The Thoughts of Wesley son of Cornelius

Verse 3
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 NIV)

This verse is packed full of key words, such as, God, loved, world, gave, only, Son, whoever, believes, perish, and eternal life.

Love: the highest attraction or attachment that exists. To love like God is to be like God.
World: mankind, present, past, or future.
Gave: to put into the possession of another.
Only: Need I really define this term?
Son: seed, descendant, heir to the family possessions
Whoever: inclusive
Believes: to place confidence in, to trust
Perish juxtaposed to eternal: deterioration in quality versus enhancement in quality

Verse 3 (repeated)
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 NIV)

Verse 2:
Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in [or through] Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NIV)

The key words in this verse are wages, sin, death, gift, God, and eternal life.

Wages: a payment for labor or services, what you owe.
Sin: see last post.
Death: Separation either of the soul and the body or man from God.
Gift: something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation, what someone else buys.
God: see last post.
Eternal life: Unification with God for an infinite duration.

Verse 2 (repeated):
Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in [or through] Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NIV)

In the Bible there are many wonderful verses. However, some of the verses are a must know. In the posts that follow, I will list 5 to 10 verses that I feel are very important for the Christian to remember. I personally will try to memorize these verses along with their references.

Verse 1:
Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV)

The key words in this verse are all, sinned, short and God.

All: the whole amount or quantity of, the whole number or sum of. All means all.
Sinned: to transgress from the Law of God, to be in a vitiated state or estranged from God.
Short: not coming up to a measure or not meeting a standard, goal, or height.
God: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe.

Verse 1 (repeated):
Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV)

“I am the LORD, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right.” (Isaiah 45:19 NIV)

So much more can be written about early civilizations. Maybe one day I will revitalize this topic. I have yet to write on the complexities of the Mayan writings, the Minoans and Mycenaeans, the complexities of early Indian religions, the Russians, Japanese, Aborigines, or the various African nations. I have not even written about the late Babylonians, Persians, Vikings, or European Barbarians; all of which have had complex legal and social systems. I have come to the conclusion that the ancients were not inferior to us; they were the same as we are now.

The modern world view gives us two hypotheses on the spread of early man. One called the single-origin hypothesis, or Out-of-African model, and the second called the multiregional hypothesis. I applaud the Wikipedia writer who had integrity to write: “Because of the scarcity of fossils and the discovery of important new finds every few years, researchers disagree about the details and sometimes even basic elements of human evolutionary history.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Africa_theory)

We, Christians, should be careful in taking world views and mixing them with Biblical views. An old earth hypothesis and the hypothesis of human evolution do not fit with the Biblical teachings. But I hope I have introduced you, the reader, to areas that do support Biblical Theory (or for Joe, Biblical Truth).

Even the famous Thomas Aquinas compromised his teachings by mixing Aristotle’s humanistic views with Biblical views. (see Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live?) Please, do not fall prey to world corruption, and please let me know if the thoughts of Wesley Son of Cornelius ever become corrupted. For further posts about the importance of God’s Word being true see my posts every Saturday as a guest writer on Joe’s blog: http://steeplemedia.com/blogs/son_of_liberty

Next time: something different!

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. … For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Psalm 19:1-3; Romans 1:20 NIV)

India and China appear to have developed outside of the influence of Mesopotamian and Mediterranean regions. Their connection to the Biblical worldview is very puzzling. A historian has to rummage through historian garbage to try and determine the first settlers in this region. I believe the devout belief in the Evolution Hypothesis has disabled us from understanding the early Asians. Could the early settlers in China have brought with them stories of old?

Dr. Ethel R. Nelson, a pathologist and resident of Thailand; Richard E. Broadberry, a medical laboratory specialist in Taipei, fluent in Chinese; C.H. Kang; Kui Shin Voo; Larry Hovee and many others believe to have found a connection with ancient Chinese characters and Creation, the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood as told by Moses.

