Introducing A Friend

[Vanhin]

Hey folks. I wanted to introduce a friend who wandered into the LDS section of Christianforums.com, and has some very interesting contributions to understanding the correlation of ancient Judaism and our faith. Needless to say, he was not very welcomed at CF, and has suffered a few abuses for his point of view. I told him about lds.net, and promised to introduce him here.

He went by the name "thekabalist", but I'm not sure what alias he will use here. Please welcome him. I think you will not be disappointed in some of his work. Here is a sample:

Hi forum,

At the request of Vanhin I was going through your scriptures and found something of interest. I didn't have much time to look things through but I wanted to give you a glimpse of ancient hebrew tradition.

I saw that in one of your books there is a star called Kolob right? This is what I read: "and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God".

The term "Kolob" would be written as follows: קלב

It is quite interesting because this would in ancient Hebrew mean quite literally "that which is in likeness of a heart" because the particle ק means "in likeness of" and the word "לב" means "heart".

Now in ancient Hebrew we also have a practice of letter permutation. Essentially it means the Hebrew letters can be permuted to find alternative meanings. What is amusing is that one of the two other possible words with these letters would be קבל which means literally "to receive" and is used in connection with a deeper revelation from G-d. This is the basic root of the Hebrew word "Kabbalah" for instance.

The other two take us back to Nm. 23:1 where the Bible makes a pun with the words לקב (to curse) and בלק (Balak) which is understood as meaning that G-d inverted the curse that was upon the sons of Israel.

When we look at the ancient knowledge of gematria which is to look at the numeric value of the words there's also something pretty cool: the number 132 is the numeric value we have.

This is also the number of the expression יהוה אלהים which is usually translated as "Lord G-d" but I have already explained previously to mean "He who is the lifegiver of the Powerful ones". So the name Kolob bears the same value and essence as the name "Lord G-d".

I'll leave the interpretation up to you!

שלום

shalom

Regards,

Vanhin

[Vanhin]

I failed to mention that he was a rabbi, but I cannot remember from what school, and the post where he told us has been removed. So, I'm sure he will tell us. :) So have at it thekabalist, you are among friends now.

Regards,

Vanhin

[thekabalist]

Hi Vanhin,

Thanks for the introduction. Glad to be here. I would just like to make one correction to the above. The actual spelling to mean "in the likeness of a heart" would be כלב and not קלב as I originally wrote. Because the letters ק and כ can have the same sound in Hebrew. However to get קלב to mean "in the likeness of a heart" I would have to be more interpretative when it's totally unnecessary as כלב would quite well fit the proposed meaning. Sorry about this typo.

b'shalom

[beefche]

Hey! We welcome anyone and having a rabbi would be really cool. I look forward to his contributions and I'm sure many of us will have some questions for him.

[thekabalist]

I failed to mention that he was a rabbi, but I cannot remember from what school, and the post where he told us has been removed. So, I'm sure he will tell us. :) So have at it thekabalist, you are among friends now.

Regards,

Vanhin

Hi Vanhin,

I am of the school of Safed which focuses on Kabbalah. :)

I am looking forward to restoring our studies on the Hebrew roots of the names in the BoM that was deleted from the other forum. Should I start a topic with it?

[Vanhin]

Hi Vanhin,

I am of the school of Safed which focuses on Kabbalah. :)

I am looking forward to restoring our studies on the Hebrew roots of the names in the BoM that was deleted from the other forum. Should I start a topic with it?

Yes, please, that is a great place to start.

Regards,

Vanhin

[FlaviusHambonius]

I look forward to reading some of your writings thekabalist-- sounds very interesting--I love learning new things.

Thanks also to you Vanhin.

[Generally_Me]

I've seen some of your other threads, and they are extremely interesting!

[pam]

I failed to mention that he was a rabbi, but I cannot remember from what school, and the post where he told us has been removed. So, I'm sure he will tell us. :) So have at it thekabalist, you are among friends now.

Regards,

Vanhin

Just wanted some clarification. Are you now a rabbi or were you just going to school for it? Not that it makes any difference whatsoever, (I have found the information that you have brought to this site fascinating) I am just curious.

[thekabalist]

Just wanted some clarification. Are you now a rabbi or were you just going to school for it? Not that it makes any difference whatsoever, (I have found the information that you have brought to this site fascinating) I am just curious.

I am a rabbi at present. But then again so are a good deal of the religious Jews because a rabbi is not clergy contrary to popular belief. Judaism has a complex law system and a rabbi is like a lawyer. Someone who specializes in Jewish law. Now in many countries such a person will also become sort of a clergy but it's not supposed to be that way. Especially because any Jew can conduct our rites and religious practices as long as they are properly done. We don't have clergy as in the Christian sense in the more religious communities. Only in Reform and Conservative where the laymen prefer to see the rabbis in such a way.