Seed of the Woman.

[John D. Brey]

This forum is the closest thing I know to a church that allows multiple interpretations. What I take exception to is the insistence on your part that Judaism can be inherited genetically which I think is an accusation against Jews that only blows back upon us, as its not grounded. Levitical service which is limited to only one tribe might be inherited, but it is also not about genetics. I can become a Levite through adoption. An extreme operational factor of Judaism is that anyone can join and that all blood is equal, which is important when considering the atonement as explained in the current Christian canon. Our connection to Judaism depends upon it, so the insistence that there are genes which cause Jesus to be the Christ is really just sawing off the limb we sit upon. This has no support in the Bible as I pointed out in your thread before, and it basically undermines the possibility of Christianity at all. Worse than that it is I think an accusation against the circumcised which if it were to spread to other Christians then it would embarrass us. It is like heaping coals of fire upon one's own head. I see it as a bomb that could blow us to smithereens were it to catch on, and then what? Sure there are some serious problems in Christianity today, but do we deserve to be destroyed? I'm going to lean towards no for the moment.

. . . I appreciate your concern, and agree with it. . . But that's far from what I'm saying. My position uses Jewish scripture and sensibilities to show that Jesus is Messiah. I'm literally taking the Talmud, and Jewish midrashim as serious as the NT, in order to show that Judaism has a deeper understanding of some of these things than orthodox Christianity. It requires the melding of Jewish and Christian commentary to put the whole thing together.

The "genetic" thing is merely a claim (that I've yet to support with evidence, scriptural and scientific) that Jesus can be the firstborn of humanity even though he was born in the first century. . . I know that sounds idiotic, and impossible. But I'm convinced I can show any person with a reasonable understanding of scripture, and science, and a relatively open mind, that my proposition can be proven to the acceptance of anyone with the basic prerequisites just mentioned.


John

 

[BilliardsBall]

Yeshua is shown, conclusively, to be Messiah, by reason of his authenticatable claim to being the firstborn son of Adam (despite the fact that Cain acquired that title through graft, literally, Genesis 2:21). -----The original messianic-prophesy was that the "seed of the woman" (which at the time of the prophesy was still insider her) would be the messianic-personage who would save Adam and Eve from their original sin. Cain was born of the "seed of the woman" not long after the prophesy was given, creating the paradox concerning Yeshua's relationship to Cain: both vying for the title "firstborn of creation." ----Solve the paradox, and Yeshua's messianic-claim becomes completely undeniable.

Cain acquired the title "firstborn of creation" (he's the first produce of the "seed of the woman"; the first human being "born," i.e., the "firstborn of creation"). -----But he acquired the title through "graft," literally. Such that we need know little more than that to be able to argue conclusively, to any able bodied and minded Jew, that Yeshua is the only person other than Cain to have any claim whatsoever to the seat of David.


John

Exciting. Eve may have thought Cain was the promised one, in the Hebrew.

 

[Sleeppy]

John the Baptist refers says those coming to see him are the spawn of vipers, so when Jesus comes to see him whose spawn is he? (Luke 3:7) Is Jesus the spawn of vipers, since he comes to see John and is baptized by John? How is it possible that humans can be their spawn? What about when Jesus calls someone the sons of Cain and indicates this is the opposite of being a son of Abraham? We know that Cain's children die in the flood, yet Jesus calls some men the sons of Cain. (John 8:41) So did Cain's descendants not die? You see it is not about genetics at all.

Jesus uses "sons of Cain" somewhere?

 

[Brickjectivity]

Jesus uses "sons of Cain" somewhere?

yet Jesus calls some men the sons of Cain. (John 8:41)

 

[Sleeppy]

That wording isn't there.


But interesting. I've used the phrase before.

 

[Brickjectivity]

That wording isn't there.


But interesting. I've used the phrase before.

It won't get you a pay raise, and it won't get your fired.

 

[John D. Brey]

Exciting. Eve may have thought Cain was the promised one, in the Hebrew.

I posted a couple proof-texts in the "Kiss the Son" thread showing that this is a relatively well-worn idea in the commentaries. In Midrash Rabbah we read:

WITH THE HELP OF (ETH) THE LORD. R. Ishmael asked R. Akiba: “Since you have served Nahum of Gimzo for twenty-two years, [and he taught], Every ak and rak is a limitation, while every eth [את] and gam is an extension, tell me what is the purpose of the eth [את] written here [Gen. 4:1]? ‘If it said, “I have gotten a man the Lord,” he replied, “it would have been difficult [to interpret (since Cain became a murderer . . .)]; hence ETH [with the help of] THE LORD is required.”

