Daily Bible Reading, Thoughts, and a prayer for January 3rd 2010

Today is January 3^rd; welcome to the Daily Audio Bible; my name is Brian (Greg typing) and we are engrossed in our first week of the year.  So were sort of just pushing out of the dock; just getting ready to set sail on the adventure really of a lifetime, everyday, seven days a week, through the Bible, all the way in one year.  I’ve already hyped it up enough to say it changes everything so let’s just sail and head towards the sunset for a while and see what happens.

We are reading in the book of Genesis from The New Living Translation Bible this week.   Genesis 5:1-7:24 today.  We will continue with Matthew 3:7-4:11, Psalm 3:1-8 and 1:10-19.

Genesis 5:1-7:24

 ¹ This is the written account of the descendants of Adam. When God created human beings, he made them to be like himself. ² He created them male and female, and he blessed them and called them “human.”

 ³ When Adam was 130 years old, he became the father of a son who was just like him—in his very image. He named his son Seth. ⁴ After the birth of Seth, Adam lived another 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ⁵ Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.
 ⁶ When Seth was 105 years old, he became the father of Enosh. ⁷ After the birth of Enosh, Seth lived another 807 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ⁸ Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.
 ⁹ When Enosh was 90 years old, he became the father of Kenan. ¹⁰ After the birth of Kenan, Enosh lived another 815 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹¹ Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died.
 ¹² When Kenan was 70 years old, he became the father of Mahalalel. ¹³ After the birth of Mahalalel, Kenan lived another 840 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹⁴ Kenan lived 910 years, and then he died.
 ¹⁵ When Mahalalel was 65 years old, he became the father of Jared. ¹⁶ After the birth of Jared, Mahalalel lived another 830 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹⁷ Mahalalel lived 895 years, and then he died.
 ¹⁸ When Jared was 162 years old, he became the father of Enoch. ¹⁹ After the birth of Enoch, Jared lived another 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ²⁰ Jared lived 962 years, and then he died.
 ²¹ When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah. ²² After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived in close fellowship with God for another 300 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ²³ Enoch lived 365 years, ²⁴ walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him.
 ²⁵ When Methuselah was 187 years old, he became the father of Lamech. ²⁶ After the birth of Lamech, Methuselah lived another 782 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ²⁷ Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died.
 ²⁸ When Lamech was 182 years old, he became the father of a son. ²⁹ Lamech named his son Noah, for he said, “May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labor of farming this ground that the Lord has cursed.” ³⁰ After the birth of Noah, Lamech lived another 595 years, and he had other sons and daughters. ³¹ Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died.
 ³² By the time Noah was 500 years old, he was the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

 ¹ Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. ² The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. ³ Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”

 ⁴ In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.

 ⁵ The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. ⁶ So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. ⁷ And the Lord said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” ⁸ But Noah found favor with the Lord.

 ⁹ This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. ¹⁰ Noah was the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

 ¹¹ Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. ¹² God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. ¹³ So God said to Noah, “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth!

 ¹⁴ “Build a large boat from cypress wood and waterproof it with tar, inside and out. Then construct decks and stalls throughout its interior. ¹⁵ Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. ¹⁶ Leave an 18-inch opening below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the side, and build three decks inside the boat—lower, middle, and upper.

 ¹⁷ “Look! I am about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die. ¹⁸ But I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat—you and your wife and your sons and their wives. ¹⁹ Bring a pair of every kind of animal—a male and a female—into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood. ²⁰ Pairs of every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground, will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹ And be sure to take on board enough food for your family and for all the animals.”

 ²² So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him.

¹ When everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous. ² Take with you seven pairs—male and female—of each animal I have approved for eating and for sacrifice, and take one pair of each of the others. ³ Also take seven pairs of every kind of bird. There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood. ⁴ Seven days from now I will make the rains pour down on the earth. And it will rain for forty days and forty nights, until I have wiped from the earth all the living things I have created.”

 ⁵ So Noah did everything as the Lord commanded him.

 ⁶ Noah was 600 years old when the flood covered the earth. ⁷ He went on board the boat to escape the flood—he and his wife and his sons and their wives. ⁸ With them were all the various kinds of animals—those approved for eating and for sacrifice and those that were not—along with all the birds and the small animals that scurry along the ground. ⁹ They entered the boat in pairs, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ After seven days, the waters of the flood came and covered the earth.

 ¹¹ When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. ¹² The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights.

 ¹³ That very day Noah had gone into the boat with his wife and his sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and their wives. ¹⁴ With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of animal—domestic and wild, large and small—along with birds of every kind. ¹⁵ Two by two they came into the boat, representing every living thing that breathes. ¹⁶ A male and female of each kind entered, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them.

 ¹⁷ For forty days the floodwaters grew deeper, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth. ¹⁸ As the waters rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface. ¹⁹ Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, ²⁰ rising more than twenty-two feet above the highest peaks. ²¹ All the living things on earth died—birds, domestic animals, wild animals, small animals that scurry along the ground, and all the people. ²² Everything that breathed and lived on dry land died. ²³ God wiped out every living thing on the earth—people, livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and the birds of the sky. All were destroyed. The only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat. ²⁴ And the floodwaters covered the earth for 150 days.

