I'll rephrase.
How does this apply to argument at hand about Christian 'losers'.
And keep up the brass talk. I like it. I'll try to return the same if I disagree with you.
Robert there are no losers! Christian or not!
Glad you see the brass talk... Many don't see that Jesus loved to brass talk! Jesus was the master of Brass talk...
In Hebrew grammar, the position of emphasis is usually the beginning of the clause. Unfortunately, our English translation of the Hebrew text does not always reveal this emphasis. So it should not be forgotten that Hebrew-unlike English-usually confronts the listener or reader immediately with a verbal form (often a transitive verb, but sometimes an intransitive or “stative” form) even before the subject itself is designated.
Laziness, inertia, or passivity were hardly marks of the Hebrews’ lifestyle. Rather, the Hebrews were mainly a doing and feeling people. Thus their language has few abstract terms.
Rather, "Hebrew may be called primarily a language of the senses. The words originally express concrete or material things and movements or actions which struck the senses or started the emotions. Only secondary and in metaphor could they be used to denote abstract or metaphysical ideas."
The Bible contains many Hebraisms in which abstract thoughts or immaterial conceptions are conveyed through material or physical terminology.
I can give a number of examples to illustrate this point: "look" is "lift up the eyes" (Gen. 22:4); "be angry" is "burned in one's nostrils" (Exod.4:14); "disclose something to another" or "reveal" is "unstopped someone's ears" (Ruth 4:4); "have no compassion" is "hard-heartedness" (1Sam.6:6); "stubborn" is "stiff-necked" (2 Chr.30:8;cf.Acts 7:51). In addition, the Hebrews often referred to God by use of anthropomorphisms (i.e., representation of God with human attributes). The "living" and "active" God of the Hebrews is thus never reduced to mere impersonal abstraction. For instance, the 10 Commandments are said to be "inscribed by the finger of God" (Exo.31:18). The prophet Isaiah states, "surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear to dull to hear (Isa. 59:1).
Again, a well-known proverb states, "the eyes of the Lord are everywhere" (Prov.15:3).
In the same vein, today's Church must not forget that the earliest theology in the New Testament is relational or existential rather than propositional or creedal.
The New Testament reflects this same visceral Hebraic perspective on human nature. A person may be lead with his heart (Rom. 10:10). One may refresh spiritually the
bowels [heart]of other believers (Phlm. 7, 20). A person may come under the judgment of God when the Lord searches his
kidneys [mind](Rev. 2:23). (Used e-Sword to review strong numbers in these verses.)
Very suprising. These texts illustrate that for the New Testament authors passion was tied to their belief that human beings were "whole"; that is they considered one's physical, psychological, and spiritual functions to be one indivisible entity. Both Testaments affirm this perspective, as seen in the above passages.
They describe a person's various mental, spiritual, and emotional reactions to stress by locating these reactions in the organs of the body were a person actually feels the effects of that stress. The Hebrews-both men and women-were able to affirm their full humanity. They gave vent unashamedly to their feelings, for each emotion had "a time" appropriate for its expression: being angry, crying, laughing, singing, feasting, dancing, handclapping, shouting, embracing, and loving (see Eccl. 3:1- 8).
The nature of Hebrew is to paint verbal pictures with broad strokes of the brush. Theirs was primarily a descriptive of what the eyes see rather than what the mind speculates.
Let us consider several examples of this earthiness. The prophecy of Isaiah describes graphically the intended fate of the people of Jerusalem. Trapped in the year 701 B.C. by the powerful Assyrian army of Sennacherib, they are described as those who have to "eat their own filth and drink their own urine" (Isaiah 36:12). Though Jerusalem was miraculously spared this Assyrian attack (Isaiah 37;cf.2 Kgs. 19), more than a century later (586 B.C.) Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. Jeremiah was one of the leading prophets of the Southern Kingdom at the time. With the same candor as Isaiah, Jeremiah depicts sorrowfully the acts of cannibalism performed by his own people as Jerusalem was brought to the very brink of starvation:
"with their own hands and passionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed" (Lam. 4:10; cf. Deut 28: 53-57). Against the background of their Babylonian exile God's people are described as sinful and unclean, who is
"righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6).
However, the Hebrew for "filthy rags" is far more explicit, reflecting the Hebrews vivid, earthly style of expression. It is
beged iddim, literally
"garment of menstruation." In similarity graphic words,
Jeremiah likens Israel's sexual excesses as Canaanite shrines to that of a female wild Donkey in heat: "[You are] a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving-in her heat who can restrain her? Any males that pursue her need not to tire themselves; at mating time they will find her" (Jer. 2:24).
Such vivid biblical imagery reminds us that the Hebrew people live close to nature; they were not afraid to face head on those areas of life that people in the West world would normally either euphemistically or avoid discussing altogether.
Do you see many Christians that talk brass... I think not!!!
Paul