The earliest understood writing in China is found on Oracle bone scripts. Interestingly, this writing is during the time of the Shang Dynasty, as was the worship of ShangTi (see post on Religion-Chinese). As with cuneiform and hieroglyphics, the earliest characters are pictographic in nature. Some linguists believe some of the characters to be phonograms. However, it can clearly be seen at the following site that many were logograms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character
As seen in the website above, Chinese still use a variation of ancient characters today. Sadly, in order to reduce the number of characters in their language, the Chinese are tending toward the Simplified Script. I hope they are not losing the ancient details with this transition.

But how does a language depict concepts and ideas in a pictographic nature? This topic is debated among historians. For the most part, they believe a lot of the concepts came from phonetic sounds of the words you could depict with pictures. Other historians believe they used pictures by association.

Dr. Nelson, et al, believes the ancient Chinese brought with them stories of the Creation, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood. Therefore, ancient characters for various concepts depict some of these stories. For example, the character to covet is a woman between two trees. Nelson believes this represents Eve and the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Furthermore, the character for tempter is the character of devil, trees, and cover.

As with any discovery, a historian or archaeologist must be careful to come to any conclusion too quickly. I believe Nelson has given substantial evidence for her theory. However, sometimes I believe she forces many of the characters and associations. You can come to your own conclusion (see the references below).

I return back to the character for tempter and give a modern day Chinese perspective. One of my Chinese friends says that the Chinese did not have devils in their early mythologies. The character now used for devil is the same used for ghost. Chinese were and still are very superstitious. It was believed that the ghosts lived in the woods under the cover of darkness. He believes this is the understanding of this character. Maybe. But the idea is still thought provoking.

REF: Nelson, Ethel R., and Richard E. Broadberry. Genesis and the Mystery Confucius Couldn’t Solve. Shunichi Yamamoto: 1994.

http://www.wbschool.org/chinesecharacters.htm (MUST SEE)

http://www.creationism.org/genesis.htm

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/pdf_notice.asp?pdf=/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/tjv13n1chinese_lamb.pdf

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i3/china.asp

http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/388.asp

“… they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. … and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. … Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. … So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, and Lot went with him. … Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom.” (Genesis 12, 13 NIV)

As seen by the travels of Abram, the Middle Eastern community intermingled during antiquity. This interaction can also be seen in the written languages. As noted in an earlier post, hieroglyphics were used in Egypt. However, alongside hieroglyphics is hieratic. Various ideas exist on when hieratic developed; however, most scholars believe it developed alongside hieroglyphics. Hieratic is designed for quick writing on papyrus with ink. A comparison of the two writing styles can be seen here:
http://home.prcn.org/sfryer/Hieratic/

It is believed that this hieratic writing style influenced those living in Canaan. The Proto-Canaanite alphabet can be seen below. This alphabet would be improved and is now referred to as the Phoenician alphabet. Like Egyptian writing, there were no vowels in the alphabet. As people moved like Abram, various writing styles were borrowed, improved, or altered. Secular historians believe the Phoenician alphabet had a large influence on Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Arabic. No doubt a strong resemblance can be seen in the diagram below.


The Phoenicians are known for their trade by sea. More of likely, they not only exported purple dye (where we might get the word Canaan) but also their alphabet. By trade and general interaction, we can see how the Greeks adopted this new style. Prior to this time, the predecessors to Greece, Minoan and Mycenaean, used a written language we call Linear A and B, respectively. This ancient language is still not completely deciphered.

Before leaving the language of this region, some interesting points need to be addressed. What language did Moses write in? Secular historians, with many Biblical historians, believe that Hebrew did not fully develop into a written language as we know it today until 1000 BC. This is more than 400 years after Moses. Could Moses have written in hieratic or some Proto-Canaanite language? Dr. Unger writes: "The original Scriptures of the Hebrews were inscribed in this same Canaanite-Phoenician alphabet, which had reached a fairly stable form before the Conquest, but which continued to undergo certain changes in style and writing in the course of the centuries. Eventually in the post-exilic period the Holy Scriptures were put into the antique Aramaic alphabet. When that alphabet assumed the square form, the Hebrew Bible found itself with the style of letter already characteristic of the second century BC Isaiah manuscript of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Palestine in 1947." [ref] I am still thinking on this one.

