As I've been writing about my impressions while reading the Old Testament and the BKC I realized that I'm being just a tiny bit critical. As I'm starting this reading of the OT I've also started listening to the Teaching Company lectures on Augustine by Dr. Phillip Cary.
I don't think that I could have had any clearer juxtaposition in the difference in the way the Greeks thought and the way that the Jews thought. Dr. Cary states clearly that the Early Church Fathers, especially Augustine, were Christian Platonists. People need to realize that Jews and Greeks saw the world differently. Isaiah and Plato were roughly contemporaries. Isaiah had no conception of the "Unmovable Mover," he could see God in the heavenly temple and describe him, and that's it. Very anthropomorphic those Jews.
Last night I was writing about the BKC and the way that the authors were saying that the Lord did not repent even when the KJV says that he did repent. I realized that I was being flippant and perhaps I needed to consider their view point a little more. I started thinking about the word repent and how I've read recently that in the Greek the word meant "a turning away from" or something like that. So I did a little research to see if maybe I'm perhaps being too judgmental.
According to Strong's the Greek word translated repent is
metanoeo 1. to change one's mind i.e. to repent 2. to change one's mind for better, heartily to amend with abhorrence of one's past sins
The Hebrew word is
nacham a primitive root; properly, to sigh, i.e. breathe strongly; by implication, to be sorry, i.e. (in a favorable sense) to pity, console or (reflexively) rue; or (unfavorably) to avenge (oneself):–comfort (self), ease (one's self), repent (-er, -ing, self)
1. to be sorry, console oneself, repent, regret, comfort, be comforted
a. (Niphal)
1. to be sorry, be moved to pity, have compassion
2. to be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
3. to comfort oneself, be comforted
4. to comfort oneself, ease oneself
b. (Piel) to comfort, console
c. (Pual) to be comforted, be consoled
d. (Hithpael)
1. to be sorry, have compassion
2. to rue, repent of
3. to comfort oneself, be comforted
4. to ease oneself
A little more reading, and some of the other things that I've been reading lately seem to come to a head. In my research I found that many people think that the Christian concept of "sin" as being a moral failure is a post biblical concept. I think that this is what Bishop Stendhal was saying when he said that Augustine was the first modern introspective man, and that in the west we inherit that tendency to look inwardly and try to figure out what is going on in our souls. Dr. Cary in his tapes certain make it clear that Augustine was very introspective, in fact he had to make up a word for the inner dialogue that he was having, soliloquy.
The Jews were much more practical about sin, and their word for sin was "chet" which was more like "missing the mark" as in missing the target with an arrow. Well what happens when you miss the mark? You pull out another arrow and try again to improve your ability to hit the mark. Bishop Stendhal seemed to be implying something similar when he pointed out in his book "Paul Among the Jews and Gentiles" that Paul showed no "introspection" when he talked about sin. Of course to see that Bishop Stendhal says that you need to read Paul without the Augustinian/Lutheran lenses on.
If you look like it like that the saying that God "repented" of making mankind, it starts to make sense. It didn't think that He had made a terrible moral mistake that he needed to rectify. He just needed to start over because things had gone terribly wrong. At least that was probably the way that the Jew that wrote the Bible thought when he wrote that God repented.
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