For those who like to measure by counting, Bereshit is the longest of the five books in the Torah, with 20, 512 of the 79,847 Hebrew words; 78,064 of the 304,805 Hebrew letters. For those who like to consider meanings, considering how short Bereshit is, the stories and characters are among the most referenced in Western Civilization. Complex and contradictory and very human, and thus memorial.

Each week in synagogues around the world, a portion of the Torah, called a parashah, is read. After this reading, typically one of the religious leaders, perhaps the Rabbi, or a layperson, provides a lesson, called a D’var Torah or Drasha, using the reading as the basis.

This week, the portion being read was called Vayeira, Genesis chapter 18, verse 1, through chapter 22, verse 24. It covers a lot of ground, starting with Abraham being visited by three strangers and ending with the Akedah, or binding of Isaac.

At Ohr Kodesh, the synagogue where my wife Ellen and I belong, Ellen gave the D’var Torah this week focusing on the lessons learned from the visit of those three visitors and what it should mean to us. While her discussion dealt with people we might know but not interact with in a syngogue, it is applicable to many other situations.

I provide it here for your reading pleasure and to provide some food for thought.

D’var torah shabbat vayera

My personal opinion is that faith is just that, faith. To me, faith does not have to be ‘proven’ by the historicity of religious texts or disproven by the lack of same. My interest has pretty much nothing to do with my Jewish beliefs, but rather curiosity as to whether the historic record is consistent or inconsistent, or has any evidence at all, related to the Bible as history. There has been a lot of new information collected over the last twenty years and the ability to interpret the material already collected has increased enormously. Thus there is lots to read and think about.

Over time, my interests stray a bit from that original focus and have moved to early Christianity and on to the middle ages and Islam, covering what I call the three major Abrahamic religions. When I talk about, and I guess write about, these thoughts I do find myself more cautious when discussing Christianity or Islam, since as a Jew I sometimes feel how my thoughts will be taken, which I try to always disassociate with faith and belief, may be misinterpreted.

A discussion about the Edict of Milan after the jump …

In any event, recently I received an email from the National Defense University, a wonderful institution about their Empires series, http://www.nationalwarcollege.org/EMPIRES/index.htm,  To quote from their web page “The purpose of the “Empires” series is simply to take a sophisticated and explicitly historical look at the experience of past imperial powers, always with an eye towards the United States’ current “imperial” issues.”.

While I intend to attend as many of these as I can, sadly I will not be able to attend the next one because of schedule conflicts.

Since I am easily distracted, I used the excuse of the email to look at past meetings in the series, then looked at the materials from those lectures, then looked at web pages about the topics in the materials, and on and on.

One of the lectures talked about Constantine. Ah-ha, a truly significant figure in Christian history. In fact, I suspect an underestimated such figure. One of the acts that he did was to issue what was called the Edict of Milan in 313. This Edict legalized the worship of Christianity explicitly but the wording was actually an interesting expression of religious freedom. It was issued in the name of Constantinus, Constantine, and Licinius, emperors nominally of the East and West, an organization established by Diocletian before Constantine.

The quote below is from one of the lectures, the emphasis was from the original speaker.

“We, Constantinus and Licinius the Emperors, having met in concord in Milan and having set in order everything which pertains to the common good and public security, are of the opinion that among the various things which we preceived would profit men, or which should be set in order, the first was to be found in the vultivation of religion: we should therefore give both to Christians and to all others free facility to follow the religion which each may desire, so that by this means whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven may be gracious and favourable to us and to all who have been placed under our authority. Therefore we are of the opinion that the following decision is in accordance with sound and true reasoning: that no one who has given his mental assent to the Christian persuasion or to any other which he feels suitable to him should be compelled to deny his conviction, so that the Supreme Godhead (“Summa Divinitas”), whose worship we freely observe, can assist us in all things with his wonted favour and benevolence.”

To me, it sounds amazingly modern.