Matthew 3:7-4:11

 ⁷ But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee God’s coming wrath? ⁸ Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. ⁹ Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. ¹⁰ Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.

 ¹¹ “I baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹² He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.”

 ¹³ Then Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. ¹⁴ But John tried to talk him out of it. “I am the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he said, “so why are you coming to me?”

 ¹⁵ But Jesus said, “It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.” So John agreed to baptize him.

 ¹⁶ After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. ¹⁷ And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.”

 ¹ Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. ² For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.

 ³ During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”

 ⁴ But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say,

   ‘People do not live by bread alone,
      but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

 ⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, ⁶ and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say,

   ‘He will order his angels to protect you.
   And they will hold you up with their hands
      so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’”

 ⁷ Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the Lord your God.’”

 ⁸ Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹ “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”

 ¹⁰ “Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say,

   ‘You must worship the Lord your God
      and serve only him.’”

 ¹¹ Then the devil went away, and angels came and took care of Jesus.

Psalms – The Hebrew word for Psalms is Tehillim; praises it means, it’s a collection of 150 Praises and Hymns, congregational songs, poems of worship.  It’s basically five books in one and they are classified by wro wrote them, or their theme, or their purpose.  Some of them give praises to God.  Others speak of his Character or things that He’s done.  Some are songs of lament or repentance.  While others are songs of Thanksgiving; no matter the circumstance, the Book pf Psalms is meant to bring praise, glory, adoration, reverence and honor to God, in all circumstances, for all purposes.  Psalms is a beautiful book containing some of the most heartfelt musical poetry ever written, and every conceivable human motions explored in the Psalms.  There are hearts, cries that are so passionate that you can feel them no matter when they were written.  And yet; there are some exalted high experiences where the Glory of the Lord is present.  King David of Israel was a master musician and he composed most of the Psalms.  And though we have a large amount of information about David; we will see him much as we read through the Old Testament.  The Psalms reveals his heart they give us a context for his actions, and what we find is, he is absolutely human, and the ebb and flow of his humanity is always present in his compositions.  He’s not the only one who wrote the Psalms; other writers including Solomon, the sons of Cora, Aseph, Ethan, and there are a number that are anonymous or the author is unknown.  But the purpose remains the same.  The Psalms were meant to rally the people and to enrich the worship experience of Israel.  And these songs would have been sung in public and in private as people went about their daily lives.  They’ve stood the test of time for we sing and quote them still; so their power and their enduring beauty is unmatched, their absolutely unrivaled in literature.  Scholars believe the Psalms were written and composed over a very long period of time, between about 950 BC until 165 or 170 BC during three major periods in the life of the children of Israel all of which we cover as we read the Old Testament.  The first would have been the reign of David and Solomon; the second would have been when the children of Israel were taken into exile in Babylon.  And the third would contain writings from the time they were freed and allowed to go back out of exile and re-establish their culture.  So we have a long time span; a lot of culture points happen in almost a thousand years.  But the Psalms are very cohesive in their purpose of bringing glory and honor to God in a very authentic and beautiful way. 

Psalms  3:1-8 ¹ O Lord, I have so many enemies;
      so many are against me.
 ² So many are saying,
      “God will never rescue him!”                       
 ³ But you, O Lord, are a shield around me;
      you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.
 ⁴ I cried out to the Lord,
      and he answered me from his holy mountain.
 ⁵ I lay down and slept,
      yet I woke up in safety,
      for the Lord was watching over me.
 ⁶ I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies
      who surround me on every side.

 ⁷ Arise, O Lord!
      Rescue me, my God!
   Slap all my enemies in the face!
      Shatter the teeth of the wicked!
 ⁸ Victory comes from you, O Lord.
      May you bless your people.

Proverbs 1:10-19¹⁰ My child, if sinners entice you,
      turn your back on them!
 ¹¹ They may say, “Come and join us.
      Let’s hide and kill someone!
      Just for fun, let’s ambush the innocent!
 ¹² Let’s swallow them alive, like the grave;
      let’s swallow them whole, like those who go down to the pit of death.
 ¹³ Think of the great things we’ll get!
      We’ll fill our houses with all the stuff we take.
 ¹⁴ Come, throw in your lot with us;
      we’ll all share the loot.”

 ¹⁵ My child, don’t go along with them!
      Stay far away from their paths.
 ¹⁶ They rush to commit evil deeds.
      They hurry to commit murder.
 ¹⁷ If a bird sees a trap being set,
      it knows to stay away.
 ¹⁸ But these people set an ambush for themselves;
      they are trying to get themselves killed.
 ¹⁹ Such is the fate of all who are greedy for money;
      it robs them of life.

