【www.jxscct.com--读后感】
《The Holy Bible King James Version》是一本由Not Available (NA)著作，Hendrickson Publishers出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：GBP 2.99，页数：2004-01-08，文章吧小编精心整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(一)：Compare the Child Sacrifice in Different Cultures--A Research Based on Abraham Tested
The first time I had been amazed by the surprising similarities or sharp contrasts between two things that seem to have no faintest relation with each other was in my middle school history class. After discovering the likeness of what happened in China and around the world by chance, I have unconsciously developed the habit to compare what I learned and try to figure out their inner connections, which not only helps me to get a better understanding of things but also inspire further thoughts and ideas towards various phenomenon and issues. This way of learning was encouraged when I read the text book of the course of European Culture, and noticed the part called “What was happening in China？”. Now I have fully adopted this method, learning with comparison.
When I read the Holy Bible and lost in the colourful stories and the profound meaning it tries to deliver, I was hooked by the story of Abraham Tested, not only because of its dramatic plots, but also because it reminds me of so many different and similar accidents in other cultures and under other circumstances, which lights up the passion to make a comparison among them.
“Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Issac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.”(Genesis 22:9) The father made all these actions calmly and orderly as if he was not preparing to kill his son but only to slaughter one of the chickens as a butcher. The narration above this paragraph has emphasized how precious the son was to his father makes it more unreasonable for Abraham to kill his only son regretlessly. As parents’ love is regarded as the most selfless one in the world, many people will wonder what is the father’s thought when he is determined to sacrifice his child as they read about Abraham Tested.
In this case, portrayed as a faithful follower but to some extend a ruthless father, Abraham probably knew that the God would not really take the life of his son, which has been indicated by the text. The first clue is that God told Abraham when Hagar and Ishmael were sent away that “through Issac that your offspring will be reckoned”.(Genesis 21:12) When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Issac had no descendant yet. Thus Abraham could believe that his son would not die at that time and he would have much time to live. The second clue is in Abraham’s words before he was ready to kill his son. After all things was ready, Issac asked his father where the lamb was for the burnt offering. Abraham answered God himself would prepare the lamb. When the angel stopped Abraham from killing his son, he soon found a ram in a thicket caught by its horns.(Genesis 22:13) This seemed to be arranged by God in advance, and he did not mean to take away Issac from the beginning. From the reasons mentioned above we can guess that Abraham must have known the result of this sacrifice, so his actions appeared calmly.
When talking about story of sacrificing one’s children in order to show their loyalty, it does not come singly but in pairs. There are similar thing in Chinese history. A man called Guo Ju was regarded as a kind person. He was born in a well-off family, but he divided the family’s fortune into two part and gave them all to his two brothers after his father’s death. He left nothing to himself except the responsibility of supporting his mother. He was extremely filial. When his family became too poor to survive, Guo asked his wife to bury their three-year-old son so that their family could spare more food for his mother. The ending of this story is kind of like the binding of Issac. The son did not die, because when the father dug a hole he found a case of gold which was marked to reward Guo for his great filial piety. In this case, the father’s reason was that the couple could have more sons but mother was the only one. However, it is clear that lives could not be measured like that. Although this story is ridiculous from the modern view, it has been regarded as a model of filial piety for a long time in Chinese history.
The happy endings of these two examples make it seems that their purpose is just to teach people a lesson, while there are more stories about children sacrifice and these do cost lives.
The king of Moab took his firstborn son and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall.(Kings 3:27) This father merely gave his son’s life as a jetton in order to exchange the victory of the battle.
Similarly, in the Greek mythology, the King Agamemnon also sacrifice his eldest daughter to gain wind from Artemis for sailing to Troy.
For more instance, in the book of Micah, a man asked God:“ Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul？ ”(Micah 6:7) Even the king of Moab and Agamemnon had an excuse to sacrifice their children, which was claimed for the honour of their people. However, this man seemed too selfish for asking to exchange his son for his own salvation.