Until then, let’s move east to a country that appears to be excluded from the interaction of this cradle of civilization yet shows some interesting common traits.

REF: Unger, Merrill F. Archaeology and the Old Testament. Zondervan: Michigan; 1954.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

“The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras. … The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim and the Rodanim. (From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.” (Genesis 10:2, 4, 5 NIV)

Someone reading through his Bible might skip over this passage, or read it and not grasp what is mentioned. I have been surprised of the contents.

Many Biblical historians believe the following connections to the sons of Japheth.
1. Magog might possibly be the father of the Scythians.
2. Madia is probably the father of the Medes.
3. The Hebrews called the Greek the Javan. (see Daniel 8:21)
4. More of likely, the Kittim settled in Cyprus. (see Numbers 24:24)
5. Rodanim might be reflected in the Greek isle of Rhodes.

From this information, it appears Japheth’s descendants settled along the north of the Mediterranean Sea.

“The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. … Mizraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Casluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites. Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites. Later the Canaanite clans scattered and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.” (Genesis 10:6, 13-19)

As with the descendants of Japheth, we can get an idea of where the Hamites settled.

1. The Hebrews referred to the Egyptians as Mizraim. Interestingly, Mizraim is dual and could possibly represent a Lower and Upper Egypt.
2. Clearly, Canaan settled in what would be eventually called the Promised Land.
3. Canaan was the father of the famous Hittites and Amorites.
4. The name Sidon is still used today for the city of the same name in Lebanon. This area was the area of the Phoenicians.

From this information, the majority of Ham’s descendants settled along the east and south coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. The Egyptians, Philistines, Phoenicians, and Greeks were all maritime people. Their early interactions might be evident in their written languages.

“The sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram. … The region where they lived stretched from Mesha toward Sephar, in the eastern hill country.” (Genesis 10:22, 30 NIV)

Based on their names and the people groups named after them, it is believed that the Shemites, now called Semites, lived in the Mesopotamian region. As the Hamites developed in Canaan and Egypt (see next post), the Shemites were developing in the region between the rivers. Egypt had its hieroglyphics; Mesopotamia had its cuneiform.

The secular history places a people group called the Ubaidians in the Mesopotamian region. The Semitic nomads inhabiting the Syrian Desert and the Arabian Peninsula would eventually infiltrate the Ubaidian settlements. The cross-fertilization of these people would develop into the Sumerians. The Sumerians would hold dominion of this region until the Elamites would migrate out of modern day Iran and destroy Ur around 2000 BC (interestingly, approx. 90 years after Abram and his family left Ur). During their reign, the Sumerians created a writing style called cuneiform.

The earliest examples of writing are marks on small tablets that were attached to shipping containers. Like hieroglyphics, cuneiform characters are pictographic. The first characters can be seen in the second column of the picture to the right. These characters were drawn using a sharp pointed stylus. Over time the characters would be turned sideways to write more quickly and legibly. However, the pointed stylus that was dragged through the clay would leave messy ridges; therefore, the pointed stylus was replaced by a triangular stylus. This stylus was pressed into the clay, giving wedge-shaped (Latin cuneus-iform) impressions.

Also like hieroglyphics, individual cuneiform characters could be a phonogram, logogram, or an ideogram. The Sumerians also used determinative symbols.

Following the Elamite invasion, other groups would make a presence in Mesopotamia. Eventually, the Babylonians and Assyrians would be the most influential. The Babylonians and Assyrians spoke Akkadian. The written Akkadian language borrowed its characters from Sumerian cuneiform. The Sumerian script was also adapted for the writing of the Elamites, Hittites, and Hurrians. The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets also borrowed from the Sumerian writings.

To learn about the complexity of the Hittite cuneiform visit http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/index_en.php?page=accueil.

To learn about the details of the Akkadian cuneiform visit
http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/.

REF: Kramer, Samuel Noah. Great Ages of Man: Cradle of Civilization. Time: New York, 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform