I am really joyful with you H2Soul, stay/remain strong in Christ Jesus.
The shalom peace to you and family and I believe we are in the home stretch in this race we are running.
J.
Found this from Dr Brown
The fact is that the ancient rabbis also dealt
with the question of how the invisible
God could interact with human beings,
using the Aramaic term Memra’, which
means “the word” to personify God. In
other words, God’s “word” is depicted as
an extension of Himself, performing His
divine will (see Ps. 107:20 and Isa. 55:10-
12), with the most dramatic example
found in the creation account, in which
God created all things by speaking.
The Aramaic Targums further developed
this concept of the divine Memra’, often
speaking of “the word of the Lord” rather than “the Lord Himself.” Compare the
following examples in which the scrip-
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tural passage comes first and the Targum
(the Aramaic translation of the ancient
rabbis) follows:
Gen. 1:27 God created man
The Word of the LORD
created man (Targum
Pseudo-Jonathan)
Num. 10:35 Rise up, O LORD!
Rise up, O Word of the
LORD!
Isa. 45:17 Israel will be saved by
the LORD
Israel will be saved by
the Word of the LORD
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Perhaps most interesting is the Targum’s
rendition of Genesis 28:20-21. Whereas
the Hebrew reads, “If God will be with
me . . . then the Lord will be my God,” the
Targum reads, “If the Word of the Lord will
be with me . . . then the Word of the Lord
will be my God.” We have to keep in mind
that these words echoed in the ears of
those who attended the synagogues over
the centuries; they heard over and over
again that Jacob’s God was the Word of
the Lord!
If we were to go to the beginning of the
Gospel of John and substitute Memra’
for “word,” we would get the following
text: “In the beginning was the Memra’,
and the Memra’ was with God, and the
Memra’ was God. He was with God in
the beginning. Through him all things
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were made” ( John 1:1-3). This is sounding quite Jewish! The main difference
is that while the manifestations of God
in the Hebrew Scriptures occurred episodically, being few and far between and
only lasting briefly, the miracle of God’s
self-disclosure in Yeshua is that this manifestation lasted for thirty-three years.
The Gospel of John goes further, saying,
“The Memra’ became flesh and took up
residence among us. We observed His
glory, the glory of the One and Only Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth”
( John 1:14, adapted from the CSB).
The Greek phrase for “made His dwelling among us” literally means “to pitch
a tent” or “to tabernacle.” Just as YHWH
pitched his tent in Israel (i.e. the tent
of meeting), so too has His tent been
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pitched among us in the person of Yeshua. What an incredible act of divine condescension, and yet at the same time, He
filled the universe with His presence.The
word John uses in his Gospel for Memra’
is logos, a Jewish Greek concept that was
described in detail by Philo. According to
The Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion,
p. 423, Philo used the idea of the logos
to bridge the gap between the
transcendent God of Judaism and
the divine principle experienced
by human beings. This view of
the Logos as a mediating principle between God and creation
could link up with . . . the concept
of meimra (Aram.; “word”) in
Targum literature (especially as it
appears in Targum Onkelos).
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One might ask, “Doesn’t this violate the
Shema, which declares God’s unity?”
That is a terrific question, since this is a fundamental concept of Judaism. But there is
absolutely no violation of our profession
of faith in the Shema,
since the word ’echad
denotes oneness, not absolute unity.
Interestingly, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994),
perhaps the most influential rabbi of the
modern era, makes this striking point:
Echad means ‘one’ . . . But is
echad the ideal word to express
the divine unity? Like its English
equivalent, the word does not
preclude the existence of other
objects . . . nor does it preclude its
object being composed of parts.
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(Cited from “The Numerology of
Redemption”)
The oneness the Shema speaks of is like
the oneness of night and day (Gen. 1:5),
the oneness of man and woman who
have become one flesh (Gen. 2:24), or
the unity of the assortment of various
pieces coming together to form the Tabernacle (Exod. 36:13). God’s oneness
is similar to these types of unity. In the
centuries after Yeshua manifested Himself to Israel, Christian theologians recognized this complex unity in God, calling Him a trinity, i.e. Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, but this concept does not
speak of three gods. Rather, it speaks of
God in His complex unity.
7 secrets of the real Messiah.
Enjoy
J.