In all these examples, fathers sacrifice their children for loyalty to God, filial piety of parents, peace for the country, power in the battle, and even their own interests. Another common point in these stories is that it’s the fathers who made the decision of sacrificing their children. This maybe partly because the absolute power of men in ancient time, while from my view, the more possible reason might be people’s average opinion of regarding mothers as more merciful to the children.
These stories are made by people, but child sacrifice really existed in ancient time. Although these events are impossible to happen openly today, we should still try to prevent ourselves from this kind of incorrect values, which had rooted in varied cultures as mentioned above. Child sacrifice has no excuses no matter under what conditions and how their parents value.
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(二)：圣经和我
我有一本德文版的圣经和一本中文版的圣经，德文版圣经对我来说就好像是“为了激励自己减肥而特意买一条瘦的牛仔裤结果根本没穿过”的感觉，中文版倒是经常翻翻，还被我带到学校里面来了。
这本圣经其实是我外祖母的，她老人家是个虔诚的基督教信徒，可能是因为外祖父去世地早，为了找寻精神寄托才信的教，这些我不大清楚，还是有机会问下母亲好了。
这本圣经至少有10年的历史了，闻闻还有当时县里教堂烧的那种蜡烛的味道，
话说到底，我是不信教的，暂且不管尼采说的那些“上帝已死”，从现实的角度来讲，外祖母于2012年中风，住院后情况有所好转，本来已经康复到可以拄着拐杖走路的地步，结果又扭到了腰导致卧床至今，神智也不太清楚了，从那以后就再也不相信所谓的救世主了，外祖母中年丧父，把一儿三女抚养长大，然后晚年丧女，二女儿因为脑瘤去世，本以为可以安度晚年，现在却只能躺在床上等待死亡，想想这就是信了半辈子神的结果，总觉得荒诞不已。
记得小时候无知，还和她老人家争论主是否存在，现在想想真是愚不可及。
上帝已死：
当神定下的准则无法继续成为约束人行为的律法时，上帝就已经死了。
从这一点看，自从亚当和夏娃吃下苹果的时候，就已经注定了人类悲剧的结局。
人们可以把圣经看做历史书，神话读本，宗教文本，但我还是倾向于将其看做关于“约束”的条文，圣经写出来的根本目的不是发展信徒，而是号召人们采用某种生活态度，自然而然，人类社会发展至今，圣经对其信徒的约束力早已比不上虔诚的穆斯林，
有的时候全民都读圣经，到底是好事呢，还是 坏事呢？
虽然不信教，却依旧对福音书中描述的情景有所向往，这也许就是圣经的魅力所在。
如同书的结尾：
啊，主啊！我愿你来！
——————————————————
厦门大学软件学院——李锴
2014/6/24
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(三)：Sabbath--A Time to Rest
Time plays an significant role in Bible and Judaism. In Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth day by day. The call to prayer, one of the important rites of Judaism, is also performed in chronological order. When it came to how to deal with time, God had given people an answer--Sabbath.
Although human beings are not able to conquer the time, they are able to control it. God says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates” (Exodus 20:11). People tried to dominate the world in the previous six days but they could also try to dominate themselves on the seventh day no matter what class they came from.
However, Sabbath did not mean idleness. “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work”(Genesis 2:2). This sentence might be confusing. Did God really work on the seventh day or he did nothing？ In fact, God did work on the seventh day. He created peace and calmness.
In Bible, Sabbath is highly related with “holy”(one of the most famous words of Bible). “Holy” is the most suitable word to express the mystery and honor of God and in the sentence “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy”(Genesis 2:2), “holy” was used to describe Sabbath. From this perspective, we can understand the great significance of Sabbath in Bible.
When I first read Genesis, I was shocked. I assumed that God would choose to set up a holy land, whether a holy mountain or a holy well, after completing the heavens and the earth. Nevertheless, God let the holy Sabbath appear first. Then in Exodus, he told Moses that “say to the Israelites, ‘you must observe my Sabbath. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the LORD, who makes you holy”(Exodus 31:18). God’s words mean that only by observing Sabbath can human beings become holy. At last, God thought that it was time to consecrate things. So in Numbers, there is a sentence saying that “when Moses finished setting up the tabernacle, he anointed it and consecrated the altar and all its utensils”(Numbers 7:1). From the order of consecration we can also know the importance of Sabbath.