Daily Bible Reading, Thoughts, and a prayer

Thoughts from Prayer for January 3rd 2010 Bible reading

So we have Noah to thank for an awful lot; here God created Man and all of the living creatures, this beautiful, beautiful; world and all we have to do is step out our door and look around to understand the beauty of God’s creation.  But go all the way back to the beginning and imagine the fresh art of God in His creation; and yet He put Man in this world created in His image with a free will.  And right away; right away he uses that free will to step away, to take control of his own destiny, and in doing that mankind systematically became worse and worse as they stepped further and further away from God.  And it got to the point where God is saying I am sorry I ever did this.  He’s looking at this beautiful creation he made and he’s sorry He did it; in fact, it goes deeper than that.

The Bible says it broke His heart.  And si He nakes a decision; I’m wiping it all out, everything I made, it’s Mine, it’s beautiful and I loved it, it’s broken my heart, but I can’t let it continue to turn black, I’m not going to let it turn from utter beauty to utter ugly.  And when you get to the end of this paragraph where He is making this decision and there’s one sentence that saves us.  But Noah found favor with God; and then we read the story of how God saved mankind because of Noah’s righteousness.  So; sure, we have a lot to thank Noah for but this gives us a clue about God and we’ll see this more than once in the Bible.  God relents; He changes his mind about destroying everything and though Noah’s righteousness saves a remnant and starts over again, and this theme repeats itself over and over and over people left to their own devices eventually destroy themselves, but those who are righteous are left and God brings them together and starts over again. 

What this really means is; everything we do, how we live our lives before the Lord matters a lot.  If Noah hadn’t been the righteous one as well we wouldn’t be reading through any scripture today.  God would have wiped the world out.  But Noah found favor with the Lord.  So there is no way that we can take it lightly that it matters that we find favor with the Lord, because we don’t know what is riding on us in the world that we live in.  And as we go through the scriptures we are going to find out over and over again that it matters deeply what we do, it matters deeply what we say. 

If there is one thing the Bible will do for us this year it will wake us up to how things really are; and were going to get to the end of this year going “I have slept through far too much of life” I thought what I saw was all there was, and I have found my comfort in my HD TV, when a raging battle for my very heart and soul and the heart and soul of my wife or husband the heart and soul of my children was raging and warring all around me.  So I kind of want to stamp it in stone right here at the top of the year.  It matters the lives that we live; God is calling us into a life that is epic, not a life that settles for anything, but favor with the Lord.

Prayer for January 3rd 2010

(Prayer) So Heavenly Father we thank You for Your mercy.  We glory in the way You save the righteous and start over.  We thank You for Your patience with Your people.  And God it is our desire right now at the top of the year.  But the desire will not change; come Holy Spirit, come lead us into all truth, give us the eyes of the Kingdom, let us see things as they are, let us live lives of purpose because we know what’s going on, and we know that You have placed us at this point in history for a reason, it’s not random, we have an irreplaceable role to play in the lives of the world that we live with those inside our sphere of influence, so come Lord, lead the way, we are following.  We pray this in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Have a great day.  And I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

DAB January 3 – 2010

Daily Audio Bible 2010 by Brian Hardin

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible; today is the second day of January my name is Brian (Greg typing) it’s good to be with you.  It’s going to take a week for us to get into the flow of things, unless you have already been here and you’re sort of continuing on, but for all of you who are new it will take a week and we’ll get all settled in and moving forward but welcome today to the Daily Audio Bible for 2010.  As I said yesterday since we started four books on the same day and it’s sort of the custom around here to give a little overview of each book as we come to it.  We did the book of Genesis yesterday; so when we come to the New Testament reading for today I’ll give us a little overview on the book of Matthew, but for now we are reading from the New Living Translation this week.

Daily Bible Reading, Thoughts, and a prayer for January 2nd 2010

Today we are reading from The New Living Translation Bible this week.  We’ll begin today from Genesis 3:1-4:26.  We will continue with Matthew 2:13-3:6, Psalm 2:1-12 and Proverbs 1:7-9.

Genesis 3:1-4:26

 ¹ The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

 ² “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. ³ “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”

 ⁴ “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. ⁵ “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

 ⁶ The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. ⁷ At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

 ⁸ When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. ⁹ Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

 ¹⁰ He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

 ¹¹ “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”

 ¹² The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

 ¹³ Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?”

   “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

 ¹⁴ Then the Lord God said to the serpent,

   “Because you have done this, you are cursed
      more than all animals, domestic and wild.
   You will crawl on your belly,
      groveling in the dust as long as you live.
 ¹⁵ And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
      and between your offspring and her offspring.
   He will strike your head,
      and you will strike his heel.”

 ¹⁶ Then he said to the woman,

   “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
      and in pain you will give birth.
   And you will desire to control your husband,
      but he will rule over you.”

 ¹⁷ And to the man he said,

   “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
      whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
   the ground is cursed because of you.
      All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
 ¹⁸ It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
      though you will eat of its grains.
 ¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
      will you have food to eat
   until you return to the ground
      from which you were made.
   For you were made from dust,
      and to dust you will return.”

 ²⁰ Then the man—Adam—named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all who live. ²¹ And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.

 ²² Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!” ²³ So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. ²⁴ After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

¹ Now Adam had sexual relations with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, “With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!” ² Later she gave birth to his brother and named him Abel.

