Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Tax-chick; DungeonMaster
I think Scott comes across better either in a recording (audio or video) or in a book. His verbal lecture style doesn’t convert too well to a written format.

In other words, Scott Hahn's an overrated hack, unless an editor is employed to clean up his arguments for print?

10 posted on 10/08/2007 8:09:41 AM PDT by Alex Murphy ("Therefore the prudent keep silent at that time, for it is an evil time." - Amos 5:13)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]


To: Alex Murphy

Have a Guinness and a kitten. If you are a gentleman, you will refrain from twisting my remarks, in the future. Dr. Hahn, whom I know slightly, would probably find you hysterical, but I have no sense of humor.


11 posted on 10/08/2007 8:13:54 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("Lettuce dance, lettuce dance, everyone should lettuce dance!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]

To: Alex Murphy
Well, here we go. What I would like to do now is to begin to change our focus to scripture itself. Of course, the place we have to begin in order to see what the scripture says about the Blessed Virgin Mary is found all the way in the beginning of the Bible. Let's turn to Genesis, chapter 3. There we see the first Eve having been seduced and, I believe, brutally intimidated into a kind of disobedient submission. You can go back and listen to this tape that I think we made two or two-and-a-half days ago about how often we distort what really happened in the temptation narrative, because we don't know how to read Hebrew narrative. There is a literary artistry there at work that's very hard for the Western mind to grasp, understand and appreciate. But I believe, just to sum it up, that Adam was called to be a faithful covenant head in a marital covenant, and he was called to show forth, as the representative of the covenant, the love, the hessed, the loyalty of the covenant to the fullest degree. And, as our Lord says, "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his beloved."

So, if he is truly going to love his covenant partner in marriage, he has to be willing to lay his life down. Now, how does God, the Father, test his son's loyalty and love? Well, that's what the serpent is there for. The serpent, nahash in Hebrew is, I believe, misunderstood to be a snake. Medieval art work, and this has been carried on into the modern tradition where you have Eve depicted as some dumb, perhaps blonde, but some dumb air-head who just basically is tricked by some little snake, hanging from a branch in a tree, to eat the apple. All right, and so all men just kind of sit back and say, "Yeah, it's still the same way." And they congratulate themselves on being so worldly wise that they wouldn't be so dumb as this air head.

Total misreading, I believe. This is my own hypothesis. This is my own interpretation. You don't have to abide by it, but my view is that the nahash, the serpent is deliberately depicted as a kind of, I'd say mythical figure but I don't want to deny the historicity of this text. It's just that Hebrew historical narrative can often use mythical imagery to communicate historical truth. In Daniel 7, I mentioned four gentile kingdoms are described as being "four beasts." So, I believe, here we have the serpent as a kind of dragon. The word is used and used and used in Hebrew to connote or denotes a dragon figure like Leviathan or Banmuth or Rehab, the monster later than Isaiah and elsewhere in the Old Testament. In Revelation 12:9 in the New Testament confirms this translation of nahash, not as serpent/snake, but as serpent/dragon, because there Satan is described as the "ancient serpent" and then it goes on to describe a seven-headed dragon.

So in his upclose look at scripture about Mary it took him 3 paragraphs to say absolutely nothing, but to sound very intelligent in saying it.

23 posted on 10/08/2007 10:21:59 AM PDT by DungeonMaster (John 2:4 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson