WORD STUDY – SON (ARAMAIC) –ברא
John 3:35 The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.
This morning I sat down to do a study and I had no study passage in mind so I did the old open your Bible and point to a verse thing. I came up with John 3:35 and felt that great impression, you know what I mean, to study the word Son in Aramaic. That’s like asking me to explain the Trinity which I cannot do, no one can. The church calls the Trinity a mystery and I am in the pew right with them on that. I believe in the Trinity because I believe the Bible speaks of the Trinity, so I believe in the Trinity. But I sure cannot explain it.
What I find troubling is that the disciples who were all Jews had no problem with calling the Jesus the Son of God, even though their entire upbringing told them there was only one God. Every morning they recited the Shama of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear O’ Israel, the Lord our God is one.” If you had one God then how could this human being declare Himself to be the Son of God without saying you had two Gods. Then you have the Holy Spirit coming on Him during His baptism and now you have three Gods. These Jewish disciples didn’t bat an eye.
Well, the disciples were simply unlearned men who would did not think about such philosophical issues. Then how about the Apostle Paul who was a intellectual, surely he would have wondered about this vision of Jesus who declared Himself God and then being filled with the Holy Spirit finds himself confronting three Gods rather than one?
The answer may lie in the fact that the first century Semitic Jews did not think the way we do in our modern, technological, mathematical, precise thinking. We use a Platonic form of reasoning and logic and they used a box form of reasoning and when something didn’t fit in the box they thought outside the box.
But I will end up writing a book if you go into all the details and this is just a simple study of the word Son. The word Son in Greek is huion from the root word huios. It sounds like the word the military uses when they raise their fist and say “huion” to identify solidarity but it is not same word, I have no idea what that word means in the military, I will have to ask someone sometime. Anyways, that word in the Greek means a son, or anyone who shares the same nature as someone else. It still has the idea of a separate, individual unique person.
The word that is used in the Aramaic is bera which is a sort of all purpose adjective. The Aramaic used in Jesus’s day had very few adjectives and bera was used for many things. It’s Semitic origin lies in the idea of being formed out of something else but still a part of that same thing it was formed out of. It is sort of like building a sand castle on the beach. You have a beach full of sand and out of that sand you build a castle, however, it is still part and parcel of that sand and the first wave that comes washes away that castle and the sand blends back into the sand of the beach. So in the Semitic mindset, they had no problem with Jesus calling Himself the Son of God and still being God for God was the sand on the beach and Jesus was a part of God that rose up from the sand for form the castle and then when the wave of death came He just washed into that beach of God. We humans however, were not so formed, we were formed from the dust of the ground and God only breathed into us life, we were not formed form that sandy beach.
I have no doubt someone with a degree in theology can be a big beach bully and knock my sand castle down with a lot of theological words but I am no theologian, I am just a simple teacher of ancient languages and I can only tell you what I believe first century man was hearing when he heard the words, Son of God.
So what about all this Father and Son talk? You have to again think in first century Semitic thought. According to the common Near Eastern custom as father would turn everything he owned over to his first born son when he died. This was not strictly followed by the first century as sometimes the father would divide his estate equally between his sons. He could also do it before he died but according to Jewish law it would be in deed form only, the son could not sell the deed until his father died. If he did it would be an illegal transaction and like in the case of the prodigal son who would have had to sell his deed to an unscrupulous money changer once the Father returned with his son and declared himself alive the unscrupulous money changer would be forced by law to return the deed without any compensation. So the father did not have to dip into the older son’s share of inheritance to restore the son’s inheritance, the unscrupulous money changer had to do it. Sort of like when we wander away from God and the enemy steals all that God has given us, when we return to God the enemy is forced to return all he has stolen.
But I am off the point here. In first century custom it was the eldest son who had absolute authority over all that the father possessed while he was alive and after he dies unless the father legally chooses to grant that authority to his other children but it would have to be an agreement between the father and son for no matter what the agreement was the father and eldest son were considered one and the same in the authority they possessed. The eldest son could transact any business in the name of the father all he had to do was prove he was the father’s eldest son and that was usually done with a special robe (like Joseph was given) or a signet like Judah carried.
Thus, it was no problem for the disciples to understand that Jesus was simply the sandcastle on the beach of God and then to use the illustration of a first born son having all authority of His father it blended quite well into the thinking of a first century Semitic mindset.
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