Introduction to Christianity

Introduction to Christianity May 2017 1.0. Act One Creation 1.1. Babylonian Creation Story “EnumaElish” In the beginning, neither heaven nor earth had names nor the sky and earth. Apsu, the god of fresh waters (sweet water), and Tiamat, the goddess of the salt oceans (salt water), and the god of the mist that rises from both of them, were still mingled as one. There were no mountains, there was no pasture land, and not even a reed-marsh could be found to break the surface of the waters. It was then that Apsu and Tiamat parented two gods (Lahmu and Lahamu). When they joined, they created Anshar, Kishar and Anu. From the generation of these gods, there arose Ea and his brothers. Ea was the god of rivers and was Tiamat and Apsu’s great-grandson. Ea was the cleverest of the gods and with his magic Ea became the most powerful of the gods, ruling even his forebears. Ea and his brothers were restless; they surged over the water days and nights. Eventually Apsu, in his frustration and inability to sleep with the clamor, went to Tiamat, and he proposed to her that he slay their noisy offspring. Tiamat was furious at his suggestion to kill their clan, but after leaving her Apsu resolved to proceed with his murderous plan. When the young gods heard of his plot against them, they were silent and fearful but soon Ea was hatching a scheme. He cast a spell on Apsu, pulled Apsu’s crown from his head, and slew him. Ea then built his palace on Apsu’s waters, and it was there that, with the goddess Damkina, he fathered Marduk, the four-eared, four-eyed giant who was god of the rains and storms. The other gods, however, went to Tiamat and complained of how Ea had slain her husband. Aroused, she collected an army of dragons and monsters, and at its head she placed the god, Kingu. Even Ea was at a loss how to combactwuch a host, until he finally called on his son Marduk. Marduk gladly agreed to take on his father’s battle, on the condition that he, Marduk, would rule the gods after achieving this victory. The other gods agreed. Marduk armed himself with a bow and arrows, a club, and lightning, and he went in search of Tiamat’s monstrous army. Rolling his thunder and storms in front him, he attached, and Kingu’s battle plan soon disintegrated. Tiamat was left alone to fight Marduk, and she was defeated. Marduk caught her in his nets. When she opened her mouth to devour him, he fill it with the evil wind that served him. She could not close her mouth with his gale blasting in it, he shot an arrow down her throat. It split her heart, and she was slain. After subduing the rest of her host, he took his club and split Tiamat’s water-laden body in half like a clam shell. Half he put in the sky and made the heavens, and he posted guards there to make sure that Tiamat’s salt waters could not escape. Across the heavens he made stations in the stars for the gods, and he made the moon and set it forth on its schedule across the heavens. From the other half of Tiamat’s body he made the land, which he placed over Apsu’s fresh waters, which now arise in wells and springs. From her eyes he made flow the Tigirs and Euphrats. Across this land he made the grains and herbs, the pastures and fields, the rains and the seeds, the cows and ewes, and the forests and the orchards. Marduk set the vanquished (defeated) gods who had supported Tiamat to a variety of tasks, including work in the fields an d canals. Soon they complained of their work, however, and they rebelled by burning their spades and baskets. Marduk saw a solution to their labors, though and proposed it to Ea. He had Kingu, Tiamat’sbeneral, brought forward from the ranks of the defeated gods, and Kingu was slain. With Kingu’s blood, with clay from the earth, and with spittle from the other gods, Ea and the birth-goddess Nintu created humans. On them Ea imposed the labor previously assigned to the gods. Thus the humans were set to maintain the canals and boundary ditches, to hoe and to carry, to irrigate the land and to raise crops, to raise animals and fill the granaries, and to worship the gods at their regular festivals. Marduk became the sun god. Chinese Creation Story – Pan Gu (giant entity or giant dragon) and Nu Wa (goddess who rosed from dead Pan Gu) Genesis One & Two – New International Version (NIV) 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. 24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image,     in the image of God he created them;     male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. 2 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. 5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground,6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.7 Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.)13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.[e]14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 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 to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam[f] no suitable helper was found.21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs[g] and then closed up the place with flesh.22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones     and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’     for she was taken out of man.” 