Common Sense in Bible Interpretation, part 2

Shalom, friends and family.

(Continuing on...)

Perhaps, people are uncomfortable with the interpretation that these could actually be meteorites and thus would rather have an allegory to replace the catastrophe described in Revelation 6:12-17, but there is no contextual support for such an interpretation.

Another such location is Revelation 9:1-12 in which John (Yochanan) spoke of creatures he called "locusts" or "akris," which means "pointed," or as "lighting" on the "top" of vegetation. John said, "I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit." Some have said here that this was figurative of an angel, but again there is no reason for such an interpretation. None of the Bible expositors seem to want to have an object with "the key of the bottomless pit," the "hee kleis tou freatos tees abussou." I believe the same was true for the translators for the KJV. Hence, they translated "autoo" as "to him" rather than "to it." While it is a masculine pronoun, it is masculine only in the sense that the word for which it is the antecedent is also masculine in gender. This is true for many such gender dependent languages, like French or Spanish.

The words for "the cat," for instance, in French (le chat) and in Spanish (el gato) is masculine although we know that not all cats are masculine in gender. Things, too, carry gender in such languages although we do not translate them into English as having gender. The words for "the ceiling of the room" in French (el plafond de la chambre) and in Spanish (el cielo de la sala) are both translated into English without gender and if the word for "room" were substituted by a pronoun, the English translation would be "its ceiling," in both languages. Greek is no different. Thus, the translator supplied the words "to him" rather than "to it" on a bias that should not have been introduced.

"Kleis" can be a literal "key" OR it can be a "key" something. Strong's defines it this way:

NT:2807 kleis (klice); from NT:2808; a key (as shutting a lock), literally or figuratively:
KJV - key.

(Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)

I believe that, if one avoids the personification of the "star" and assumes it is indeed a literal "star" that falls to the ground, a meteorite, then "kleis" should be given a FIGURATIVE understanding as the "key COORDINATES!"
"The bottomless pit" is "tou freatos tees abussou" and literally means "the pit of-the no-bottom," or the "pit without depth," or the "pit with an unsounded depth."

So, there is nothing inconsistent with letting this star also be a meteorite with the power, the force, the knack, and the "key" location to crack the earth's crust. It could even be a literal key, such as a diamond or a corundum spike which would actually pierce the earth's crust. Verse two seems to verify that it is a physical event: "And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit."

The point is that one does not have to take the figurative point of view; a literal one will do just as well.

As an aside, these verses never say what happened to the locusts, but after John said that they had the power to inflict pain and torture men for five months, and before he said that the first woe was over, John mentioned that they had a king named "Abaddown" (in Hebrew) and "Apolluoon" (in Greek), both meaning "destruction" or a "destroying." This king is NOT haSatan or the devil; this king is so named because if he dies, so does the species! This could mean that the creatures were destroyed after five months, that they died on their own, or they were defeated by the death of their king.

"They had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails." There's a type of katydid, in the locust family, called an "extatosoma tiaratum" that has a scorpion-like abdomen. While there are no current species of locusts that have stings in their abdomens, we are constantly discovering new species of insects and who knows what species may have existed before the Flood that may now be extinct or unclassified? One can find several pictures of an "extatosoma tiaratum" by Googling the name. My point is this: if one species of insect can learn to curl its "tail" like a scorpion, then why would it be far-fetched for a species of locust to do it? And, if one species of insect - say, the bee or the wasp - can have stings in their abdomens, then why not another species - the locust? They may not have survived on the surface after the Flood for whatever reason, but God can re-introduce the species, if He's been "storing" it in a subterranean chamber.

And, they had a king instead of a queen. What's interesting about the extatosoma tiaratum is that I was reading about a hobbyist who kept one for a pet, and he said that if there is no male, the e. tiaratum can still lay eggs that will hatch, but they will be all female! If the king (the male) were to die right away, then the species would die out as quickly as it arrived, say, in about 5 months!

