Bible Archives - Page 10 of 12 - Ramblin' with Roger

M is for Martha

Mary sat and listened to Jesus as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work.

I always liked the name Martha. Partly, it’s because my first girlfriend was named Martha. I used to serenade her with the song Martha My Dear by the Beatles [LISTEN], from the white album. It was only later I discovered that Martha was Paul McCartney’s English sheepdog.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (pictured), of course, was the first First Lady of the United States, though she wasn’t so dubbed at the time. Martha is one of those classic girls’ names that, while extremely popular in the US in the 1880s (#14 in 1882), never lost at least a core of support; it didn’t leave the top 100 until 1966 and was still at #709 in 2010.

I’ve heard the slightly derisive term “being a Martha.” This referred to Luke 10:38-42 when Martha of Bethany and her sister Mary “offered hospitality to their friend Jesus…Mary sat and listened to him as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work. Jesus told Martha not to worry about small things, but to concentrate on what was important.” This proved to be a key concept in Christian hospitality; don’t NOT invite someone over, just because your home is not immaculate.

My daughter is fond of a PBS TV program called Martha Speaks, which “is an animated children’s television sitcom based on the 1992 children’s book of the same name by Susan Meddaugh about a talking dog named Martha…who is owned by ten-year-old Helen… When Helen feeds Martha some alphabet soup, the soup travels to her brain instead of her stomach, resulting in her ability to speak. The show focuses on synonyms and vocabulary, with each episode featuring an underlying theme illustrated with keywords.” LISTEN to the opening title theme song, which features these lyrics: “Martha Speaks and speaks and speaks and speaks and…Communicates, enumerates, elucidates, exaggerates, indicates, and explicates, bloviates, and overstates and (pant, pant, pant) hyperventilates!” And here is a video guide to the episodes.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

A is for Adam and Eve

What bothers me about the literal Creationists is not that they believe what they believe. It’s that a whole pseudoscience that was created around it.

Big fat caveat upfront; I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s faith, I’m just trying to understand.

Someone I know only online, who I suspect wouldn’t consider herself a particularly religious person, decided to read the Bible. She stopped after Genesis 2. She complained that there were two seemingly contradictory Creation stories. In Genesis 1, the creatures came, then the man and the woman. But in Genesis 2, you get the Adam’s rib version, where the man is seemingly created before the creatures, but definitely before the woman. I say “seemingly”, because the NIV version reads at v. 19 “Now the LORD God HAD formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man…”; the “had” suggests the possibility that the animal had already existed and that the man, hanging out in the garden, simply hadn’t seen them.

The problem, I contended, is that the person was reading the stories as history, as science, not allegory. If you read it as history, and Adam and Eve were in fact the first people, what does it mean in terms of their descendants? Who was Cain’s wife, and who were the people he feared might kill him in Genesis 4? That specific issue confounded me when I was a teenager, and was one of the items that indeed shook my faith at the time.

Once I realized it was not a literal history, it became much easier to understand.

This is why I’m quite puzzled by those who have decided to take Genesis 1 verbatim. The earth and all its creatures, including humans, were formed in six days – possible? Sure, in a “God can do anything” way, but not at all likely. And the order of the creation seems to mesh pretty well with the evolutionary cycle we’ve come to understand, albeit considerably longer. The word “day” may not have meant 24 hours; remember, no one wrote this down at the time, but rather learned it from the oral tradition, transcribing it relatively quite recently, in the last millennium Before the Christian Era. This philosophy, I’ve learned, is called progressive creationism.

What bothers me about the literal Creationists is not that they believe what they believe. It’s that a whole pseudoscience that was created around it, of people walking the earth with the dinosaurs only 4000 years ago, and the planet only 10,000, rather than humans being around for 50,000 to 200,000 years, the dinosaurs having been extinct for 65 million years, and the Earth itself being about 4.6 billion years old. How does this narrative conflict with “some vast eternal plan”, quoting Fiddler on the Roof?

I guess I’m saying that I don’t think science and creation are that much at odds. The shoehorning of a literal six-day earth making – that seems to be a lot more work.

Can someone please explain this to me? Oh, and check out this recent Doonesbury strip, which addresses the issue.

ABC Wednesday team – Round 9

Citation to top piece of artwork.

The Lydster, Part 87: The Book of Acts

I like that Lydia has three syllables but only five letter; very efficient.

Very early on in this blog, I laid out the rules for naming the daughter, most of which were negative:
*No name in the top 10 in the Social Security list of most popular names for the most recent year available.
*No naming after any family member, living or dead.
*No unisex names…This comes directly from the fact that my father AND my sister were both named Leslie.
*No single-syllable names; it had to have two or more syllables, to balance off the shortness of Green.
*No names that easily went to the nickname.
*It should have a recognizable spelling.
*No names beginning and ending with A. We have nieces named Alexandria, Adrianna, and Alexa.

But I should have emphasized more how much I liked the name, Lydia. I like that it has three syllables but only five letters; very efficient. I actually didn’t notice at the time, but I like that she has the same initials as my late father.

And I like that it’s not only a Biblical name but a New Testament name.

From Acts 16 (NIV):
13 On the Sabbath we [Paul and his companions] went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14 One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

So Lydia was a woman of means, she was hospitable and she had faith, something I hoped for my daughter, who seems to have the latter two, and she likes purple to boot.

Apocalypse Now QUESTION

…how Matthew 24:6-7, “And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars…” has been misinterpreted, which I found oddly comforting.

I was noting to someone – probably Arthur, right after the Christchurch earthquake in February, that I’m not much of a believer in the apocalypse, as portrayed in some religious literature. Then the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan helped generate this Newsweek cover. Still don’t believe it, though if the world destroys itself, it’d more likely be at our own hand.

