Cindy K

Though we attended an Assemblies of God Church, I was fed a fairly steady diet of Ken Copeland from the time I was a young teen. Later, my mother forced a great deal of Benny Hinn on me, and I’d been told from a young age that God intended that I become the next Kathryn Kuhlman, so I dutifully ate what I was fed by my parents. Unfortunately, much of that ideology has shaped my thinking, sometimes to the point that I wish I could take a toothbrush and toothpaste to scrub out my brain.

As an undergrad, my college hired impressive people to come in to teach electives, and I arranged to study classes on Judaism (as I didn’t feel comfortable learning Christian topics from Catholics — I went for the nursing program, not the theology). I had the honor of studying with a Rabbi and notable leader in Philadelphia who traveled one night a week to teach at the school. I so wanted to take the opportunity to understand the Jewish roots of Christianity at that point in my life. I was very impressed and also enamoured by the things this Rabbi taught regarding Hebrew tradition. While between churches at different times in my life, for the novelty, I’ve attended Messianic congregations — primarily to get more expert insight into Hebrew.

I find the Yeshivite myths of language to be very lovely about how God added the “ah” sound to Ish to make woman Isha. Woman is man with God’s breath of fire. The “ah” represents fire — the fire of life. This could also be meant as woman is man’s fire of passion, too. And I was taught that this is also what God did with Abram and Sarai when he changed their names — he breathed his life into them which allowed them to conceive Isaac. He added that “ah” to their names, heralding the that life. Again, this is not Scripture, but it is a long tradition that demonstrates a great love for the Hebrew language held by that tradition. There are some lovely observations that are thought provoking, but again, I am not stating that they are Scripture. It is just a commentary on how the Jews now understand their own language, once very near to being a dead language.

Don mentioned one of two schools of thought in the previous thread, that one being that woman is only an understanding of “opposite” that God created, not necessarily implying anything about gender at all, save that woman was made to be “opposite”
(ke’negdo) from man. Some say that man and woman are like mirror opposites in whom one sees a recognizable reflection of the other in a very Jewish poetic sense as described by some rabbis.

The other idea held by many Jews (most all that I’ve encountered which is no true representation of all Jews), as mentioned above in this blog post, is that per Genesis 1:27-28, Adam was made as one being who somehow contained some type of qualities of both male and female. I’ve read Jewish commentaries that said that Adam, though physically a male, did initially contain all that was Eve within him in some capacity. I’ve read the language (of non-believing Jews) that also speculate that this might make Adam a “functional hermaphrodite” of some type.

Under the influence to some degree of the Ken Copeland stuff and respectful of the Jewish teachings (with some assumption that the Jews have some capacity to traditionally interpret their own language), I have always been persuaded that God transcends all gender, but has chosen to reveal Himself to us as male and not female (which includes Jesus who is not some kind of sick ESS understanding). The female symbolism and analogy is carried by the church, and gender helps teach us something about this mystery of God’s love for His creation. With the caution, fear and trembling that I have been strongly affected by some of these things, concerning Adam and Eve, I have made sense of this that Adam was made as one being that contained the seed of what Eve was in his side/rib (a supportive structure that protects man’s heart as opposed to a bone from the foot or head per Justin Martyr -I think that is attributed to him). And to that substance of bone and flesh taken from Adam, something both physical and representative of something metaphysical — whatever that means, God added that same breath of “ah” that was the very same thing that allowed Abram and Sarai to become parents. Again, anything we add to what is expressly written in the word is man’s theory, but I’ve always been moved by the parallel of the “ah” in the story of Abraham. (And I am not out publishing books about this, claiming that this is the only possible interpretation of Genesis, either.) But I do think that God is not gender-bound at all, but that we were given gender to help us understand some mysterious aspects of Christ’s relationship to us as our Redeemer. (That, again is based on some of my understanding of certain Hebrew words, but another topic for another day.)

I’ve pulled some quotes from “The Jewish Way in Love and Marriage” (by orthodox Rabbi Maurice Lamb) last year and posted online, mainly to demonstrate that what was taught by Vision Forum’s weird twis of traditional theonomy with Jewish, Uber-Adam weirdness was not remotely like anything traditional Jews believe. (Vision Forum relies pretty heavily on their claims that they are following practices true to traditional Jewish patriarchy which actually proves to be more harsh than the Mishnah.) If anyone is interested, they can link over to read the blog posts here: http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2008/05/creation-of-eve-jewish-way.html

It’s just more information, something that may or may not be helpful sometimes. But I can’t shake the Abraham and Sarah name change as completely insignificant.