REFORMATION

The evenning sky promises another beautiful clear day.

Reform means to take a new shape or to form again.  Reform happens in religion when there is reinterpretation and renewed inspiration. This keeps it alive and revelavant to our day as it  goes through reformation that helps us understand words and stories written so many ages ago with certain goals and attitudes and beliefs in their God.  A god of war that stood on their side because they were right and their religion gave them superiority over others. 

I am hoping for another nice day to go out to do some shopping.

It has been brought to my attention that my lamp shades in my funny T.V. room do not match.

  I am changing all my lamps around but maybe I should just change the lamp shades

 but they are very expensive.

 

I am hoping for another warm and sunny day as I want to first go out and take some pictures. 

Reformation has been a power force for change in the Christian faith and as we read the Bible we will come across controversies and contradictions.  Either you have a religion that is black and white or you have a religion that is built on diversity.  Religious diversity that has ethical standards and that is open to change can be like a pathway toward what is the complete picture.  Our goal is to live all of life to a higher plane and allow the spirit of God to reveal to us the light that is hidden in the very human words written ages ago. 

Reformation started way back in the time of Ezra, at the beginning of the fourth century, when he was sent by the Persian King as the minister of Jewish affairs with a mandate to make the miscellaneous teachings that were credited to Moses into what became the Torah.  The Persians were reviewing the legal systems of all their subjects to make sure they were compatible with the security of the empire.  Ezra would then work out a satisfactory reformation between Mosaic law and Persian jurisprudence.  At this time the Jews were in complete malaise and under the influence of foreign standards even though they had rebuilt their second temple at Mount Zion.  They need spiritual discipline that was based on the "law of Moses".  Ezra was a scholar who would interpret the scriptures.

"Torah study was not an academic exercise but a spiritual quest"  This quest would be open to reinterpretation.  Revelation had not happened once and for all time, but it was an on going process"

This is from the book :The Bible" by Karen Armstrong.

Jews had started in the third century to translate their scriptures into Greek, the project probably initiated by the Alexandrian Jews themselves but over the years it acquired a mythical aura.  The Greek King of Egypt so impressed by the Jewish scriptures that he, Ptolemy Philately's, that he wanted a translation for his library.  So six elders from the twelve tribes worked on the text to preserve it forever :imperishable and unchanged".  It was believed that the translators were inspired.

Until Philo [70 BCE to 45BCE] a Jew who came from a wealthy family in Alexandria changed the word into allegories of divine logos [reason] that carried over the essence of the Semitic tales  They were questing after wisdom and would base their on allegory on numerology and etymology; transform their Homeric stories into moral philosophy.  Names took on deeper symbolic meanings.  Adam, became nous [natural reason] and even though the literal meaning was still taken seriously there was deeper meanings that changed the physical or dimensional dimension and were transformed into myths.  Real happenings that had a spiritual dimension that transcended time.  "Unless they were liberated from their historical content and became a spiritual reality they could have no religious function."  There would be a central thread that ran through all the readings.  Philo wrote four theses on Cain and Abel coming to the conclusion that the main theme was the battle between love of self and love of God.  Cain wanted to keep everything for himself while Abel was willing to submit and honor God; this resulting in anger in Cain and he destroyed his brother but was really destroying the love of God in his own heart.