Be careful of the words you use!

Words are powerful.

Artfully crafted together they can make you...

• laugh at a joke.
• cry at the death of a fictitious character such as Old Yeller.
• smell the freshness of the air after a thunderstorm.
• taste the saltiness of oceanspray on your face.
  
• feel the relentless craving for water as you lie on the desert floor baking under hot blasts of sand and burning heat.
  

The same is true for words we use in "religious talk."

There are a number of words in our vocabulary we should look at to determine how they effect us. It could be that certain words innocently prejudice our understanding, or their use could be a deliberate attempt to manipulate how we think.

Let's look at two of these words, or rather terms:

• Old Testament
  
• New Testament

What is curious is that the term "Old Testament" doesn't become prominent until around the fourth century. For almost 1400 years before the Messiah came, and for about 300 years after the Messiah was resurrected, the world of believers in the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and later the followers of the Messiah - knew this collection of writings by other terms.

Those terms were simply the Torah (the Law), the Nebi'im (the Prophets), and the Kethubim (the Writings which includes the Psalms). Together they were referred to as the T N K, or Tenak.

In fact, in Luke 24:44 Yahshua (Jesus) said, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all have to be filled that were writtern in the Torah of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."

What event or events occurred around the fourth century that might be the catalyst for this shift to a useage of the term "Old Testament " ?

This was the time of the beginnings of the Roman church as modeled after Constantine. Along with it came the inclusion of a number of influences from the Roman Empire and the pagan cultures it contained. Also a long growing resentment against anything Jewish came to blossom.

With the new term of "Old Testament" was there a deliberate attempt to reduce the importance of the Scriptures of the Tenak? We may never know for certain.

Yet, we do know that the word "old " implies a meaning the Tenak does not.

What do you think of when you hear something is old?

If you had your choice between two items - one old and the other new - isn't it natural to want the new? None of us want an outdated reel-to-reel tape player as opposed to a new combo DVD/CD/VCR/Stereo cassette tape deck. Today people don't even want a computer that is more than a year old.

All this means that before we even crack the pages of the Scriptures themselves, we have a subtle prejudice against the "Old" and toward the "New". This silently leads our thoughts toward a theology that says the "Old" is done away - or, at best, is not very important.

Conversely, we can see the complimentary side of this with the use of the term "New" Testament.

This brings up a question.

When we 21st century technologically advanced westerners say that there is a new moon, do we really believe we get a "new" moon each month?

We'll discuss this next time and how this ties in with our "New" Testament.

There's also this question about the use of the word "Testament". Aren't these supposed to be books of the "Covenant" ?