Midrash Rabbah Bere****h, XXII, 2-4.​

What the rabbis are discussing is the fact that Yahweh (the Lord) falls in the middle of consistent constructions where if the same exegetical rule is applied consistently, the "et" (את), dictates that by simply interpreting the word "Yahweh" the same as every other noun in the text, Eve is claiming she's just birthed Yahweh (the man of God).

As Luther points out, there's every reason for Eve, under the circumstances she found herself, to believe she'd just birthed the promised Redeemer, her "Seed," the Savior who will crush the head of the serpent:

And Eve said: I have gotten the man of the Lord. From this statement another reason my be gathered why Eve did not call Cain a son [as she did her later offspring], namely, that because of her excessive joy and reverence she was unwilling to call him son but had something greater in mind about him, as though Cain would be the man who would crush the head of the serpent. . . Although this was a false hope, it nevertheless is clear that Eve was a saintly woman and that she believed the promise concerning the future salvation through the blessed Seed. And because she believes, she is so happy about her son and speaks of him in such grand terms: "I have gotten the man of God who will conduct himself more properly and with greater good fortune than my Adam and I conducted ourselves in Paradise. For this reason I do not call him my son, but he is the man of God who was promised and provided by God.".

Luther, Genesis 4:1.​

Though it's indeed an exciting proposition that Eve may have thought Cain was the "Seed of the Woman," the Redeemer, there are things that come out of that understanding that could literally change the way Christians and Jews read the entire Tanakh.



John

 

[Kemosloby]

I get 0 results searching "Firstborn son of Adam". Where does Jesus make this claim? The relationship of Jesus to Adam is "Adam was a pattern of the One to come" . Seed of the woman could mean any human born after Adam and Eve.

 

[blü 2]

. . . I agree with you. But for those who take the Bible seriously, I have a sound scientific theory not just for how Yeshua can be the legitimate "firstborn of creation," but one that answers numerous other oddities in the Tanakh.

No, not a scientific theory at all.

You have a literary theory, a theory about writing an alternative version of a particular story. If you use science in that, so does science fiction.

 

[John D. Brey]

No, not a scientific theory at all.

You have a literary theory, a theory about writing an alternative version of a particular story. If you use science in that, so does science fiction.

. . . I'll leave it to you to determine if the Bible is fiction; such that any science about it is accurately deemed "science fiction." -------I don't have a horse in that race.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I get 0 results searching "Firstborn son of Adam". Where does Jesus make this claim? The relationship of Jesus to Adam is "Adam was a pattern of the One to come" . Seed of the woman could mean any human born after Adam and Eve.

. . . Try: The First Jewish Mother. . . And to your second point, all interpretation is contingent on, and entangled in, what we can believe and make sense of. In this thread and others I've shown a couple cases where even the best interpreters, with the best of intentions, are comfortable re-writing the holy word of God when they can't make sense of it as it's written.

As written, Jesus is the firstborn of creation. It's taken a lot of history, exegesis, and science . . . but today we can make sense of what previously seemed impossible.


John

 

[Kemosloby]

. . . Try: The First Jewish Mother. . . And to your second point, all interpretation is contingent on, and entangled in, what we can believe and make sense of. In this thread and others I've shown a couple cases where even the best interpreters, with the best of intentions, are comfortable re-writing the holy word of God when they can't make sense of it as it's written.


John

That's pretty funny. But there was no covenant between God and the Jews until Abraham.

 

[blü 2]

. . . I'll leave it to you to determine if the Bible is fiction; such that any science about it is accurately deemed "science fiction." -------I don't have a horse in that race.

The point will still remain. You're purporting to apply science to a story whose accuracy you have no way of establishing and ─ as science will tell you ─ whose gross improbability as a record of real events is manifest on its face.

 

[John D. Brey]

That's pretty funny. But there was no covenant between God and the Jews until Abraham.

. . . Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch is one of the greatest exegetes of the Hebrew language who has ever lived. He claims that in the strict sense of the Hebrew text, God isn't establishing a new covenant with Abraham, but merely restarting the original covenant he had with Adam. R. Hirsch has no reason to say that for effect. And he builds no theology on it. He's just relaying what the Hebrew actually says (proof-text upon request).


John

 

[Profound Realization]

The key comes from the word "graft":

a shoot or twig inserted into a slit on the trunk or stem of a living plant, from which it receives sap.synonyms:scion, cutting, shoot, offshoot, bud, sprout, sprig"​

Isaiah 11 claims Messiah will sprout as a "shoot" out of the "root" of Jesse. Zechariah calls King Messiah the "Branch" (and the word means a basal-shoot). Isaiah 53 says Messiah will "sprout" (same Hebrew word for a scion) from dry ground. -----In every case the Tanakh's association of the Messiah as a "sprout" or "sprig," or "scion," uses the Hebrew word speaking specifically of a basal-shoot coming out of the original root.

What's that got to do with authenticating Yeshua's messianic claim? Pretty much everything.