Ancient rabbis held the opinion that even the fool revere Sabbath. They thought that it was impossible to tell a lie on the Sabbath day. Zohar says, “Sabbath is the name of sole saint”(Rashbi). Therefore, people should not call Sabbath in unholy land because Sabbath is the name of God. That is why some religious people do not want name their children ‘Shabbat’ now.
Here is a story of a rabbi in Poet and Merchant:
There is a rabbi who was put into a cave by some bad guys. Living in the cave, he did not know whether it was day or night. So he could not sing and pray to celebrate Sabbath, which had been his habit since he was young. What was worse, he could not resist the temptation to smoke. He felt worried and self-condemned from time to time. Suddenly, all his pain had gone. Then there were words coming from his heart saying that “ it must be Friday night. Every time when I was thirst for the foods that were forbidden on Sabbath day, this desire would leave me when Sabbath day had come.” Then he stood up happily and thanked the God. Week by week, his desire for cigarette regularly faded away.
This story told us that the real meaning of Sabbath lies in rest. Both spirit and body could have a rest on Sabbath day. Both human beings and God posses the same love. People’s love towards Sabbath is like God’s love towards people. Human beings kept Sabbath like God consecrated the seventh day. But however idealized Sabbath was, it was still an concrete fact, a legal system, and a living order. And it must be so because “rest without spiritual rest, rest would become the source of degradation; and abstinence successfully protected this glorious day from being vulgarized”(Heschel 29中文译：休息而无灵性，则是堕落之源; 而这些禁戒成功地防止了这光辉的日子被庸俗化). Nowadays, Sabbath still has a great influence on our life, for example, professors in XMU would take a year’s sabbatical from teaching to do a research or to write a book.
Works Cited
1.Shimon Bar Yochai（Rashbi). Zohar（光辉之书）.
2.Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Sabbath--Its Meaning for Modern Man, Shanghai Sumerian press, August 2013.
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(四)：Women with Negative Images in the Bible
In the Old Testament, human are considered sinful not because they belong to human race but that they have betrayed their God. It is believed that everyone has a certain kind of relation with God, it is not the relationship between creator and creation but between two human. By the time human believe that they have the capability of knowing everything and not satisfied with what they possess, they would tend to betray their holy partner by despoiling gifts which God has not given them as trophies.
In the Bible, there are mainly two kinds of women, one is pure and flawless angel such as Deborah, the judge of Israel and Miryam, sister of Moses, and the other is ignoble whore. A large number of women and original sin are usually tightly combined together and their characters are set as the initiator to conduct sin such as adultery, incest and seduction.
At the very beginning of Genesis, Eve was considered as the disastrous woman who led to the falling of Adam and all other human beings. Although God had previously warned them, “you may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:15), Eve still could not resist the temptation and curiosity and first took a bite of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What was more unforgivable was that she also tempted her husband to eat the fruit and induced Adam to fall. Her greedy human nature and lust for “delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3:4) finally resulted in expulsion from Garden Eden. To punish Eve, God increased her pain in childbearing and declared that she should be ruled over by her husband, which means all the women after Eve are cursed and doomed to suffer from the same things.
