The idea of fulfillment in the scripture is described as anything that gets us closer to God or a step forth in the path of Israel in God’s ultimate divine plan. Hosea said “Out of Egypt” to mean that the Israelis were growing further and further from him (thus going in the opposite direction of fulfillment. This happened when Israel was corrupt way before the story of Jesus. Yet, in Mathew’s introduction to Jesus’s narrative, we can see that he uses the same exact phrases when he describes the fleeing of the Holy family from the pharoah who wanted to kill the baby. This can be interepreted not as to the character of Jesus in the narrative but to the act of him getting away from Israel because of threats to his life. In that sense, we can see a perfect parellel if we consider Jesus the son of God. His physical movement away from the Israelis is similar to Israel’s past sinning since in both cases the two actions are leading to a furthering from God himself. In that sense we can see that mathew through the idea of fulfillment is making a case Jesus being the son of God.

In both Mathew 1 and Luke 1, there are many hints to the Old testament. In Luke, there is a major focus on the idea of salvation. He puts forth the idea that the time has come where Israel will be removed from the many falls and eternally be risen through the narrative of Jesus Christ. This is shown through Zechariah’s chant and Elisabat’s rejoicement when she encounters Mary. In Mathew, he presents an account for the connection between the Old testament and the character of Jesus by linking Abraham to his disciples leading to Jesus himself. He emphasized David since the covenant that we talked about in the last class specifically said that the new King will be of David’s heritage.

I think the fact that the people were always complaining asking for food and wishing to go back to egypt led to their condemption. I believe that this could represent the fact that people couldn’t simply trust in God and waited patiently to get to the promised land. They were always unthankful and angry at Moses and God for embarking on this journey. In some way, I see that as the modern call for the abandonment of your responsibilty to strive for a better life instead of settling for the bare safe minimum. Yet, a huge theme in the bible is the rejection of envy which is a key element to this desire for a better life since it is all relative. I think Moses was condemned because he allocated the mercy of God: food and water offered in the wilderness, for his own greatness. He didn’t recognize for a bit that God was the ultimate source of all of the good which lead him to be confused about the power that is given to him.

I think that the death of Moses and the rise of the Joshua represent the new era of God’s people. It’s like everyone has a role in this adventure and when you have accomplished that goal, a new era begins. In Moses’s cse I think that he fullfilled h his goals by getting the Israelites into the promised land. Now, this is a new chaper and thus new characters are needed. His death is a representation of success to me.

The last paragraph is hinting that there are going ot be a lot of faults in the furure. It is telling us that Moses is the best out of all of them and now he is dead so even if we get other prophets, it won’t lead to a better relationship with God until; Jesus which is the last peophet, .

We have seen many authors approach the impurity vs purity issue that was adressed through Leviticus. One point of view is that everything really comes back to the idea of death against life and so this constant struggle is manifested through the idea of purity. Another idea is that, it is a representative of what leads to a good life. If we boil it down, most of those rules of representations of purity cover major social and health issues that we run through everyday. If we objectively look at one of the functions of religion, there is a clear idea that it tries to show the best way of life for its followers. These rules could have been coded in the form of purity and impurity to hide that they genuinely serve the common good. For example, the idea that if you get a skin disease, you become impure. There are multiple skin diseases that are contageous and so this could be a way to control these issues (especially in times where it was hygene was critical).

God wants these purities because he wants what is best for human beings. If God is the representation of all goodness and holiness in the world, and we know that all the impurities are not bad but deviate from the ultimate goodness then it seems obvious that these two concepts can’t mix. How does something come impure in the first place? It is by something pure coming in contact with the impure and getting infected by it. I am not suggesting that God can get inefected with these impuritites, but rather trying to look at this idea through the archetypes and the purposes hidden beneath the words.

I think the same thing applies to eating. I have no idea if pig meat is bad for you or not but I would say that in general not knowing how to cook something or eating it in wrong way could potentially lead to severe health related epidemics. Moreover, we could also look at this in maintainting the general fittness of the human being as a whole, because pig meat has way more fat than other forms of meat. This might seem stupid, but that is the only rational I can come up for it.

