Special Knowledge

Sometimes we get lulled into believing that if we know something that someone else doesn't know, that makes us special, or somehow more valuable. Really, the knowledge may be special, but we are still no more, or less, important than anyone else. In fact, if we hold that knowledge to ourselves, it may end up being detrimental to our environment--whether this is a special knowledge of how things work on the job, or an understanding of an item of Scripture. It's easy to think that, as long as I hold this knowledge to myself, they can never fire me, but, if the day comes when that knowledge is desperately needed, and you are on vacation, you might just get fired.

Sometimes that 'special knowledge' is flawed, anyway. I know of a church that teaches that if you really understand Scripture, then you will know where God came from. There is some truth to that, but the Scripture verse that they use is Habakkuk 3:3, which reads, in part, "God came from Teman..." Of course, God always was, and, even if God did have His origin in someplace called Teman, what does that mean to us? nothing, really, because we have no way of knowing where that was... But a little research shows that Teman was a city built by (or at least named for) one of the grandsons of Esau (also known as Edom). In Genesis 36 it tells us about the man Teman (or Duke Teman). In Jeremiah 49, we find that God was displeased with the inhabitants of Teman--so much so that He was going to utterly destroy the city. Amos 1 corroborates this account, as does Obadiah 1. So, in Habakkuk, God is returning from the destruction of the city of Teman. This could make for an interesting tongue-in-cheek Bible trivia question, "Where does the Bible say God came from?" along with, "Who cut Samson's hair?" (most people will say Delilah, but she didn't).

There is another religious organization that teaches that there were actually five crucifixions on Good Friday--Matthew 27 says that there were two thieves, and Luke 23 says there were two malefactors (or criminals). They say that you shouldn't assume that the two thieves in Matthew are the same men that are mentioned in Luke. I say you shouldn't assume that they are not... They are adamant that, while a thief is a malefactor, a malefactor is not necessarily a thief. I will concede that point, but, if there were two thieves, and two criminals who were not thieves (murderers, seditionists, heretics, or whatever), then that would have made a total of four malefactors; Luke clearly says that there were two. Only two. (In the Bill Cosby version of the Great Flood story, that's what Noah kept telling the rabbits, "Only two.") If the two malefactors in Luke were not the two thieves in Matthew, then Luke must not have been able to count...

There is also a philosophy floating around that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, even though both describe rebuilding the Temple at the end of the Captivity (a period of time when the Israelites were held captive in Babylon), are actually talking about two separate events--that the temple was actually rebuilt twice. Odd that the destruction of the Temple in between the two accounts is not mentioned... Does this mean that the Ezra mentioned in the book of Nehemiah is a different Ezra than the one that wrote the book of Ezra? Is the Nehemiah mentioned in Ezra a different Nehemiah than the one that wrote the book of Nehemiah? Is the King Artaxerxes mentioned in the book of Ezra a different Artaxerxes than the one mentioned in Nehemiah? Now, Ezra 4 does indicate that they were working on building the Temple during the reign of Artaxerxes, but were forced to stop building until the reign of King Darius, while Nehemiah says that they started building the Temple during the reign of Artaxerxes, and doesn't mention the work being stopped, or King Darius taking the throne. Later on in Ezra, though, in Chapter 7, it specifically mentions the seventh year of King Artaxerxes (why are we talking about him again, after talking about King Darius succeeding him? Maybe there really were two kings referred to by the Jews as Artaxerxes, but, considering that Ezra would presumably then include both of them, that would indicate at least some overlap between Ezra and Nehemiah--but I think it is probably just that Ezra got ahead of himself, and backtracked his narrative into Artaxerxes' reign), and Nehemiah starts out "in the twentieth year." In the twentieth year of what? Well, Nehemiah 2:1 says that it was the twentieth year of Artaxerxes; that would be after the seventh year of Artaxerxes, mentioned in Ezra, but before the second year of Darius, also mentioned in Ezra. So, Nehemiah covers a shorter time period that Ezra, but Nehemiah's timeline is completely included within Ezra's timeline. That makes it unlikely that Ezra and Nehemiah are describing separate events, only that Ezra is including a lot of details that Nehemiah does not.