   When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd, while Cain cultivated the ground. ³ When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. ⁴ Abel also brought a gift—the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, ⁵ but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.

 ⁶ “Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? ⁷ You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”

 ⁸ One day Cain suggested to his brother, “Let’s go out into the fields.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him.

 ⁹ Afterward the Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?”

   “I don’t know,” Cain responded. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”

 ¹⁰ But the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! ¹¹ Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother’s blood. ¹² No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work! From now on you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”

 ¹³ Cain replied to the Lord, “My punishment is too great for me to bear! ¹⁴ You have banished me from the land and from your presence; you have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me!”

 ¹⁵ The Lord replied, “No, for I will give a sevenfold punishment to anyone who kills you.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who might try to kill him. ¹⁶ So Cain left the Lord’s presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

 ¹⁷ Cain had sexual relations with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Then Cain founded a city, which he named Enoch, after his son. ¹⁸ Enoch had a son named Irad. Irad became the father of Mehujael. Mehujael became the father of Methushael. Methushael became the father of Lamech.

 ¹⁹ Lamech married two women. The first was named Adah, and the second was Zillah. ²⁰ Adah gave birth to Jabal, who was the first of those who raise livestock and live in tents. ²¹ His brother’s name was Jubal, the first of all who play the harp and flute. ²² Lamech’s other wife, Zillah, gave birth to a son named Tubal-cain. He became an expert in forging tools of bronze and iron. Tubal-cain had a sister named Naamah. ²³ One day Lamech said to his wives,

   “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
      listen to me, you wives of Lamech.
   I have killed a man who attacked me,
      a young man who wounded me.
 ²⁴ If someone who kills Cain is punished seven times,
      then the one who kills me will be punished seventy-seven times!”

²⁵ Adam had sexual relations with his wife again, and she gave birth to another son. She named him Seth, for she said, “God has granted me another son in place of Abel, whom Cain killed.” ²⁶ When Seth grew up, he had a son and named him Enosh. At that time people first began to worship the Lord by name.

The book of Matthew is one of the four Gospels.  And the Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Each give us the account of Christ’s life.  Matthew was one of Jesus twelve Apostles and so he had first hand knowledge about what he was writing about.  He was a firsthand witness to what he recorded.  Matthew was a tax collector so he wasn’t the most liked person socially.  But when Jesus called him and the Rabbi went by and called him.  He left it all at once.  So; from that perspective this is a guy writing this stuff down that gave up everything.  He gave the life he new previous in exchange for this leap of faith to follow Jesus, believing he was the Son of God.  Scholars believe Matthew was written somewhere between 50 and 60 AD and it’s aimed at Jewish people who have become Christians.  It uses the Old Testament in quotation more than any of the other Gospels do.  The Old Testament of course would have been the only Holy Scriptures for the Jewish people at that time.  And Matthew works hard in an attempt to show Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Mosaic law.  Alright; it’s a Gospel of Jesus, so we get to know Jesus pretty well.  We get to understand his style.  There are over twenty Parables in the book of Matthew that will encounter.  These are stories that Jesus used to illustrate a greater point.  Jesus often used stories that would contain emotion and feeling and visuals that would illustrate something far richer and deeper.  And it’s in the book of Matthew that we first encounter the rumblings of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that it is here, and that it is now.  And Jesus is its King.

Matthew 2:13-3:6

 ¹³ After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

 ¹⁴ That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, ¹⁵ and they stayed there until Herod’s death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: “I called my Son out of Egypt.”

 ¹⁶ Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance. ¹⁷ Herod’s brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

 ¹⁸ “A cry was heard in Ramah—
      weeping and great mourning.
   Rachel weeps for her children,
      refusing to be comforted,
      for they are dead.”

 ¹⁹ When Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. ²⁰ “Get up!” the angel said. “Take the child and his mother back to the land of Israel, because those who were trying to kill the child are dead.”

 ²¹ So Joseph got up and returned to the land of Israel with Jesus and his mother. ²² But when he learned that the new ruler of Judea was Herod’s son Archelaus, he was afraid to go there. Then, after being warned in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee. ²³ So the family went and lived in a town called Nazareth. This fulfilled what the prophets had said: “He will be called a Nazarene.”

 ¹ In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, ² “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” ³ The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said,

   “He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
   ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
      Clear the road for him!’”

 ⁴ John’s clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁵ People from Jerusalem and from all of Judea and all over the Jordan Valley went out to see and hear John. ⁶ And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River.

 ⁴ But the one who rules in heaven laughs.
      The Lord scoffs at them.
 ⁵ Then in anger he rebukes them,
      terrifying them with his fierce fury.
 ⁶ For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne
      in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.”

 ⁷ The king proclaims the Lord’s decree:
   “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son.
      Today I have become your Father.
 ⁸ Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance,
      the whole earth as your possession.
 ⁹ You will break them with an iron rod
      and smash them like clay pots.’”

 ¹⁰ Now then, you kings, act wisely!
      Be warned, you rulers of the earth!
 ¹¹ Serve the Lord with reverent fear,
      and rejoice with trembling.
 ¹² Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry,
      and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities—
   for his anger flares up in an instant.
      But what joy for all who take refuge in him!