In Chapter 38 of Genesis, Judah’s daughter-in-law, Tamar became a widow with no children after his eldest son Er died of evil. As it was mentioned in Deuteronomy, "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not be married abroad unto one not of his kin; her husband"s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband"s brother unto her. "(Deuteronomy 25:5)
So Tamar married Judah’s second son Onan. However, Onan refused to produce offspring for his brother and received death from God as well. Therefore, Judah told Tamar to go back to her father’s house until his youngest son Shelah grew up. Many years later, Judah’s wife died and he seemed to forget the contract with Tamar. As a loyal wife who desperately wanted a child under her dead husband’s name, Tamar played a trick to achieve her aim. She disguised as a prostitute and covered her face whiling waiting for her father-in-law. After Judah lay with Tamar, she conceived as she planned previously. Many people consider Tamar as the initiator and cause of the sin of incest, but at that time it was ashamed for a woman who did not have a child. Under this circumstance it would not be hard for people to understand why she did that; she wanted to reverse her miserable destiny and knew that the only way to have a place in society is to be a mother. This woman had incredibly dispassionate attitude and unbelievable wisdom. In order to be able to identify her child’s lineage, Tamar asked for Judah’s seal, cord and stalk before they lay together, which saved her from being burnt due to pregnancy. “Tamar’s deception and seduction is construed as a heroic deed for she does not act out of concern for her own well-being.” (He 33) And even God did not punish her for conducting sin.
Moreover, women always come after men as their mothers or wives and are under the shadow of men’s glory. Christian believe that women are subordinate to men and are born to help men because they are regarded as the generation of a part from man’s body, a rib. “Among the 3400 characters recorded in the Bible, only 5% of them are women.”(Huang 3) According to Simone De Beauvior’s theory of “the Other”, marginalized and cursed, the majority of women are merely the tool of giving birth to children and are at an edge position.
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(五)：The Original Relationship between Human and the Lord God in the Garden of Eden
The Holy Bible King James Version is the first religious book that I have truly taken a close look at. I am quite interested in it, so I did a research on "The Original Relationship between Human and the Lord God in the Garden of Eden".
The LORD God picked up a pile of dust, puttered around as if making a human-like pottery. Behold, there came the earliest ancestor of mankind, Adam. And then, God granted him Eve, a woman, as his friend, as his companion, as his lover, and as a part of him. The LORD God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis, 2:7) In Genesis (1:26), we are told that the LORD God formed Adam according to his own image and figure, so the LORD God must be permeated with love and singleness of his heart towards all human. Nevertheless, why did God choose dust？ Why didn’t God use gold or even diamond since he cherished his creature so much？ I would say, it is because dust is mean and low; it is humbled to nothingness. So, it could act as the most proper medium between human and the LORD God. It revealed that human became a valuable living soul only when he kept the LORD God inside his heart. It was the very beginning of esteem, of obedience, of belief, and of faith.
When distrust defeated belief, when grudge smashed faith, human would be likely to be guilty of innumerable and all kinds of evil. What’s more, their relationship with the LORD God began to experience a myriad of changes. That is exactly what matters. Having the human living immortally in the paradise-like Eden Garden seemed to be the LORD God’s original intention. But why didn’t he slam the door against the serpent, which was the incarnation of Satan that he must have been clearer than anyone？ That’s because the LORD God endow human the right of free choice and entrusted them the future of the whole mankind. When Eve saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, (Genesis, 3:6) thoughts or recollections just began to flash across her mind; yet the solemn promise to the LORD God just started to collapse while the belief in the LORD God to crumble as well.
Crime and evil sprout at the very moment when human’s eyes were open, when they won the ability to think and when they gained the knowledge to distinguish between good and evil. As time went by, human put the LORD God and themselves on an equal footing, which caused a little wicked idea thriving into a myriad of evils mount to heaven. Then the LORD God changed from an amiable grandfather into a stern father. For that time, human had to labor over, how to undertake liability, how to face life and death and how to bear severe sufferings.
(e.g. The Lord God said to the woman, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘you shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.”(Genesis, 3:15-22))
The first thing Adam and Eve noticed after they had eaten the forbidden fruit was that they were naked. So their first action was to sew fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Since their eyes were opened, that meant they obvious knew what consequence beven escape. But they did none of those things. When the LORD God asked Adam, “Where are you？” He answered” I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” That is illogic and worth researching to me. How come that Adam hid himself because of his sense of shame instead of his guilt？ Integrating human’s vacillation towards their vow to the God with their avaricious and desirable natural instincts together, I suppose, all kinds of temptation first swallow human’s body, and then engulf their eyes, finally devour the whole soul. According to this succession, seduction turns to evil thoughts, and become sin at the end, pauses at one step, and leaves a very deep footmark at each step.
