Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The Rabbi's Teaching


Last week, I happened to watch two men on GLC. One was an African-American pastor and the other was a Jewish man. (Not a Messianic Jew) The pastor, Keith, wanted to learn Hebrew, so he went to Israel and met this Jewish man, Nehemiah, who was his guide. (A part-time guide, but a serious student of Hebrew.) Long story short, Keith convinced Nehemiah to teach him Hebrew. That was 8 years ago. In the '80's, it was discovered that Matthew was first written in Hebrew. So Nehemiah came to Keith and told him they should study it together. Out of that study, they wrote a book together called A Prayer to Our Father. As they talked about it, the thing that stood out to me was the phrase, "...thy kingdom come, thy will be done..." They said that in the Hebrew, it actually meant, "thy will will be done in thy kingdom!" I got so excited! I ordered the book and can hardly wait for it to get here.

Well, that got me to thinking. If the Hebrew is so different from the English, how much more are we missing in the translation? I'm doing a study on Rachel with a friend. So tonight, I decided to google the Hebrew meaning of Rachel and Leah's names. Somehow, I came across a site that had a little blurb written by a Rabbi. Ding, ding ding!!! I decided to google "Rabbis teaching on Rachel and Leah." I am enthralled! It's like I can't get enough. I know some of the things that are taught come from tradition and not scripture, but it's so interesting. I encourage you to take a look. Isn't technology wonderful---that I can sit at home and learn from Rabbis?

3 comments:

Rachel said...

That was so interesting. Especially because my name is involved. It may be a lot of Jewish tradition, but that's the life they led. It made a lot of sense. I find myself engulfed in wonder. How much of the bible do we really understand?

Marcy Faye Hallden said...

does this mean you're back from your break?

Becky Dietz said...

Yeah....my break was shorter than I expected. I was fasting from facebook and blogging so I could hear God. I heard sooner than I expected. But I'm limiting my time online.