We're exploring a new theme on the podcast called the anointed. Anointing is taking oil,

smearing it on someone, and it has a very specific purpose. Oil marks a personal

place that's a bridge between heaven and earth. Cool, but why oil? Why not wine? Let's

go on. So what we're going to trace down in this conversation is there's a recipe

for special anointing oil. You find it in the Torah. The recipe for anointing oil is given

by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and it's not just oil. It's oil infused with pungent,

aromatic spices, and it makes this incredible perfume. How creations packed with these plants

that if you just ate the leaf, you would not enjoy it, but you crush it, pulverize it,

or soak it, and then it can infuse this with the taste that just is like otherworldly.

What I think the biblical authors want us to see in this anointing oil is the life of Eden condensed

into a little dense liquid. The life of Eden begins with the water of life, filling the dry ground

and forming the human, and then God's spirits fills the human. The water and spirit,

marking humanity as a place where heaven and earth are one. And so to remember that place,

or even to designate a place to be like that, we anoint it with oil. There's moments when

through liquid and spirit, a person of place is marked as a special portal between heaven and earth

to bring about that reunion of heaven and earth in some way. And I think that's where

all of a sudden and all these themes come crashing together of the liquid life and the spirit.

Our joint images, and that's what anointing means in the Bible.

Today Tim McEy and I continue exploring the theme of the anointing, looking at the symbol

of oil in the Bible. I'm John Collins and you're listening to Bible Project Podcast.

Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

Hey Tim. Hey John, hello. Hi. Hey, we're just kind of right at the beginning of a new conversation.

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