Here's an excerpt from http://www.reptileexpert.org/extatosoma-tiaratum-care/:

Breeding Extatosoma tiaratums

As previously mentioned, the females are parthenogenic so will produce eggs with or without males. That said, males are common too so breeding in captivity is common. It is very easy to breed Extatosoma tiaratum, you simply have to have mature males and females together and ensure that conditions are right and they will breed. As I have said, even without males you will find the females produce fertile eggs.
There is an advantage to having eggs produced via mating compared to produced via parthenogenesis. Eggs produced which are fertilised via males hatch in about half of the time compared to parthenogenesis eggs. Fertilised eggs hatch in approximately3-4 months producing both males and females, whereas parthenogenic produced eggs take some 8-12months to hatch and produce only females.

(The article and others like it at www.reptileexpert.org are fascinating reading!)

Another case in point is Matthew 10:16-39 and Luke 14:25-35: These verses are both passages which give us poignant words of Jesus the Christ (Yeshua` haMashiach): "...he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me," and "If any many come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

Are these verses advocating hatred of one's own family? NO! That contradicts many passages in the  Bible, e.g., Deuteronomy 6:4-25, Ephesians 5:1-6:9, and Colossians 3:12-4:6, to name a few. Are they advocating a hatred of oneself? NO! Paul said to the Ephesians (1:6) that Christians are "accepted in the Beloved!" Furthermore, we are instructed...

Lev. 19:18
18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.
KJV

Matt. 22:37-40
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
KJV

It's kind of hard to love your neighbor, if you can't love yourself. So, NO! He is NOT advocating hatred of oneself, either.

On the other hand, some people have a huge amount of trouble with these verses. How can these verses be made to mesh with these other Scripture passages? Didn't the same God inspire these writings as well as the others?

The typical answer many well-meaning Christians will give in answer to this dilemma is that Christ was using a relative comparison here: compared to our love for Christ, all other love relationships should seem as hatred by comparison, including our self-esteem.

However, nothing in the verse suggests that such an interpretation is warranted. Quite to the contrary, the reactions of His disciples and would-be disciples suggest that this was a difficult statement with which to come to grips.

A solution to this dilemma can come with the acceptance of three key points of view: First, not everything said in Scripture is to be accepted universally; there are some (in fact, many) statements in the Bible which only have a specific application, limited to the location, situation, and period of time in which the statement was made, or the people to whom it was addressed. The second key point of view is that, historically speaking, Jesus is getting very close to the time in which He will die, ... and He knows it. The third key is that love is not primarily an emotion; it is time and commitment. As Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family has said, "Kids spell 'love' 'T-I-M-E.'"

Based on these facts, an alternative interpretation would purport that Jesus, knowing full well that His time on earth was very limited, was simply saying that if anyone would desire to be one of Jesus' disciples at this point in His ministry, he or she would have to be extremely dedicated to the task of learning from Him, so dedicated in fact that one cannot be committed to his or her family. However, these are not passages with universal application! Therefore, they do not directly apply to the present nor to present day Christians. Why are these verses in the Bible? Thare are included to emphasize the foreknowledge Jesus had concerning His own death and for historical accuracy. NOT EVERYTHING IN THE BIBLE HAS PERSONAL APPLICATION!

When I was young, a popular chorus sang in church was "Every Promise in the Book is Mine." However, this statement is not necessarily true! Many promises were made to national Isra'el, and some promises were temporary in nature, extending only to those individuals to whom God, Jesus, or a prophet spoke, and only for the timespan given. For instance, Abraham was promised a son in his old age, but that promise does not necessarily extend to couples today, no matter how desperate they may be to have children. Other promises were collective promises and never intended to apply to single individuals.

Therefore, Jesus was NOT saying that one must ALWAYS hate his father and mother and wife and brothers and sisters; He was saying that AT THAT TIME IN HIS MINISTRY, so close to the end of His first advent, that one had to be seriously committed to Him and His teachings and not to his or her family. It was a LAST CALL for seriously minded students. The "drop/add" period was over.

In the Messiah's love,
Retrobyter