CHAPTER 1
BIBLICAL DREAMS
Known unto God are all his works fromthe beginning of the world.—Acts 15:18
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I willpour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons andyour daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shallsee visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.—Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28-30
The Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Bibles are collections of what wereoriginally a number of independent books written by various authorsin different languages. They were referred to as The Holy Scriptures,which are the inspired Word of God, also known as The Holy Bible.
The Holy Bible is a canonical collection of texts considered sacredin Judaism or Christianity. Different religious groups included differentbooks within their canons, in varying order, dividing or combiningbooks or incorporating additional material. Christian Bibles range fromthe 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books of the EthiopianOrthodox Church canon.
The English word bible is derived through Latin from the Greekword bi.bli'a, meaning "little books." This is further derived frombi'blos, a word describing the inner portion of the papyrus plant fromwhich the early form of paper was created. Gebal, an ancient Phoenicianseaport famous for making and exporting papyrus paper, was called"Byblos" by the Greeks.
The Bible is divided into two sections. The Old Testament, whichdetails events from the beginning of creation until just prior to the birthof Jesus, was written in Hebrew and Aramaic from 1513 BC to 443 BC,and contains 39 books. It was written by numerous scribes, or authors,beginning with Moses in 1513 BC and ending with Nehemiah andMalachi in 443 BC. The Protestant Old Testament is identical with theHebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh, which includes the Five Books ofMoses (the Torah = "teaching" or "law"), as well as the Nevi'im (booksof the prophets) and the Ketuvim ("writings"). This was followed bya large gap of around five hundred years, until the apostle Matthewrecorded his historic account—along with Paul, Luke, James, Mark,Peter, Jude, and John.
The second half of the Christian Bible is the New Testament,containing 27 books: the four canonical gospels describing the lifeand teachings of Jesus; Acts of the Apostles telling of the early times ofthe Christian Church under the apostles; 21 epistles or letters, mainlywritten by Paul but also by James, Peter, John and Jude; and the bookof Revelation, largely a prophetic description of the end times. This waswritten in Greek some 500-600 years after the Old Testament, in thefirst and second centuries AD.
Therefore, the Bible was written over a period of 1600 to 1700 years.No other book in history has taken so long to complete.
All Scripture is "inspired of God." This expression is translatedfrom the Greek phrase theópneustos, meaning "God breathed" or "Godinspired." By "breathing" on faithful men, God caused his spirit, orforce, to become operative within them and directed what he wantedrecorded. God would use men who were even considered "unletteredand ordinary" in scholastic training to become his scribes, regardlessof their occupation: shepherd, tentmaker, fisherman, tax collector,physician, priest, prophet, or king.
On four occasions in the Bible, the "finger of God" is said to be themeans of carrying out God's will. Firstly, when Pharaoh's magicians sawMoses perform supernatural feats, they told Pharaoh, "This is the fingerof God" (Exodus 8:19). The second and third times refer to the finger ofGod writing His Ten Commandments on stone tablets (Exodus 31:18;Deuteronomy 9:10). The fourth is when Jesus, addressing his disciples inLuke 11:20, declared, "But if I drive out demons by the finger of God,then the Kingdom of God has come upon you."
Though not stated as such, the moving finger that appeared inresponse to King Belshazzar's blasphemy could be considered anotherexample: "Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wroteon the plaster of the wall, near the lamp stand in the royal palace. Theking watched the hand as it wrote" (Daniel 5:5).
However, the most famous example of "God's finger" is depictedby Michelangelo's fresco The Creation of Adam, depicted on the SistineChapel ceiling. The painting (circa AD 1511-1512) is traditionallythought to illustrate the Biblical creation narrative from the Book ofGenesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man. The imageof the near-touching fingers of God and Adam—his first creation ofman—represents one of the single most iconic images of the origin ofhumanity.
In 1990, a physician named Frank Lynn Meshberger noted in themedical publication, Journal of the American Medical Association, thatthe background figures and forms portrayed behind the figure of Godappear to be an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain.
Meshberger further claimed there appeared to be an activecommunication exchange between God and Adam, just as neuronstransmit biochemical information across synaptic clefts. God's rightarm also extends across what resembles the prefrontal cortex.
The question is this: how could Michelangelo have known of thisin AD 1511, centuries before the structure of the brain was identifiedby Spanish neuroscientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in 1887—withthe regions mapped out many years later identifying their function?Perhaps, as Michael Salcman, in a paper entitled "The Creation ofAdam by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)" (Neurosurgery, Vol.59, December 2006), "a cynic might suppose that neurologists ... areprone to discover brains ... everywhere."
Meshberger was actually a gynecologist, so his further observationthat the red cloth around God has the shape of a human uterus and thatthe scarf hanging out—colored green—could represent a cut umbilicalcord (or perhaps the brain stem) might not be too surprising.
Be that as it may, English physicist and mathematician, Sir IsaacNewton once remarked, "I find more sure marks of authenticity inthe Bible than in any profane history whatsoever" (Two Apologies, R.Watson, London, 1820, p. 57).
Therefore, our dreams may be the unconscious means by which weare directed on the right path by God:
"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth itnot. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleepfalleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then heopeneth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hidepride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pitand his life from perishing by the sword"—Job 33:14-18(King James Version).
Over 125 references to significant dreams which influenced thecourse of history appear throughout both the Old and New Testamentsof the Bible. Some of these are revealed in the following narratives.
Abraham (Abram)
The story of...
