indeed, ‘to the Law and the Testimony!’
. . . if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
Isaiah 8:
20 Should not a people inquire of their own God? . .
21 I swear by the Torah and the teaching. . .
What part of “HEAR”
don’t we still understand,
oh Jew, oh Gentile?
NSB@S6K