The Lord God made coats of skins, and clothed Adam and Eve before he sent them forth from the Garden of Eden. How could the Lord God make coats of skins？ He must slaughter intact and living lambs. In the face of Adam and Eve, The Lord God poured out the blood of the lambs and then dismembered their bodies to make fur clothing. Why did he do so？ Obviously the Lord God wanted them to know that the lambs were dead on account of their fault. And the whole world became the scapegoat of human’s crime. All creation was cursed to suffered from pain and sacrifice. From this we may see, the first sermon, delivered by the Lord God to human, was not by verbal, but via action. Another thing worth mention is that the fig leaves were prickling and uncomfortable to skin. So we should not ignore the fact that the Lord God really cared about human. However he intended to make them learn in sufferings, grow up mentally and spiritually and finally get close to him with pure soul.
All in all, as it is said in the First Letter of John (2:16), “for all that is in the world, the lust of fresh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.” It is human’s natural instinct to have the rapacious desire to be too arrogant to put themselves in the same position of God. That’s not real intimacy, but filthy offence to God. That is also what we should evade today. Stay modesty, and stay merciful. I wonder that’s why so many Christians pray. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” (The Letter of Paul to the Romans, 8:10)
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(六)：one of the leaders in the Bible--Joseph
Bible introduces the development of the Christian. And during the development of the Christian, there are many great leaders and i admire Joseph most, so here i will make an brief analyse of Joseph.
Joseph, the son of Jacob’s old age, was fully loved by his father. His father loved Joseph more than any other sons and made him a coat of many colors. Because only Joseph got the long robe with sleeves, his brothers were very jealous of him. This is just only one reason that his brothers hate him. Another reason is that little Joseph often brought unto his father his brothers’ evil reports. These two reasons made his brothers hate him and could not speak peaceably unto him [37:1-11]. One day they wanted to kill Joseph, but they didn’t. They changed their mind and decided to sold him as a slave to Egypt. They just told their father, Jacob, that Joseph was killed by a wild beast. Eventually, because he was wise and had the ability to interpret dreams thirteen years later, he was introduced to the pharaoh and rose to high position. He predicted that there would be a seven years of harvest and a seven years of famine, and they all come true. When the famine was coming, Joseph had restored enough grain in the city. So there are many people coming from other cities to buy grain from him. His brothers also come. At last, Joseph forgave his brothers and all of them settled there. He was a great leader of Israel and made the nation prosperous.
This is a brief introduction of the story. I want to talk about this story from the point that what actually made Joseph have a great change and make him become a great leader of Israel.
The first thing is that he had the ability to foresee something all because his dream and he could interpret dream. When he was young, he had dreams that the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to him, which means that he would be the leader of the family and even the whole Israel nation. When he was in Egypt, he succeeded in interpreting the chief cupbearer and the Pharaoh’s dreams. Just because of his ability (41:37), he rose to high position. Besides his ability to interpret the dreams, he was good at seize opportunities. If he did not seize to rise up and be the leader just care for the things happened just now, he will never lead people to the success and lead the whole nation to prosperity. Dream is Joseph’s most powerful weapon to overcome difficulties and find spirits and virtues: strong-minded, unyielding and patient. These are spirits that all good leaders have. When he was left in the deep hole, we can imagine how lonely and scared he was. Maybe he had begged his brother for helping him and not leaving him. But he did not give in and he made a living by his own. He became the servant of Potiphar. Potiphar made him oversee of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. He charged the whole house with great patience and deal with all things properly. When he was put into prison, he also not give up. Finally, he rose to a higher position. He was a great man that can bear all tough situation. This is the same as what Menci had said in his work called “Thrive in Calamity and Perish in Soft Living”: God will drop responsibility on one person, he must frustrate and harass his heart, fatigue his body, make him go through hunger and poor and make him do reverse confusion. Only in these ways, he inner heart will be alert, these also can firm his character and cold the ability that he does not have. Joseph will take the responsibility to lead his nation to prosperity. Though he was in such tough conditions, he never give up.
