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Chapter One
The Bible: Part One
• • • The words of the Bible are very powerful and have been used to create new powers and destroy old ones. For many people they are the first formal words spoken over them as children, and they will be the last formal words spoken over them at their death. The words of the Bible are also some of the most argued and fought over words in the history of the earth. The words of the Bible are used when people announce peace - and when they declare war. The words of the Bible are the building blocks that were used to create many theological systems. In addition, they also are found in the foundational supports of many political systems. Likewise, they found their way into many legal systems and exerted a great deal of influence on their laws. The words of the Bible are some of the most familiar words known to mankind, embedded into the memories of hundreds of millions. Yet, these same words are at the center of some of the most heated controversies in history. Why is the Bible at the heart of so many conflicts and wars? Doesn’t it seem strange that the Bible is not known more for bring unity, harmony, and peace? Doesn’t anyone ever wonder why Christians are divided into thousands of different sects? And why Jews can’t even agree on the basic question - "Who is a Jew?" But there is one thing on which we all must completely agree: The Bible is a book of words! Therefore, shouldn't our primary goal be to learn how to find the most accurate meanings for its words? We believe it should be. We have created this course in order to help you accomplish this goal. In it you are going to learn how words work. Studying the Bible without an understanding of how words work is like swimming in shark-infested waters. You will find yourself surrounded by an endless number of conflicting religious doctrines and beliefs - each one eagerly waiting to consume the untrained Bible reader. A Few Questions For You
Part Two The Prime Directive If you have ever watched Star Trek you are very familiar with the term "Prime Directive." It is the most important rule, the one that must be followed at all costs. For almost two decades I have been following it and I know that it works. It is the one thing that we ask all participants of our local study groups to agree to follow. Now I want to share it with you: "My beliefs must be large enough to include every fact; I must be open enough to have my beliefs tested by others; and I must be flexible enough to change my beliefs when new facts are discovered." It will be a faithful guide for you as you enter one of the most challenging and rewarding phases of your spiritual quest. You will learn how to soar to new heights of understanding, and to discover the deeper truths of one of the most ancient documents as you become a skilled Biblical Analyst. No longer will you blindly "study" the words of your Bible. With the new skills that you are about to acquire, you will be able to unlock the ancient messages of your Bible. The one thing that every person who walked this path of yours has said is this: "These messages have always been right before my eyes, but they were invisible to me because I did not know how to find them."
To discover the most ACCURATE meanings of the words of our Bibles, thereby empowering us to be able to test the accuracy of the many different translations and interpretations. To teach students of the Bible a method for separating FACTS from OPINIONS and UNTRUTHS.
BHC Biblical Analyst Linguistic
Methodology for the 21st Century student of the
Bible. • • •
The BHC Biblical Analyst Principle One:
A word is one or more symbols or
sounds Without our Prime Directive and Principle One we will only be able to perceive those things for which we have an understanding. Suppose you were standing in a crowd of bidders at an estate sale. The auctioneer points to the next item, an old safe. Before the bidding begins, he tells everyone that it could be empty. You can see the safe, feel it, knock on it, even smell it, but without the combination or being able to talk to the last person to see it open, you will never know its contents. Millions of Bible readers are in a similar situation, but they don’t know it! The most important book in their lives is just like the safe. They see words, hear them, and may have even memorized many of them, but they have never unlocked their ancient meanings. You are about to learn how to unlock the door to discover the treasures that have been hidden in your biblical safe. However, before we begin to look at the words of your Bible, you must be aware of another very important principle. Principle Two: Our Beliefs Are So Powerful That They Have the Power to Change What Our Eyes Actually See - Even Without Our Being Aware of the Process! It's Not Upside-Down to Me At the Hanover Institute in Germany in the late nineteenth century, the following experiment was conducted. Subjects were asked to put on goggles with inverting lenses. That is, when the subjects looked through the lenses, the world appeared upside-down. The purpose of the research was to see how subjects responded to this unusual situation. Now, if you or I were asked to speculate on the ways the subjects might respond to this predicament, we would probably guess that they would learn to adjust to ‘upside-downness.’ (However, we would also worry about these goggled people trying to walk down steps or negotiate street crossings.) How did the subjects deal with the upside-down vision problem? While some took a short time and others took many hours, all who wore the goggles ultimately reported to the experimenters that the world was back to normal. Their solution was simple: Turn the information right side up! Somehow they were able to unconsciously search out the vision-control mechanism inside their brains and ‘click the switch’ that turned the information 180 degrees around! That is an amazing solution to the problem. When confronted with the choice of creating new rules to deal with the upside-down information or keeping the old rules and altering the data, the subjects of this experiment did the most efficient thing: They kept their rules and changed the data. That change allowed them to deal with the world efficiently and effectively at minimum disruption to their way of seeing the world. This simple experiment is a very powerful demonstration of our ability to manipulate the physiological information coming into our minds. Who would have guessed that, by choice, we could so dramatically alter our sensory input? We have far more control over what we perceive and how we perceive than we realize. If our beliefs are very powerful, they can even create data that does not exist. Seeing Red An avid scuba diver quite often dived to depths of 100-150 feet to check fish traps he had off the coast of Miami Beach. Because that area is well trafficked by expensive yachts, lots of garbage is strewn along the ocean floor - especially beer cans. The problem was that when he saw Budweiser beer cans down at the 150-foot level, he clearly saw their red labels. Why did that bother him? If you understand the physics of light, you know that the color red cannot penetrate through 150 feet of water. All that is left at that depth is green and a few other colors far toward the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. There is no color red at that depth! And that is what bothered him. He knew he should not be seeing red. So, how was he able to see the color that could not be there? He saw the red label because he knew the correct model of the Budweiser beer can. That is, he knew the color it was supposed to be, and, to make it fit the rules, he literally colored the can in his mind. In reality, that label could not show up as red. But as far as his perception was concerned, it was Budweiser red.
Powerful beliefs trap us into
seeing the world in only one way - Our Belief Systems We must recognize the influence Belief Systems exert on our perception of the world. The Belief System effect has been observed in the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, as well as in many areas of business, education, and religion. Our Belief Systems keep us away from data that run counter to them. When we encounter information that conflicts with our Belief Systems we tend to write it off by calling it ‘impossible’ or ‘inaccurate.’ We may even be incapable of perceiving the data at all!
We see best what we think we
are supposed to see.
You must
constantly be aware of the power of your
personal Belief System and the potential problem it
presents as you begin to use the BHC Biblical Analyst Linguistic
Method. Chances are, your BS (belief system) may not want you to take a fresh look at
the very familiar words of your Bible. |
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