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. ACT Three God Births a People “Genocide,” a term used to describe violence against member of a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups with the intent to destroy the entire group, came into general usage only after World War II, when the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against the Jews of Europe during that conflict became know. In 1948, the United Nations declared genocide to be an international crime; the term would later be applied to the horrific acts of violence committed during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in the African country of Rwanda in the 1990s. An international treaty signed by some 120 countries in 1998 established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has jurisdiction to prosecute crimes of genocide. The word genocide owes its existence Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish Lawyer who fled the Nazi occupation of Poland and arrived in the United States in 1941. As a boy, Lemkin had been horrified when he learned of the Turkish massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenian during World War I. As an adult, he set out to come up with a term to describe Nazi crimes against European Jews during World War II, and to enter that term into the world of International law in the hopes of preventing and punishing such horrific crimes against innocent people. In 1944, he coined the term “genocide” by combining genos, the Greek word for race or tribe, with the Latin suffix cide (“to kill”). Though the term “genocide” was not coined until 1944, acts of genocide have been committed throughout history. In ancient times, it was common practice for victors in war to slaughter the men of a population they conquered. Arguably the first, modern genocide took place in the 13th century, when heretics in medieval Europe were massacred during the Albigensian Crusade. In 1948, the U.N. approved its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), which defined genocide as any of a number of acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This included killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, inflicting conditions of life intended to bring about the group’s demise, imposing measures intended to prevent births (i.e. forced sterilization) or forcibly removing the group’s children. Genocide’s “intent to destroy” separates it from other crimes of humanity such as ethnic cleansing, which aims at forcibly expelling a group from a geographic area (by killing, forced deportation and other methods). The convention entered into force in 1951 and has since been ratified by more than 130 countries. Though the United States was one of the convention’s original signatories, the U.S. Senate did not ratify it until 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed it over strong opposition by those who felt it would limit U.S. sovereignty. Though the CPPCG established an awareness that the evils of genocide existed, its actual effectiveness in stopping such crimes remained to be seen: Not one country invoked the convention during 1975 to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime killed some 1.7 million people in Cambodia (a country that had ratified the CPPCG in 1950). Events of the 1990s; In 1992, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and Bosnian Serb leaders targeted both Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croatian civilians for atrocious crimes resulting in the deaths of some 100,000 people by 1995. In 1993, the U.N. Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, in the Netherlands; it was the first international tribunal since Nuremburg and the first to have a mandate to prosecute the crime of genocide. From April to mid-July 1994, members of the Hutu majority in Rwanda murdered some 500,000 to 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority, with horrifying brutality and speed. As with the former Yugoslavia, the international community did little to stop the crimes while they were occurring, but that fall the U.N. expanded the mandate of the ICTY to include the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in Tanzania. The Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals helped clarify exactly what types of actions could be classified as genocidal, as well as how criminal responsibility for these actions should be established. In 1998, the ICTR set the important precedent that systematic rape is in fact a crime of genocide; it also handed down the first conviction for genocide after a trial, that of the mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba. An international statute signed in Rome in 1998 expanded the CCPG’s definition of genocide and applied it to times of both war and peace. The statute also established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which began sittings in 2002 at The Hague (without the participation of the U.S., China or Russia). Since then, the ICC has dealt with cases against leaders in the Congo and in Sudan, where brutal acts committed by the janjawid militia against civilians in the western region of Darfur have been condemned by numerous international officials (including former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell) as genocide. Debate continues over the ICC’s rightful jurisdiction, as well as its ability to determine what exactly constitute genocidal actions. For example, in the case of Darfur, some have argued that it is impossible to prove the intent to eradicate the existence of certain groups, as opposed to displacing them from disputed territory. Despite such ongoing issues, the establishment of the ICC at the dawn of the 21st century reflected a growing international consensus behind efforts to prevent and punish the horrors of genocide. The Rwandan genocide, known officially in Rwanda as the genocide against the Tutsi,was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government. An estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994,constituting as many as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population. Some 50 perpetrators of the genocide have been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but most others have not been charged due to no witness accounts. Another 120,000 were arrested by Rwanda; of these, 60,000 were tried and convicted in the gacaca court system. Genocidaires who fled into Zaire were used as a justification when Rwanda and Uganda invaded Zaire. Act