 ⁸ My child, listen when your father corrects you.
      Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction.
 ⁹ What you learn from them will crown you with grace
      and be a chain of honor around your neck.

Daily Bible Reading, Thoughts, and a prayer

Thoughts from Prayer for January 2nd 2010 Bible reading

So it all goes up in flames today in the book of Genesis.  Sin enters the world through mankind and we are a fallen people ever since.  The Bible is that story.  Today mankind was kicked out of the Garden of Eden; where the tree of life was available to them, they were created perfectly, and what’s interesting to note is that they were not created to have the knowledge of good and evil.  We were created as a people to only know fellowship with God.  Our perfect state is not to have an awareness of anything else.  But Eve; reaching up and taking the fruit and taking a bite and giving it to her husband, and him taking a bite brought the knowledge of good and evil, and disobedience and rebellion into the world, and so we got what we chose, knowledge. 

The knowledge of good and evil; and we traded that for the tree of life.  We traded life for knowledge and we’ve been trying to figure out life ever since, with this knowledge that we never needed in the first place.  What we need is what we were created to have; a relationship, intimately with God, no second guessing, no demanding control from time to time believing that we know better.  Nothing but an eternity; in beauty with God as our father, but God see’s that they know have the knowledge of good and evil, and He say’s well, we can’t leave them in the Garden with the tree of life where they will live forever.  I can’t leave mankind in a sinful state; separated from me, growing ever farther from me for eternity, so He kicks them out of the Garden.

In the very end of the Bible; in December when we get there, were going to read the book of revelation, and were going to see a new Heaven and a new Earth created with a tree of life.  Everything else in the Bible is a walk between this Garden that mankind was just removed from, to that one, where everything is restored to perfection, and we’ll read some great stories along the way.  But it’s important to remember that we are a part of that story; and we are walking forward to that day as we are sanctified or as we are made more and more like Christ each day.

Prayer for January 2nd 2010

(Prayer) Heavenly Father we thank You; we thank You again for Your Word, for it reveals Your heart.  It gives us a context for who You are; and although you cannot be contained in a book, You have put life in this book, and it instructs and guides us into a ever deepening relationship with You.  So we invite You Holy Spirit as we do most days to come and lead us deeper into the truth.  Lead us deeper into Jesus today.  Guide our steps, give us clarity of purpose, let us begin this year strong so that we will finish it even stronger.  We pray this in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Have a great day.  And I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

DAB January 2 – 2010

Find them here. What a bunch of nutty dipshits. Following is my message to them:

“Dear Richard,

“Since you felt compelled to put your brochure on my car, I feel equally compelled to share my thoughts on your brochure and
corresponding site.

“What a fantastic pile of bullshit. The funny thing is, I don’t know which is the bigger pile of bullshit. Is it your mission of reuniting the supposed tribes of Israel? Is it the fact that you not only take the Pentateuch seriously, but also the Volume of Hogwash, Book of Mormon? Or is it that you honestly expect to rival an organization like the Roman Catholic Church by soliciting on-line donations and selling t-shirts?

“I suppose yours is a better waste of time than strapping yourself up with bombs and blowing up buildings and people, but your vision of the future world is just as frightening.

“You have not one shred of evidence for your claims. You have no logical rationality behind your goals. You might as well solicit funds to bring the return of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Leprechaun King.

“May your efforts fail gloriously,

“Best,

“Anton.”

Daily Audio Bible 2010 Intoruction by Brian Hardin

Today is January 1^st 2010!  Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible my name is Brian (Greg Typing) and I will be spending the next 365 days without stop and without fail together as we take the adventure of a lifetime together though the Bible, cover to cover.  If this is your first day here in the Daily Audio Bible family WELCOME, if you’ve come on in the last two months and figure 2010 is the year well welcome.  And if this is your second year, second, third, or forth, or even fifth time through welcome!  Every time a year closes a new one opens, and that is sort of stating the obvious but every year that we start a new Daily Audio Bible it grows to be a tight knit family and God speaks very specific things through his Word that don’t necessarily mimic what was spoken the year before.  Every year is different and so I look forward with anticipation to seeing what God does among us this year. 

One thing is certain.  Stick to this and you won’t come to December 31^st looking at just about anything the same.  That’s the transformational power of the Bible, and although I can’t explain it I can describe it and the best way to describe it is that it re-orients the way that we look at the world that we live in and so being re-oriented to looking at things through the eyes of the Kingdom of God well it changes just about everything because we are looking at circumstance, relationships, longings, desires, goals, and dreams through a new lens.  And it’s really quite beautiful as you will soon find out.  What you are about to do is to ingest into your life on a daily basis “and a good chunk” the Word of God.  The Holy Scriptures that God has inspired to lead and direct our lives; but it’s not this book of mystical wisdom that is very hard to come into a relationship with. 