The third reason that Joseph succeeded is that he had a firm belief. He believe that the Lord was with him. He believed that all the thing he experienced was arranged by the Lord. When he was in the deep hole, he believe that the Lord was with him, so he would not feel too scared. When he was in Egypt, it was God who gave him courage to fight for his living. When his brother came to Egypt to buy grain from him, he forgive them. He followed the instruction of Lord and he firmly believed that God will never abandon him. Here I want to say that everybody has belief in his heart, and this belief has great influence on his life. When people are in tough conditions, they will think of their belief and this will give them courage to continue their journey of life. Joseph, he had the belief that he should fight because it was Lord gave him responsibility to lead the nation to prosperity.
The last but the most important reason is his true love of people. He not only loved his father and brothers, he also loved all the Israel people. His brother sold him and even wanted to kill him, but when they came to Joseph to buy grain, Joseph forgive them and all his families settled in Egypt. Maybe he had hated his brother and wanted to take revenge on his brother, but he finally forgave them because he loved them.
Then Joseph said to his brothers,” Come closer to me.” And they came
closer. He said,” I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.
And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold
me here: for God sent me before you to present life.”[45:4]
From the words Joseph said, we can know that Joseph did not censure his brother for selling him. On the contrary, he thought this was God’s arrangement and this was his responsibility. Tolerance and forgiveness are not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Forgiveness is not care about what other people owed to you, how other people affronted you and what bad things other people did to you. The truly meaning of tolerance and forgiveness is love. Just as Jesus once said:” A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”[13:34] As a leader, Joseph knew how to love people and forgive people. This virtue made him a great leader.
Those are the reasons why I think Joseph was a great person. He had experienced a lot of difficulties, which made his life more colorful and meaningful. Because he experienced a lot of things, so he knew how to love others and how to refined himself. From these things, we can see that only one person has gone through difficulties and setbacks can he succeed.
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(七)：信仰的世界观
《旧约》主要记载了希伯来先民及至公元前六世纪的历史与信仰：民族是如何形成的，信仰的神是谁，以色列是什么意思，犹太人的称呼从何而来，与上帝立约是怎么回事，作为犹太人要对上帝履行什么义务，什么是犹太人的梦想与幸福。
《新约》主要记载了耶稣的生平、教导及其使徒（保罗、彼得、约翰等）的传教活动。生为犹太人的耶稣倡导了一种超越种族、民族、阶层、性别的世界观，对罗马帝国以及中世纪的欧洲文化大一统做出了卓越的贡献。
一个关乎民族兴亡，一个着眼心灵得救。关于这个天资聪颖却又不断被流亡的民族，兴亡之事还在继续.......注视普世之爱的心灵也还在天路历程中凝望上帝的眼睛.......
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(八)：Does the omnipotent God have a gender?
The God is the creator of everything through the Chapter Genesis, including the heaven and the earth. But the Holy Bible of King James Version describes God like this: “5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called night”, which means male is his gender. But differently, in another place of Genesis, it was put like this, “Then God said, ‘let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.’ ” And “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female He created them.” It seems to be a paradox of the deｓｃｒｉｐｔion of the number of God. Although God is described by “he”, the group of Gods can contain different genders.
"The word "Elohim" directly translates to "Gods." The Bible testifies that God exists in the female image, God the Mother, as well as the male image, God the Father.
World Mission Society Church of God has received Second Coming Christ Ahnsahnghong, God the Father, and the heavenly Jerusalem, God the Mother.