Four The Wilderness School God lead the people into the wilderness. In their journey, God gave the manna to them. The way people gathered it and shared it taught the people how to live as a special people on this earth. Lesson One: God Gives Manna For All What happened: God provided the manna each day (Ex. 16:4; Hos. 13:4-6) The people gathered manna each day for their clan (Ex. 16:17, 21) Larger clans gathered more, and smaller clans gathered less. All had enough, and no one had too much (Ex. 16:16-18). Communism? What the Partner People learned: God taught the second lesson when some of the people decided to board manna. Evidently they were attracted to the old Pharaoh’s - Egypt belief that having a pile of manna makes one a big deal and brings happiness. Their hoarded manna grew maggots and spoiled. Lesson Two: Hoarding Stinks What happened: Some people hoarded God’s manna. The manna they kept grew maggots and smelled foul (Ex. 16:19-20) What the partner people learned: Yahweh, the creator and liberator and teacher, had one more great lesson to share with the students of the wilderness school - the meaning of Sabbath. Yahweh wanted the partner people to receive this beautiful gift of rest and refreshment this gift of time to enjoy fully what life is all about - Friendship with God and others and nature. Lesson Three: The Gift of Sabbath What Happened: No manna fell on the seventh day of the week (Ex. 16:26). Enough manna fell on the sixth day to feed the people on both the sixth day and the seventh day (Ex. 16:23). The manna stored for the Sabbath did not rot (Ex. 16:24). What the people learned: Yahweh asked the people to carry a jar of manna with them and to keep the jar when they settled down. This precious jar of manna would remind them of the lesson they had learned in the wilderness school (Ex. 16:32-34). We own nothing. All is God’s. All is gift. Good gives enough for all to be shared by all. Hoarding causes rot. It stinks. Work is helping God distribute manna, the gift God promises to all. God promised to bring the wilderness people to another form of manna called LAND. This land would be home. Here they would plow and plant and harvest. Here they would raise their children, keep the Sabbath, and celebrate the great festivals. Yahweh was glad but also worried. Would a landed people become like Pharaoh’s Egypt with big deals and little deals, rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed? Yahweh brooded and brooded and then came up with a plan. “I will bind myself to this people in covenant partnership. We will be lovers, partners, friends forever!” What a day it was when the covenant – making ceremony took place at a mountain called Sinai! It was like a grand wedding. In the midst of lightning, thunder, smoke and trumpet sounds God made the covenant promise. Yahweh would be this people’s God and would adopt them as a holy nation. In deep gratitude the people would love God alone with heart and soul and strength (Ex. 19:1-8; Deut 6:4-5) On that special day God gave the partner people a beautiful gift – the covenant word. The gift described the blessed way the people would live because God loved them, liberated them, and promised to be their God. The gift showed them how to live as joyful manna people on the land. The leaders of Israel went up the mountain and gazed upon Yahweh without dying. They ate and drank to celebrate their house hold’s moving to a new home (Ex. 24:11). The people sensed that this was one of the greatest days since the world was created. Just when creation and angels began to sing, the people did a stupid thing. They worshiped a golden calf made out of their earrings (Ex. 32:1-29). God, of course, was wrath and Moses shattered the covenant gift. Later Moses pleaded with God to forgive the people. Yahweh responded by repeating the covenant promises and giving the covenant gift a second time (Ex. 32:30-34:35). Gradually the former slaves would embrace the gift which they called TORAH. The center of the gift was “the ten words” or the Decalogue. 20:2 “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below. 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me, 20:6 and showing covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. 20:7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain. 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. 20:9 For six days you may labor and do all your work, 20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. 20:11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, that you may live a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving to you. 20:13 “You shall not murder. 20:14 “You shall not commit adultery. 20:15 “You shall not steal. 20:16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.” When the partner people become landed and harvest their crops, they will give the first and the best tenth of their crops to God. Thus, they will remember that ALL Belongs TO GOD. For two years of three, God will give the tenth back for a great feast. During this feast a family will know that God gives and gives. They will know that Yahweh wants humans to enjoy the bounty of the earth (Deut. 14:22-26). God loves feasting but does not want some to feast while others go hungry. This would disrupt the joyful manna balance – no one with too much: no one with too little. Therefore, every third year the people with NAHALA, land inheritance, will give the tithe to those who have no land, those who are most vulnerable – the poor, the widows, the orphans, sojourners, and priests. In this way the people share in God’s hospitality – in the creator’s work of “satisfying the desire of every living thing” (Deut. 14:27-29, 26:12-18, Psalm 145:15-16). Moses also taught the people that the day of releasing the tithe will be a day to remember the exodus from Egypt. Manna living will be a grateful response of a liberated people (Deut. 15:1-5).