Actually if you can just orient yourself now to the fact that the Bible is something that you are coming into a friendship with, it is your cheerleader, it is your counselor, it is a guide, and it is leading you into life.  This will give you a much better context; you also have to understand that this is the story of God; and His relationship to mankind, of which we are a part.  And you will find very quickly that this is our story.  The things that happen in the Bible are not exceptions to the rule. They are the examples of how to live, in broad terms you will see throughout the Old Testament the story of a God who is deeply passionate for his people, a jealous lover, a gentle father, a fierce warrior, the Lord of heavens armies and our creator.

You will also see the fall of man and the ebb and flow of mankind trying to reconcile what was lost in the Garden of Eden when man fell into sin, and traded life for knowledge.  We come to the New Testament and we see what great lengths God went through to rescue us, his people, and so if you will take all of this into context you are a part of this story and this story that is the Bible is revealing to you the heart of the one that created you and who longs for an initiate relationship with you.  Then you’ll be well on the path.  So here’s what we’ll do.  Each time we come to a new book I will give just a very brief overview of what the book is about.  So we have an orientation and a context for it, as we go through it,

Since were starting four books The book of Genesis, the Book of Matthew, the book of Psalms, and the book of Proverbs all today, we’ll take four days in a row to introduce each book beginning today with the book of Genesis.  So; Genesis is not only the first book of the Bible, it’s also the first book in a series of books knows as the Pentateuch, the Pentateuch is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and although Genesis does not reveal the name of it’s author traditionally this has been attributed to Moses.   Obviously what’s written in the book of Genesis is pre-Moses; Moses wasn’t alive to write all of this down first hand.  A lot of the early scripture was passed down through oral tradition and it’s thought that Moses was the first to collect these together in written form.  But even Jesus believed that Moses was the author of the book.  Most of time we think of Genesis and we think of the creation of man and the world and all that we know and although this is a key part, Genesis covers more history and is much more of a sweeping epic than any other book of the Bible.  It covers about 2500 years.  Actually Genesis covers more time than the rest of the Old Testament put together.  So we start at the creation and go all the way up to the children of Israel arrive in Egypt and begin to grow into this mass of people that are becoming a nation.  So inside the first eleven chapters of Genesis we cover a couple of thousand years and a couple of thousand miles and then we slow things down and cover a couple of hundred more years to the end of the book and so we begin with Genesis

Daily Bible Reading, Thoughts, and a prayer for January 1st

This is the Daily Bible Reading, thoughts, and prayer starter for today.  Today we are reading from The New Living Translation Bible this week.  We’ll begin today from Genesis 1:1-2:25.  We will continue with Matthew 1:1-2:12, Psalm 1:1-6 and Proverbs 1:1-6

Genesis 1:1-2:25

 ¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

 ³ Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.”

   And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.

 ⁶ Then God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.” ⁷ And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens. ⁸ God called the space “sky.”
   And evening passed and morning came, marking the second day.

 ⁹ Then God said, “Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.” And that is what happened. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground “land” and the waters “seas.” And God saw that it was good. ¹¹ Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.” And that is what happened. ¹² The land produced vegetation—all sorts of seed-bearing plants, and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
 ¹³ And evening passed and morning came, marking the third day.

 ¹⁴ Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them mark off the seasons, days, and years. ¹⁵ Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. ¹⁶ God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
 ¹⁹ And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.

 ²⁰ Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” ²¹ So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² Then God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply. Let the fish fill the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”
 ²³ And evening passed and morning came, marking the fifth day.

 ²⁴ Then God said, “Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind—livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.” And that is what happened. ²⁵ God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
 ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

 ²⁷ So God created human beings in his own image.
      In the image of God he created them;
      male and female he created them.

 ²⁸ Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

 ²⁹ Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food.³⁰ And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life.” And that is what happened.
 ³¹ Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
   And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.

 ¹ So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. ² On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. ³ And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.

 ⁴ This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.

 When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, ⁵ neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. ⁶ Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. ⁷ Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.

 ⁸ Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. ⁹ The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

 ¹⁰ A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches. ¹¹ The first branch, called the Pishon, flowed around the entire land of Havilah, where gold is found. ¹² The gold of that land is exceptionally pure; aromatic resin and onyx stone are also found there. ¹³ The second branch, called the Gihon, flowed around the entire land of Cush. ¹⁴ The third branch, called the Tigris, flowed east of the land of Asshur. The fourth branch is called the Euphrates.

 ¹⁵ The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. ¹⁶ But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—¹⁷ except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”

 ¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” ¹⁹ So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. ²⁰ He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him.

 ²¹ So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. ²² Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.

 ²³ “At last!” the man exclaimed.

   “This one is bone from my bone,
      and flesh from my flesh!
   She will be called ‘woman,’
      because she was taken from ‘man.’”

