Latin Americans

The first thing you should ask when reading a biblical text is not what it says here, but what is the situation that the author of the piece is dealing with? Exactly the same as when I read a fable of Aesop, Greek author of the sixth century before Christ, I do not get to notice if he speaks a fox in the fable and the foxes do not talk, but what I meant by the author of the whole fable fable. We are Latin Americans, and are marked by Western culture. The Bible was written by Jews and for Jews. It is not enough to translate literally the Word of God, we need to know what that meant that we are translating into the mentality that was written. Even the New Testament, though written in Greek, reflects the Jewish mentality. It is not so simple, but not impossible, to understand the Bible, in this way.

To better understand this, we must consider many aspects of languages, for example, in the Hebrew language (which is for the Jews) there are no superlatives. To create a superlative expression must be reduplicated. When a Hebrew meant “is the most holy place” had to say: a entre holy places this is the truly santoa . a santo, holy, santoa . The Hebrew language is a language very poor. In Hebrew we have, at times, for the same expression many ways completely different.

A classic example is the word “ra” aj. ” “Ra” j “means wind, breeze, breath, breath, life, force, motion, spirit. As we see, “ra” j “means such different things as wind and spirit. Obviously there is much bread slice in this linguistic aspect of the Bible, but you have to always keep in mind all these aspects in order to understand it. Some people who are not Catholic, we say to us Catholics, who worship images of plaster, but do not realize that they worship the Bible. If we use this logic, we must apply in both cases. But in reality, it is not. Neither we worship images, nor do they worship the Bible, but we are aware of what they represent these material things. In the case of the Bible, we have to be careful study should be, and remember that the Bible are books of faith and reason. .