4… GOING ON A BIT FURTHER

 
From time to time you'll find me referring to God as 'Yahweh', abbreviated YHWH. Some versions do this too. Once misread and misunderstood as 'Jehovah', Yahweh is the name God reveals to Moses [EX 3:1-6, 14, & 6:2+]. So far as we can tell it means 'I AM WHO I AM', or words to that effect, perhaps even, 'I MYSELF AM BEING’.

In the very first verse of the very first book of the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, God reveals Himself  [1] as the Creator of the Universe, and its Great Poet and Storyteller too. Telling it all, telling us all into being. Long before the written word, God-stories are passed down verbally. Sometimes in verse, sometimes set to music by bards (like David, of whom more later) they tell us more and more about God and, unwittingly, the human story-tellers too.[2] Just as God eventually reveals His  name to Moses [EX 3:1-6, 14, & 6:2-7] Christians believe God later reveals Himself completely in Jesus & the stories about Him. Hebrew and Christian stories belong together. In them both God beckons us on to new beginnings.[3]  Perhaps this is the place to say that the early God-stories and modern scientific explanations of how things came into being need not be enemies, just complementary ways of understanding the whole Truth. It might help, too, to bear in mind that as we look at the earliest stories in Gen Chs. 1-11 they are set in times before history as we know it. Not till Gen 12 do we move into a time frame we can date with some confidence.

B.T.L.T.L. is neither an academic, scholarly, nor technically theological work. Simply an attempt by a long-time parish priest to encourage himself and us all to look at things that matter in new and living ways! A final word of warning: God stories don't sit well with or in the clutches of literalists. We mustn’t try to shut God up in His own Book, a Book that’s supposed to help set us free! Literalism kills God-stories – and God - dead in the water! On land, too! Stories need to stay as alive and kicking as YHWH God is! So let's make a start. After all every story has a beginning, a Genesis but that’s another story! (And it starts: In the beginning…)

 
NOTES:
            [1]  Till we find a gender-free pronoun for God, I’ll stick with ‘Him’ but italicise it. God is neither male nor female, but Spirit. We may think of God as Father, Mother, or Parent, but God, the Source of all Being is beyond describing in gender-oriented terms. Some prefer to think of God as the ‘Source of all Being’ and leave it at that. [2] Though all these stories are born from the heart of YHWH God, they are told into our midst by human story-tellers, known or unknown, moved by Him. (Though in some cases it may seem legitimate to doubt that!) We owe these storytellers, poets, troubadours, prophets, teachers, historians, law-makers, saints, or sinners, a debt of gratitude! [3] Stories are often better told or read aloud. Some parts of the Scriptures including the Psalms and similar passages in the O.T. as well as some early Christian hymns from the N.T. are better sung or chanted, to God, to others, even to ourselves!

 [4] If you reach the point of needing more learned teaching on the Scriptures than this small work offers, ask someone you trust for help in finding that.