Through these readings we seem to have come to a problem where we need to really think about who is God? I think this is partially because the people of Israel got mixed up with the people of Egypt who belong to a different culture. Here we can sort of see God as this character that is sticking with only one group of people and wants to fix the world through them. I would say that this claim is made clear in the old testament. Now, it is very interesting to see how God reacts with the Pharoah compared to how he reacts with “his people”. He always used Moses as somewhat of a translator to get the message to the pharoah and the interaction just seems distant in some sense. Not to dwell over that, I think God in the strictly psychological sense is some form of a higher being, where humans direct this sort of “loneliness and security” that the reading talked about to him/her. We can talk about how different people view God because that seems a very bias description. I would just rather define God in more of a broad way. I don’t really agree with all of the points of the reading, especially in how he drew the relation between atheism, monotheism, and polytheism. I think atheism stands out since it is simply a rejection of the belief system presented in religion. We can talk about how it is all talking about the same notion but the specificity in the conversation is much more important than the commonality between them. In the catholic sense, God is best defined as the all good, all powerful and all knowing being that loves humanity and sent his son and “named him” to create a social realtionship with us, which was discussed in the reading.

I think that Joseph had this “envy” that was talked about in the Anderson essay. It was somewhat of reasonable one. I mean his brothers did throw in a pit to die and went to eat, which is a representation of the dismantal of the brother relationship. Joesph was putting his brothers to the test to see if they have changed and are worthy of his help or if they are still the same people that betrayed his trust. The main purpose I would say is the forgiveness of his brothers by putting them again in the same position where they get to choose whether they would leave him. Joseph is obviously the beloved son, the chosen one. From early texts, we can tell that he is going to be more complex than any of the other chosen one’s. This event is somewhat of an indicator of that since the chosen one has to die and ressurect. Joseph was literally dead in the eyes of his father and he wasn’t the same person as when he knew his father because of the resentment that he had for his brothers for what they have done to him. The event of the cup by itself eliminates the envy Joseph has for his brothers and brings Joesph back to Israel, god’s people. He is once again the chosen one but a more complete one because of his ressurection. This is shown especially when his father passes away. He forgave his brothers after getting to be the one in control of the community. This shows growth and a closeness to God and the community.

I think that the scene of the man’s fight with Jacob is a literal representation of God’s fight with humans. Throughout genesis, we can see that humans are growing further and from God and they are getting better at developing an evil wit. This is shown through Jacob’s complexion as a character compared to the other “chosen ones”: he schemes and he develops plans to take control and gain blessings. We can see a struggle that the humans have to take with God through Jacob’s fight with him. I don’t think anyone really won but at the end God did bless him yet he gave him the name Israel which is a representation of the struggle with God. I think that this is a representation of the process of the destruction and ressurection of the communion between God and humans. God “realises” that the act of struggle with God himself is a continuous process that is inescapable for humans. There simply is no way for a human to be a complete moral saint and the struggle to become one shows the faith in God which is the most important thing in the communion. As we have discussed in class, every action that God takes is one of mercy and that is aimed at the good for human kind. It is very interesting that God revealed himself face-to-face to Jacob in which we can derive a certain special trait that Jacob possesses to be able to see God and recognise him. This idea might be connected to Jesus in the sense of “blessed are those who have belived but not seen”

Marty did not give a proper definition for religion. He proposed five principles that religion uses but these principles were the same as those used for politics, so hw could not find a discernabel difference between the two based on his 5 principles. Most people agree that religion is not an easy term to define like “culture” but we have to be careful about how we talk about this concept. People later compared religion to nationalism; David Rapoport said, “Religion has often had formidable rivals; in the modern world the nation sometimes has surpassed religion as a focus of loyalties.” Yet we can see major differences between these two ideas. Is there a clear definition for religion? Probably not. The term is so broad that there is no clear set of words that incorporate all of its faces. Even though that is true, we can corellate religion with other ideas to try to get a handle of what it talks about. The main argument, in our reading, was that there simply is no violence in the definition of religion. Obviously many people have killed in the name of Christianity and more recently Islam but the basic truth is that those acts do not represent religious acts and are not a representation of religion. Also, we can’t blame religion for the violent acts that have resulted because of some people’s misconception and delusional acts in its name. The statement that religion has changed the seculiar institutions violent because of some people is not accounting for all the good that religion caused in these same institutions. Religion is at the base of theology which is a seeking to try to understand God in his representation to us.

