Kingdom

A link from Seeking Above led me to Brian McLaren's article on Sojourners (sojo.net) called Found In Translation. This reminds me of what I've read somewhere, that kings were to write the Bible themselves, a translation I suppose it meant, to always meditate on it and live by it.
Kingdoms were the norm in Yeshua's day, they no longer are; even when they exist, they don't have the same impact or meaning. Considering other ways to relate what is meant is a really good idea I think but how frightening! Wouldn't want to be wrong...and we can't let the ancient manuscripts fall by the wayside, anything else should be clearly marked as notes and translations.

Considering what a kingdom meant then and what connotes the same idea now got me thinking again about the whole priesthood setup. I've never known anything like that, I've read it in the Bible of course, and I know Catholics and Mormons have that. The whole sacrificial system added in to the idea is bizarre and strange to me. Not that I don't understand the symbolism of sacrificial living, it's the original that is strange. The idea of killing something to make up for someone else's wrongdoing is far out of my experience.
Too bad history is so convoluted, accounts changed, meaning different in one place than in another, names different; all that makes it so difficult to know the originally intended meaning of scripture. That's why the spirit is given.