The Wisdom of the Beginnings
The Wisdom of the Beginnings is recorded in the ancient Hebrew text called the Torah. It is found in the first ten chapters of the book of Bereishis, which is called Genesis in the Christian Bible. In the ancient world, a culture’s “wisdom of the beginnings” was one of its most valued treasures, and this text has been a valued treasure of Judaism for 2,500 years and Christianity for the past 2,000 years. We brought those traditions with us when we began our studies of the text.
Jeffrey Leynor brought the Jewish background and Jim Myers the Christian understanding. Obviously, since Judaism and Christianity are mutually exclusive religions, there would discover many conflicts between their views when they viewed the text through their Belief Systems. It was clear that another way to view the text was needed, so they chose to use a linguistic approach Jim created several years before. This approach is designed to bring participants together as members of a team created to search for a specific goal -- discover what the words originally meant to their ancient authors.
As we used this method, it became very clear that a lot of things had changed in Judaism and Christianity over the past 2,000 years. However, it became very clear that in the stories recorded in the ancient text, the history of Judaism and the history of Christianity but one thing remained the same – human nature. That was a very important discovery and it led to a major breakthrough in our work. Embedded in the stories of the ancient wisdom text, we discovered a Values System and Standard in which Life is the Highest Value and Top Priority. These are universal values, principles and standard that apply to the actions of humans of Wall Street just like they applied to the actions of a man and woman in a garden located in a place called Eden. They accounts recorded in the text are designed to teach that Values System.
We discovered the benefits of studying with someone who has a different Belief System -- it allows them to share their unique views of the text and help each other examine their Beliefs in light of what the words meant to the ancient author. Needless to say, what we discovered often challenged our Jewish and Christian beliefs. On multiple occasions, we discovered that words we thought were written in the text were simply not there. We had just “believed they were.” Working as team made it much easier to correct our Belief Systems and move on.
We created The Wisdom of the Beginnings Blog to introduce our method of study to the public and share some of the values and principles we discovered. It will give you an idea of what Members discuss in their conversations and Gatherings. We will be adding new information to this blog regularly. We hope you will become a member and participate in those activities with us.