Faith is unavoidable since there is no such thing as a believing without thinking. Saint Augustine said, “No one belives anything unless one first thought it was believable.” This means that we can’t go about our day suggesting that faith is ungrounded or not intellectual since at the base of faith is thought. Moreover, faith is necessary for historical knowledge. Wilken pointed out that “The term belive signals that one is speaking about knowledge that is probable, not certain.” We definetely can’t know everything with certainty, yet we need to take stances on some subjects in our lives, since we can’t be agnostic about everything. In this difficult situation, faith is necessary for our judgement, where we assess the options based on the author and reason, to make a decision. Some critics might say that this method is not reliable becaused it is not deductively proven but imagine a world where we could rely on the trust of people to get kowledge or skills. We wouldn’t be able to learn new languages, or any skills. This is why faith is beneficial in everyday life. It builds a trust between people, and a society, where we are all united. Living without faith is much harder since we would be required to doubt the simplest of things, even the things that can be estbalished through certainties. Finally, faith is required for religion, where we give ourselves to the Lord. It is required so that we know the lord instead of barely “seeing him.”Augustine cites this text from Isaiah, “If you do not belive, you shall not understand.” Beliveing is the start of practicing to love God in his true colors, and understanding his greatness. Faith is an essential part of the daily and spiritual human life.

Abraham agrees to the request made by God since he completelely trusts him. He acknowledges the givings that he was blessed with because of God and knows that the Lord is good (because of preserving the blessed in the slaughtering of the city), therefore Abraham knows that his sacrifice can’t be the wrong decision since it is made for the Lord. I don’t think that Abraham was lying to his son in this account. I believe that what he says is a symbolism for his son. “God will provide for himself the lamb,” so the lamb could be a symbolism for the sacrifice made to the Lord and here Abraham says that God provided this sacrifice and we know from previous passages that God gave him his only son. This could mean he literally means his own son. Also, this could be false and he could be lying to his child out of pitty (how do you tell a child he is about to die?). The intention of all of this is to test whether Abraham represents the new generation of humans that form the communion with God instead of failing due to self-centered reasons. Here, God tests the priorities of Abraham and takes him to the extreme to see if he still obeys and trusts God with everything. I think part of it is coming back to the theme of taking against giving. God gave Abraham a son and now when he orders him to give him back, not complying would make Abraham “take the gift”. I think that however messed up it may sound, Abraham is praiseworthy since he is the only one that trusted God (which is the logical action) and preserved their communion. I would say God is always praiseworthy but in this certain example, I can’t see the moral goodness of his test.

I think the identity of Noah is of absolute essence to the text. His characteristics show the morally good human: one that has always been aware of his mortality, simple, and virtuous. He represents the order and goodeness of the post-Eden humanity, which is why God chooses him to be the carrier of the new line of humans. Noah emphisizes the concept of death whereby we can see the results of the first sin (abolation of immortality) but we can realize the good that comes with death, namely the admiration of beauty and life. We can see that there is a certain contrast in the text between Noah and the other humans which is similar to the concepts in the first Genesis accounts. We observe that the other humans approach life with a sense of pride and desire to glory, with a desire to possess beauty instead of admiring it. This is similar to Eve’s perspective of the tree, where she decided to take the fruit even though the logical thing was to trust in their communion with God and basically admire the tree, instead of desiring to possess it (since the tree itself is good). On the other hand, we can see that Noah was simple and pure. He did not rage over his mortality which shows a sense of modesty and acceptence of his human condition while the other humans were in rage and resentment. Noah asks no questions when God asks him to build the ship and complete all of these tasks which shows the trust he has in his communion with God instead of wanting to ascend to the divine status. Finally, Noah relates to the first sin by showing the true God-like image in humans since he represented all that is good and trusted God with everything.