Then I came across this article about how Matthew 24:6-7, “And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars…” has been misinterpreted, which I found oddly comforting.

Do you believe either in Biblical end times or the possibility that we, through being a poor tenant of this earth, are bringing to pass our own destruction? Ah, a good Lenten question.

And do uncertain times make the notion of superheroes more attractive?

Hamantashen

The quintessential Purim treat is hamantaschen.

I’ve long had a certain affection for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Partly, it’s because it always seems to fall somewhere around my birthday, or at least during Pisces. This year, it’s today (or last night), which, like Easter, et al., is particularly late in the season; next year, it’ll be March 8 (or the night before). You can find out when it falls each year here.

But it’s also because it’s based on a story from the Old Testament book of Esther, one of only two books in the Bible named for a woman, the other being Ruth. I always liked the story of palace intrigue involving Esther, though secretly Jewish, getting to marry king Ahasuerus. Meanwhile, the king’s prime minister, Haman, gets ticked off with Esther’s cousin Mordechai and plans to get all the Jews killed. Through some clever strategy, which you can read about Purim here, it is Haman who ends up being executed. The Jews’ deliverance led to the celebration of Purim.

In a church miniplay about 20 years ago, I got to be the evil Haman. Always more fun playing the bad guy.

As part of my wife’s birthday present to me, she let me have a card party, specifically HEARTS party, at our house yesterday. My friends Jeff and Sandy said they would come, but they would have to leave early because of Purim, a fact that I mentioned to my friend Mary. So one of my friends, who is a gentile who likes to bake, considered making and bringing hamantaschen. What?

The quintessential Purim treat is hamantaschen. This Yiddish word means “Haman’s pockets”; the name of these triangular-filled cookies in Hebrew — oznei Haman — means “Haman’s ears.” They are served as a reminder of the triumph over Haman, whose name is also symbolically drowned out by the children using noisemakers during the synagogue recitation of the Purim story.

Hamantaschen with poppyseed filling

Total time: 6 1/2 hours; much of it is chilling time

Servings: This makes about 3 dozen hamantaschen

Creamy poppyseed filling with raisins

3/4 cup poppyseeds (3½ ounces)

1/2 cup whole milk

3 tablespoons mild honey

2 to 3 tablespoons sugar, divided

1/4 cup raisins

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest (from about 1 orange)

1. Using a spice grinder, grind the poppy seeds into a fine meal but not to a paste. This will need to be done in batches.

2. In a small saucepan, combine the poppy seeds, milk, honey, and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Stir over low heat and bring to a simmer. Cook over low heat, stirring often until the mixture is about as thick as peanut butter, about 10 minutes.

3. Add the raisins and butter, and stir over low heat just until the butter is blended in. Remove from heat and stir in the orange zest. Taste, and stir in the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar if you like.

4. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and set it aside to cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate it until cold before using, at least 1 hour. This makes about 1 cup filling, enough for about 3 dozen hamantaschen.

Hamantaschen and assembly

3/4 cups flour (12.4 ounces)

1 cup powdered sugar (3.5 ounces)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter or stick margarine, cut into ½-inch pieces

1 egg, beaten

1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated orange zest (from about 1 large orange)

1 to 3 tablespoons orange juice

Creamy poppyseed filling with raisins

1. Combine the flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process briefly to blend. Scatter the butter pieces over the mixture. Pulse the mixture just until it resembles a coarse meal. Add the orange zest. Pour the beaten egg evenly over the mixture in the processor. Pulse again, scraping the sides down occasionally, just until the ingredients are blended.

2. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon orange juice and pulse briefly until the dough begins to stick together but does not quite form a ball. If the dough is too dry to stick together, add another tablespoon of juice and pulse several times to blend. If necessary, add the last tablespoon of juice 1 teaspoon at a time, pulsing after each addition.

3. Transfer the dough to a work surface and divide it into 4 portions. With the heel of your hand, knead each portion lightly to blend. Using a rubber spatula, transfer each portion of the dough to a sheet of plastic wrap, form it into a fairly smooth flat disk and wrap tightly. Refrigerate it for at least 3 hours or up to 3 days.

4. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. If it is very firm, let it soften for a few minutes at room temperature. Meanwhile, butter a baking sheet, or line it with foil and butter the foil.

5. Unwrap 1 quarter of the dough at a time. Push to form it into a rough circle. Tap it firmly a few times with a rolling pin to soften it and to begin flattening it. Roll it on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin, turning it often and flouring lightly as necessary, until it is about one-eighth-inch thick.

6. Using a 3-inch cookie cutter or a glass, cut the dough in rounds. Brush water lightly along the rim of each one. Put 1 teaspoon filling in the center of each. (Do not add the extra filling, or it may come out during baking.) Pull up the edges of the round in 3 arcs that almost meet in the center above the filling, to form a triangular pastry with the filling showing slightly. Pinch the edges to seal them firmly.

7. Put the pastries on the greased baking sheet and refrigerate them. Push the trimmings gently together; wrap and refrigerate them.

8. Roll the remaining dough into 3 more portions and shape more hamantaschen. After refrigerating the trimmings for at least 30 minutes, you can roll and shape them also. Refrigerate the shaped pastries for 30 minutes or up to overnight to firm the dough.

9. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 375 degrees.

10. Bake the hamantaschen until they are lightly golden at the edges, about 10 to 14 minutes.

11. Cool them on a rack, then store them in an airtight container.

Each of 3 dozen cookies: 128 calories; 2 grams protein; 14 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 7 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 21 mg cholesterol; 6 grams sugar; 27 mg sodium.

As it turned out, my friend opted for another treat that was likewise DELICIOUS.