From Genesis Forward, Man Built Systems
The Bible is tangible and inspired at once. The directness has been the design from the beginning. We have been quietly stepping back since Eden.
I want to walk you through a piece I have been carrying for a long time, and finally got onto the page in a form that holds.
You hold a Bible. The thing in your hands is tangible. Men compiled it, men translated it, men argued for centuries about which scrolls belonged. Their fingerprints are smudged on every margin. That is real, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of dishonesty. And the same Bible is the word of HaShem, inspired and authoritative, the Author still authoring through it. Both at once, not one or the other.
Most readers collapse one side. Either the book becomes “just a book,” a human artifact admired from a respectful distance, or every printed page becomes untouchable, and questioning a comma becomes a heresy charge. Neither posture holds. The work the book is asking of you is to hold both at once. Tangible and inspired. Then to do the harder thing: separate HaShem from the men who carried His words, and walk back to the Author Himself.
The piece turns on two Hebrew words. Davar, the spoken word that brings what is spoken into being. Qarov, near, close, within reach. Deuteronomy 30:14 is the spine: ki-qarov elekha ha-davar me’od, b’ficha u’vilvavcha la’asoto, “for the davar is very qarov to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.” Direct word, near placement, in the mouth and heart of the person reading. That is the architecture. The whole Tanakh keeps reaching for that posture. The whole human story keeps reaching for an alternative.
Watch the pattern start at Sinai. Exodus 20. The Ten Words are spoken. Not delivered through a representative. Not whispered to Moses behind a curtain. V’YHWH medabber el-kol-q’halchem, “And YHWH was speaking to all your assembly.” Direct covenant address from the Author to the assembled people, no human in the seam. Then the people, terrified by the directness, move back. They say to Moses, daber-atah imanu v’nishma’ah, v’al-y’daber imanu Elohim pen-namut, “you speak with us and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” The mediator is not God’s idea. The mediator is the people’s request. The reflex is purposive. The system promises closeness at a distance the nervous system can manage.
Read backward and forward, the same shape repeats. Adam hides in Eden. Israel asks for a king in 1 Samuel 8 and HaShem tells Samuel, they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. Constantine adopts the faith in 313, the early ekklesia gets folded into imperial office, and the directness Yeshua tore the veil to open quietly closes again. Augustine codifies original sin and predestination between 411 and 430. Anselm builds the satisfaction model in 1098. Calvin in 1559 hardens the predestinarian read into a confessional system. Each move was a human in the seam, codifying the seam, scaling the seam. Doctrine has a lineage. The pattern is not their pattern. Ours.
The picture that will not leave me alone is this. We were made with eyes; the eye was made to see directly. And over the centuries, layer by layer, we have grown a kind of scale across the eyeball. Man-made religion is a layer. Man-made theology is a layer. Denominational identity is a layer. Pastoral celebrity culture is a layer. The doctrine-of-the-week subculture is a layer. Each one is thin enough that you cannot feel it forming, opaque enough that once it has settled it changes the color of everything you look at. This is not your scale. This is the scale we all carry. I have my own stack. Pulling layers off mine has been the work of years.
The part I am not willing to bury at the bottom of the page is this. Direct does not mean alone. Malachi 3:16 records those who feared YHWH speaking each man to his neighbor, plural, mutual, each-to-each, a book of remembrance kept before HaShem. Acts 17:11 commends the Bereans for examining the Scriptures daily. The b’chavruta posture, two readers in front of the same Author, is in the design. Direct access is the architecture; collective reasoning is the daily practice. Both are scriptural. Both are yours.
And the sharpest edge, before we close. The veil was torn for a reason. When the curtain in the Temple ripped at Yeshua’s death, that was not a footnote. That was HaShem dramatizing the end of mediated approach. In the two thousand years since, on both sides of the post-Temple split, mankind has been quietly sewing the curtain back. On the rabbinic side, layered authority structures, codified halakhah, and teacher-to-teacher succession became the buffer. On the Gentile side, ecclesiastical hierarchy, confessional gatekeeping, and the clerical class became another buffer. Two languages, one reflex. Same Sinai moment, scaled for two millennia. That is the architecture we have actually been living inside, on both sides of the family.
Read the full essay on sergiodesoto.com: God Said Direct. Man Built Systems.
Shalom v’shalvah, your brother in the Way,
Sergio
Well-said and -reasoned. The very same personal and institutional forces that have spun these layers, however, mean that actual re-direction is unlikely. As always, it's an individual's jailbreak. Kindred spirits may assemble later.