Posted by Joffre on 1/7/2010, 15:24:56, in reply to "Re: recent reading"
65.0.191.53
This is actually my second trip through the Bible, excluding what I'd read as a kid. I had a Christian upbringing, so I already had a lot familiarity with even the material I hadn't actually read. I think that may be part of the problem I have reading it now, but there are other issues as well. Back in 02, I started reading the KJV in sections: the Pentateuch; Joshua, Judges, and Ruth; Kings I and II; etc. I was looking forward to Job, but I didn't like it when I read it, and I stalled out for several years. In 06, someone suggested I read Ecclesiastes, and I did. Then in November of 08, I started at Song of Solomon. I became annoyed with the KJV and switched to an NIV after Jeremiah. I finished around last August. Around last November, I began again with a Revised English Bible that contains the Apocrypha. I'm into the Apocrypha now, Tobit. I usually read four or five pages a day.
My book is Understanding the Bible by Stephen Harris. If you get a new copy of the latest edition, it's quite expensive. I got a used copy of the last edition. I don't know if Harris would call himself a Christian, but most of the Christians I've grown up around certainly wouldn't. He's not at all a fundamentalist who takes everything in the Bible as literal truth, the word of God. He follows the documentary hypothesis that the Pentateuch appears to be a complilation from four sources. I've not read beyond his discussion of the Pentateuch yet.
In the introductory material, he discusses the different roles of God and finishes that with a discussion of God in the New Testament. He says:
The alleged contrast between the OT's legalistic, judgmental Diety, and the NT's merciful God of grace does not bear up under scrutiny. God is both loving and vengeful in both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, as the Gospel accounts of Jesus' suffering and death demonstrate. In presenting Jesus' story, the Gospel writers maintain the tension between God's compassionate generosity and his unyielding demand for absolute submission to his will, no matter how painful to his human subjects.
A couple years ago, David Plotz on Slate.com read and blogged about the OT. I enjoyed reading that. http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/
There's a nice article on Slate now that calls for a new Agnosticism. http://www.slate.com/id/2258484/
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