When people hear the word "God," most immediately think of "God the Father," holding to the fixed idea that only God the Father exists; however, the Bible clearly testifies that there is a God the Mother in addition to a God the Father." (https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index？qid=20090927230430AAfWCuH)
The concept of God the Mother is kind of reasonable because it explain the expression of “us” and “our”. The God can be not single but double or even more. They are a group of living and they build human with male and female in their likeness. Here a conclusion can be draw on this way: God is not only male but also female, and he has two kinds of genders. But this conclusion is not suitable when it comes to God’s power. Because he is literally omnipotent, this means that gender cannot be a limit of quality of himself. But in this way, it becomes a problem to explain the word “our”., because God created man in his own image, and he cannot make woman in his image in the same way.
According to some versions of explanations from Christians, the number of creator can be plural because God create angles before the creation of the physical universe.
"The book of Job describes the angels worshipping God as He was creating the world: “Where were you when I laid the earth"s foundation？ Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions？ Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it？ On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy？” (http://www.gotquestions.org/when-angels-created.html)
From this, it can be assume that God makes human in the image of God and angles, and they do not have gender because they do not have innate weakness of male and female. God is not born with flesh or blood; instead, he has to be there first to build the world. He is eternal, so he need not have gender.
"The Bible teaches:
24 God is Spirit (John 4:24).
Because God is spirit, this helps explain why God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient.
Both God and the Word (who became Christ) have existed eternally and before all else. From them emanates the Spirit of God, by which God is omnipresent and omniscient. God the Father is the divine Father of the God family, into which truly converted Christians shall be born."(Mystery of the Ages. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York. 1985 ,p. 57)
That means the God is not like human. He is spirit so that he cannot be judged with gender. It is better to say that he has existed beyond the limit of gender of human, and he limited human beings by giving them genders.
The first words of the Old Testament are B"reshit bara Elohim — "In the beginning God created." The verb bara (he created) agrees with a subject with masculine grammatical gender. Elohim also has masculine grammatical gender. The masculine gender in Hebrew can be used for objects with no inherent gender, as well as objects with masculine natural gender.
"Genesis 1:26-27 says that the elohim were male and female, and humans were made in their image." (Coogan, Michael (October 2010). "6. Fire in Divine Loins: God"s Wives in Myth and Metaphor". God and Sex. What the Bible Really Says (1st ed.). New York, Boston: Twelve. Hachette Book Group. p. 175. ISBN 978-0-446-54525-9. Retrieved May 5, 2011. "humans are modeled on elohim, specifically in their sexual differences.")
All in all, considering God is omnipotent, he can decide whether to have or choose his gender. But mostly we called God as a masculine.
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(九)：The Story of Judah and Tamar
As a student who studied in Catholic school for 12 years, Bible is not a mysterious book for me. However, after taking the class of European Culture. I started to pick out some stories which having strong characteristic of the Jews culture and may be sound strange to the student who don’t know the background.
In the Genesis, the story of Judah and Tamar had created fierce controversy since it is the first case that the commit incest between father-in-law and daughter-in-law. However，Tamar,the woman which had slept with her father-in-law, was not to be deem as a no chaste woman but a relatively positive image. This paper will give a brief analysis on the event from the Jewish tradition and law at that time to figure out why she was regard as a righteous woman and the reason that her story was insert in the narration of Joseph’s story.
Since Jewish was a nomad, the descendant equal to labour force. The family inheritance was always the first priority since it decides whether the family will attain prosperity or not. To ensure the inheritance, the Jewish even have the tradition of Levirate which was clearly state down in the Book of Deuteronomy
“If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband"s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.”（Deuteronomy25：6）
According to the tradition, The firstborn of levirate will succeed in the name of brother which is dead, which to ensure the family will not denied and be put out of Israel.
The story of Tamar just exactly a example of levirate, her husband Shua was dead and she was married to her brother-in-law Er. However, Er was also put into death by God since he wasn’t willing to get offspring for his brother. In such a situation, by customary rule Tamar should be married to the last and only son at that time,Shelah.But Judah just afraid Shelah will soon be die after marry Tamar.So,he just give a empty promise to Tamar and send her home.
Yet, the action carry out by Tamar after she notice that Judah was not willing to keep the promise caused dissension among people, she just disguised as a Sacred prostitute and slept with her father-in-law in order to get pregnant and have heir for her husband.