You see a tree, growing out of the "root" of the tree, is a clone of the root. They're identical. The tree growing out of the root is genetically identical to the root. But since they're genetically identical, they can't propagate but in two ways. One is as a "genet" and the other is sexually. A genet is a clonal colony of clones. Every single member of a genet is genetically identical. The fruit of such trees will not only taste the same, identical, but they will literally taste like the tree itself.

In deep meditation on the first chapter of Genesis, Rashi throws out a real looloo. He says the trees of the garden were cursed with Adam because they committed the botanical facsimile of his original sin; their sin mirrors Adam's original sin?

According to Rashi the result of the botanical sin was that the fruit of the tree no longer tasted like the tree itself. In other words, the trees in the garden were no longer produced as basal-shoots forming a genet, such that every tree was genetically identical, all the fruit tasting like the roots and tree themselves. On the contrary, they began to taste different because of some mixing with other kinds of trees: they began to experiment with sexual reproduction rather than clonal, asexual, reproduction.

Obligatory death as a result of senescence – natural aging – may not have come into existence for more than a billion years after life first appeared. This form of programmed death seems to have arisen at about the same time that cells began experimenting with sex in connection with reproduction. It may have been the ultimate loss of innocence.

William Clark, Sex and the Origins of Death, (Oxford University Press, 1996), prologue XI.​

John

If it is from “spiritual” texts, I tend to portray them from an internal perspective. Trees, roots, branches as being dendrites and nerves. The woman is symbolical for the subconscious mind. It reproduces our thoughts, ideas, and gives birth to much.

I don’t view it as sexual reproduction, but rather mental and/or “spiritual” birth and reproduction.

 

[John D. Brey]

The point will still remain. You're purporting to apply science to a story whose accuracy you have no way of establishing and ─ as science will tell you ─ whose gross improbability as a record of real events is manifest on its face.

. . . I've never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed. But I'll tell you in all honesty that I've never encountered any person, principle, scientific or otherwise, that I've found to exhibit as much veracity, perfection, and trustworthiness, as I've found in the Bible.

If the foregoing is merely a gauge of my weak powers of observation, so be it. If it's because of the fore-going (known as circumcision of the mind) then that too is what it is and as it should be.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

If it is from “spiritual” texts, I tend to portray them from an internal perspective. Trees, roots, branches as being dendrites and nerves. The woman is symbolical for the subconscious mind. It reproduces our thoughts, ideas, and gives birth to much.

I don’t view it as sexual reproduction, but rather mental and/or “spiritual” birth and reproduction.

. . . I don't have a problem with any of that.


John

 

[Kemosloby]

. . . Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch is one of the greatest exegetes of the Hebrew language who has ever lived. He claims that in the strict sense of the Hebrew text, God isn't establishing a new covenant with Abraham, but merely restarting the original covenant he had with Adam. R. Hirsch has no reason to say that for effect. And he builds no theology on it. He's just relaying what the Hebrew actually says (proof-text upon request).


John

Sure it has an effect. Sort of a jew master race effect. And as a Jew Hirsch has a reason to say it. There's no other evidence to support it like Cain and Abel being circumcised The curse on the serpent stands just fine without it

 

[blü 2]

. . . I've never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed. But I'll tell you in all honesty that I've never encountered any person, principle, scientific or otherwise, that I've found to exhibit as much veracity, perfection, and trustworthiness, as I've found in the Bible.

If the foregoing is merely a gauge of my weak powers of observation, so be it. If it's because of the fore-going (known as circumcision of the mind) then that too is what it is and as it should be.

But as one familiar with science, you can't fail to be aware that the science of the bible is the science of its time ─ a flat earth, a geocentric universe, the stars affixed to the 'firmament', a hard dome over the earth, so that when detached they can fall to earth; and much more. (>Here<'s a glance at what the bible says of its own cosmology.)

These are historically interesting, but as statements about reality we (now) know they're not accurate, not true.

Why would you expect the writers of the bible to have an understanding of 21st century science anyway?

 

[John D. Brey]

Sure it has an effect. Sort of a jew master race effect. And as a Jew Hirsch has a reason to say it. There's no other evidence to support it like Cain and Abel being circumcised The curse on the serpent stands just fine without it

. . . I could agree totally with you about a rabbi having every reason to say that God re-established the original covenant with Adam with Abraham within a certain context (remember though that Abraham is just as much the father of Jesus, and Christianity, as he is Jews and Judaism . . . what's good for the goose is good for the gander; Abraham has two distinct ganders).

Nevertheless, Rabbi Hirsch is exegeting Hebrew not eisegeting it. He knows what he's talking about, and he's correct, in my opinion. The Abrahamic-covenant is a renewal of God's covenant with Adam, who was (Adam that is) the first Jew.


John