{"id":756,"date":"2010-11-16T08:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T08:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/11\/the-hebrew-bibles-hidden-message\/"},"modified":"2010-11-16T08:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T08:47:00","slug":"the-hebrew-bibles-hidden-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/11\/the-hebrew-bibles-hidden-message.html","title":{"rendered":"The Hebrew Bible&#8217;s Hidden Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>This post isn\u2019t about messages supposedly hidden in the Bible in \u201cBible code\u201d fashion. But there is\u00a0something in Scripture that is not strictly speaking hidden, and yet many of us fail to see it, at least initially. <\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019m referring to is this: <strong>In the Hebrew Bible, there seems to be very little concern that people say \u201cthe right things\u201d about or to God<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\">Just a few passages that spring to mind in connection with this theme are <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.cc\/psalms\/44-23.htm\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Psalm 44:23<\/a>, which asks God why he sleeps; <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.cc\/psalms\/78-65.htm\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Psalm 78:65<\/a>, which describes God as like a drunk person awaking from an alcohol-induced stupor; and <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=130605715\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jeremiah 15:18<\/a>, which describes God as being like a deceitful brook or waters that fail.<\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><\/div>\n<p>Whereas so much religiosity in recent decades and even for centuries has focused on making sure the \u201cright things\u201d are said about God, getting down to the nitty gritty ontological and metaphysical details, in the Jewish Bible\/Christian Old Testament, not only are questions of God\u2019s \u201cnature\u201d not addressed directly, but many things are said about God that would not only be considered inadequate but downright inappropriate by many believers today.<\/p>\n<p>I am not trying to suggest that what I am discussing here represents \u201cwhat the Bible says\u201d on this matter. But it does seem to be <em>one<\/em> thing the Bible includes in relation to this topic. And this aspect of the Biblical literature seems to be as hidden from view to many modern religious believers as God himself seemed to some of ancient Israel\u2019s psalmists.<\/p>\n<p>What do others think? Is it fair to say that, in contrast with the concern for orthodoxy in many Christian circles today and down the ages, much of the Bible simply\u00a0does not share such a concern for speaking correctly about God? <\/p>\n<p>I think this is an important question, since it is often assumed today that someone who says \u201cI don\u2019t know what I think about God\u201d is <em>moving away from faith<\/em>. And someone today\u00a0who asks\u00a0\u201cWhat, is God sleeping?\u201d would be assumed to be an impious atheist, not a candidate to author Scripture! The Hebrew Bible seems like it can be a helpful resource for those who are losing their faith in a particular idea of God, and are losing their misplaced certainty, but are not for that reason necessarily repudiating the Bible and the religious tradition connected with it. Indeed, they may be getting into more profound depths of this tradition than the fundamentalists who will make them feel like guilty backsliders for doing so.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-5112777006937718178?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post isn\u2019t about messages supposedly hidden in the Bible in \u201cBible code\u201d fashion. But there is\u00a0something in Scripture that is not strictly speaking hidden, and yet many of us fail to see it, at least initially. What I\u2019m referring to is this: In the Hebrew Bible, there seems to be very little concern that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Hebrew Bible&#039;s Hidden Message<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This post isn&#039;t about messages supposedly hidden in the Bible in &quot;Bible code&quot; fashion. But there is&nbsp;something in Scripture that is not strictly\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/11\/the-hebrew-bibles-hidden-message.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Hebrew Bible&#039;s Hidden Message\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post isn&#039;t about messages supposedly hidden in the Bible in &quot;Bible code&quot; fashion. But there is&nbsp;something in Scripture that is not strictly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/11\/the-hebrew-bibles-hidden-message.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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