 ²⁴ This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

 ²⁵ Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

Matthew 1:1-2:12

 ¹ This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham:

 ² Abraham was the father of Isaac.
   Isaac was the father of Jacob.
   Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.
 ³ Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar).
   Perez was the father of Hezron.
   Hezron was the father of Ram.
 ⁴ Ram was the father of Amminadab.
   Amminadab was the father of Nahshon.
   Nahshon was the father of Salmon.
 ⁵ Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab).
   Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth).
   Obed was the father of Jesse.
 ⁶ Jesse was the father of King David.
   David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah).
 ⁷ Solomon was the father of Rehoboam.
   Rehoboam was the father of Abijah.
   Abijah was the father of Asa.
 ⁸ Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat.
   Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram.
   Jehoram was the father of Uzziah.
 ⁹ Uzziah was the father of Jotham.
   Jotham was the father of Ahaz.
   Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah.
 ¹⁰ Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh.
   Manasseh was the father of Amon.
   Amon was the father of Josiah.
 ¹¹ Josiah was the father of Jehoiachin and his brothers (born at the time of the exile to Babylon).
 ¹² After the Babylonian exile:
   Jehoiachin was the father of Shealtiel.
   Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel.
 ¹³ Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud.
   Abiud was the father of Eliakim.
   Eliakim was the father of Azor.
 ¹⁴ Azor was the father of Zadok.
   Zadok was the father of Akim.
   Akim was the father of Eliud.
 ¹⁵ Eliud was the father of Eleazar.
   Eleazar was the father of Matthan.
   Matthan was the father of Jacob.
 ¹⁶ Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
   Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah.

 ¹⁷ All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah.

 ¹⁸ This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

 ²⁰ As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. ²¹ And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

 ²² All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

 ²³ “Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
      She will give birth to a son,
   and they will call him Immanuel,
      which means ‘God is with us.’”

 ²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

   Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, ² “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”

 ³ King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. ⁴ He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?”

 ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they said, “for this is what the prophet wrote:

 ⁶ ‘And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah,
      are not least among the ruling cities of Judah,
   for a ruler will come from you
      who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.’”

 ⁷ Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. ⁸ Then he told them, “Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him, too!”

 ⁹ After this interview the wise men went their way. And the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! ¹¹ They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

 ¹² When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.

 ⁵ Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser.
      Let those with understanding receive guidance
 ⁶ by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables,
      the words of the wise and their riddles.

Daily Bible Reading, Thoughts, and a prayer

(Prayer) Heavenly Father we come before You thanking You for Your word and consecrating this year 2010 to You.  We commit ourselves to Your will, Your Word, and Your ways, we commit ourselves to being faithful to what is in Your Word.  We commit ourselves to being faithful to staying in Your Word every single day this year. We thank You in advance for all You will do in our lives this year.  We thank You for planting us at this time in history of all time, You have selected us to live our lives now, and there is a reason for that.  And we thank You for further clarifying that as the days go by, 

Holy Spirit we invite You on the first day of thus year, come, come Holy Spirit, lead, direct, guide, discipline and comfort us every day.  We give You full access to our hearts, Nothing us is limits to You.  The things we’ve kept hidden in our closets and attic’s and under rugs in our lives we’re giving You permission to begin the process of cleaning.  Were giving You permission to wash us with Your word and guide us from the inside out.  We ask You God; here and now, for irreversible change in the year 2010, We pray God that we will never be able to return to what we was before our encounter this year with Your Word everyday. 

We pray God that this changes us in ways that cannot be changed back; we ask You to transform us into the people we were created to be, doing the things that we were created to do, and we give You permission to take us on one whatever path that needs to look like.  Were laying down our Agenda, and were laying down our assumptions of what life is supposed to look like, and yielding to You, and understanding that we are on the greatest adventure of life walking with God.  And so we acknowledge that we don’t know everything we think we know, and we bow our knee to the fact that You are the Sovereign Lord. 

There is nothing that You don’t know, and You have invited us into intimacy with You.  You have invited us into a relationship with You, and so by all means we accept, understanding fully that requires a surrendering to our personal Agenda and will, But knowing that Your will and Your ways are perfect and perfect for us.  And so right at the outset we commit ourselves to You knowing that if we don’t have that mindset, if we don’t walk into this year knowing that were not trying to make the Bible work for us, and fit into our mold, and be what we need it to be.  But rather; we are transforming ourselves to live the life the Bible offers, we will have completely missed the point altogether. 

So come Jesus; You are invited, we love You, we adore You, we thank You for what You’ve done for us.  How you’ve invaded Earth to rescue us, come, it’s time, and were ready, and we ask You to bless this year with all truth.  In the name of Jesus we pray these things.  Amen.

Have a great day.  And I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

DAB January 1 – 2010

[As stated in my About, I want to tell the world about the Orthodox faith. Up to this point, my blogs have somewhat unorganized to do that. Now God has given me a more coorinated way to do that.  I will be sharing articles from the Orthodox Faith.  

This will be a long series, but I trust it will be profitable to you in learning about the Orthodox faith. From time to time, I will also provide addition blogs of interest.  - Herman Art]

Law

The first part of the Bible is called the Torah, which means the Law. It is also called the Pentateuch which means the five books. These books are also called the Books of Moses. They include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The events described in these books, from the calling of Abraham to the death of Moses, probably took place sometime in the second millennium before Christ (2000-1200 BC).