Tamar’s action was accepted by many people because she just perform the main duty of woman in the Jewish tradition—to give descendant to the family. In the Genesis, we can find a similar case which woman using some desperate measures to ensure the family inheritance, such as Rod and his two daughter. Beside, Tamar has a different mission which makes her different from other women.
According to the Genesis chapter 49, when Jacob blesses his son, he has prophecy that the Christ will come from Judah’s descendant.
“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”(Genesis 49:10)
It provided a perfect excuse for Tamar’s action, all her effort is to make sure Judah’s family inheritance which wait for the Shiloh come
With the background information provided，the story seem much more easy to become acceptable ,at least for those believers, because most of thing happen under God will. For those non-believers，story is just story ha ha
《The Holy Bible King James Version》读后感(十)：Comments on "The Holy Bible King James Version"
In The Old Testament, God created man in his own image and called him Adam. But he said that it is not good that man should be alone, so he took one of Adam’s rids and made it a woman, named Eve, to made him a help meet for him. That is the initial reason for marriage, which is also a topic i am interested in and would like to focus on here. On top of that, there are many other reasons for marriage in the Holy Bible. More surprising, the reasons for marriage in the Holy Bible have a striking resemblance to them in ancient China.
First, from a political point of view, people get married in consideration of political status, military award and peace and stability. In Genesis, Pharaoh gave Joseph Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. So Joseph took charge of all the land of Egypt. It is not a rare case that ancient Chinese emperors made someone in an important political status with some beautiful women. What’s more, they may even gave their own daughters to draw capable men ’s attention to fight for them in the battlefield as Saul said to David, “ Here’s my oldest daughter, Merab. I want to give her to you in marriage. Only be a brave warrior for me and fight the battles of the Lord.” In other cases, for the country’s peace and stability the ancient Chinese emperors would have connections through marriage with other countries. Similarly, in Second King Ⅱ, King Jehoash of Israel gave his daughter to the son of King Amaziah of Judah as a wife to keep peaceful and stable with Israel. However, marriage also can be used as a political intrigue. In Samuel Ⅱ, Abner had sexual relations with Saul’s concubine named Rizpah daughter of Aiah to extort kingship with Ish-bosheth.
Second, from a economic point of view, people, especially women, get married because their parents can get a lot money from their marriage. In ancient China, the money was called Pin Jin. Women ’s parents all expected that their daughters could marry men who were in rich families so that they could get Pin Jin from the men ’s side, and the tradition has been observed ever since. However, the Holy Bible has a slight difference with it. In Genesis, Jacob stayed with Laban for a month. Then Laban said to Jacob, “ Should you work for me for nothing because you are my relative？ Tell me what your wages should be.” Since Jacob had fallen in love with Rachel , he said, “ I’ll serve you seven years in exchange for your younger daughter Rachel. So Jacob worked for seven years to acquire Rachel.
Third, from a tribal point of view, people marry other people who are in the same tribe in order to keep their blood pure and multiply the future generations of the tribe. In the very beginning of ancient China, people were distributed all over the land. and lived in groups. Little by little, people started to come across other groups of people. However, they all felt superior to other groups of people and continued to live independently. That is how people in Biblical world goes too. The book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people. They found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite may ever enter the assembly of God. In Genesis, Abraham sent his servant to go to his relatives to find a wife for his son Issac. Then the servant journeyed to the region of Abram Naharaim and the city of Nahor. At last, he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah to become Issac’s wife. Also, the Benjaminites abducted two hundred of the daughters of Shiloh who coming out to dance in celebration to be their wives so as to be preserved. Because an entire Israelite tribe should not be wiped out.
In conclusion, apart from the reasons above, there are many other reasons for marriage, including fertility problem, loneliness, sympathy, appreciation and so on. All the reasons for marriage have been existing until nowadays either in the Holy Bible or ancient China.
本文来源：https://www.jxscct.com/xxs/35922/