The Book of Genesis contains the pre-history of the people of Israel. It begins with the story of the creation of the world, the fall of Adam and Eve and the subsequent, quite sinful, history of the children of Adam. It then tells of God’s call and promise of salvation to Abraham, and the story of Isaac and Jacob, whom God named Israel, ending with the settlement of the twelve tribes of Israel — the families of the twelve sons of Jacob — in Egypt, during the time of Joseph’s favor with the Egyptian Pharaoh. In traditional Church language, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are called the patriarchs.

The Book of Exodus relates the deliverance of the people of Israel by Moses from the slavery in Egypt to which they were subjected after the death of Joseph. It tells of the revelation of God to Moses of His divine name of Yahweh — I AM WHO I AM (3:14). It gives the account of the passover and the exodus, and the journey of the Israelites, led by God, through the desert. Also, in this book is the narrative of God’s gift of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, and the other laws which God gave to Moses concerning the moral and ritual conduct of His People.

The Book of Leviticus is a further book of laws, primarily concerned with the priestly and ritual offices of the people which were conducted by men taken from the tribe of Levi.

The Book of Numbers concerns itself primarily with a census of the people. It also contains laws given by God to Moses, and further narratives about the movement of God’s People through the wilderness to the land which God promised them.

The Book of Deuteronomy, which means the “second law,” is again primarily a law code in which is told again the story of the Ten Commandments and the institution of the Mosaic laws of moral and ritual conduct. It ends with Moses’ blessing of the people, and his vision of the promised land into which Joshua would lead God’s People after his death, the account of which ends the Books of Moses.

Scholars tell us that the Law was not written by the personal hand of Moses and that the books show evidence of being the result of a number of oral and written traditions transmitted among the People of Israel, containing material of later periods. Nevertheless, in the Tradition of Israel and of the Christian Church, the Law remains essentially connected with Moses, the great man of God to whom “the Lord used to speak … face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex 33:11).

http://www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=112

Leviticus and Law in Post-Culture War America

“A calf might spend the first few months of its life eating grass on the range, but typically the rest of its short life is spent in a feedlot, ankle deep in manure. By nature, cattle are equipped to turn the grass that grows naturally on arid land into high-quality protein. However, allowing cattle to graze is considered inefficient these days, because it takes too long. Today’s beef cattle in the United States go from 80 to 1200 pounds in just fourteen months on a crash diet of corn, protein supplements, and drugs. They are given hormone implants (banned in Europe) to promote growth. Their calories come from corn, which is cheap and convenient but depends on the use of lots of petroleum products, and wreaks havoc on their ruminant digestive system, which is designed for grass. [...]

The meat is cheap, but the social costs are not included in the price. Each head of cattle requires about 284 gallons of oil in its lifetime. [...] ‘We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.’”

- William T. Cavanaugh, “Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire“

Creational concerns pervade the dietary laws in Leviticus. At times ignored or even criticized for what might seem to the modern reader as arbitrary distinctions, at the center of these pastoral prohibitions is a profound concern for created life.

Blood—symbolizing life and vitality in the ancient world—is a preoccupation for the community in Leviticus. Just as Abel’s blood called out to God from the ground after his murder and the same prohibition is a chief tenant of covenant with Noah so in Leviticus, the divine gift of blood is protected. Enlightened notions of a ‘right to life’ or ‘animal liberation’ are foreign to the God-centeredness of the Leviticus text.

“Blood, whether animal or human, is a metaphor for life; when it is spilt—and in the case of animals, consumed—by a human being, God’s creation is diminished by the loss of life.”

- Samuel E. Balentine, “Leviticus“

Too often such foreign sounding prohibitions can be explained away as the archaic superstitions of an agricultural, pre-modern people. In reality, such interpretations say far more about how removed the average American has really gone from the source of his or her food than it does about the text itself. These clever little things called “farmer’s markets” which we believe ourselves to have invented are actually one of the oldest and still by far the most common methods for human beings to get their food.

We should not so lightly gloss over the obvious connections between Israel and the land. Even the prohibitions against eating certain types of animals show this respect for creation. Admittedly, the ancient orderings with such categories as cleft hoof and cud chewing (Lev. 11) defy modern scientific taxonomies and can obscure meaning. Yet despite the millennia, we should notice at least this:

…created life is not to be destroyed or consumed carelessly. This is more than a sentiment of kindness towards animals or environment—but a necessary component of holiness in the land.

Long time no write!

In September, I joined a student internship through my church–New Song Christian Fellowship. Since then, there’s been a whirlwind of classes, meetings, learning, mentoring, working, sleeping, eating…

And during all of that activity, there has not been much time for me to sit at home on the computer on the internet.

But hey, that’s totally a wonderful thing! For awhile, I’ve been longing for an internet sabbatical. Well, I got one!

It’s been wonderful to be immersed in ministry to the point of not having time for the computer.

Here’s what’s happened since my last blog:

I needed a new job. I looked for one. I found one. Now I’m working seasonally at a home decor store. When the Christmas season is over, I think my temporary seasonal job will end too. So now I’m on the lookout for the next job.

I’ve taken and completed one term of Bible classes in my student internship at New Song. I took Pentateuch, Systematic Theology and Spiritual Leadership. I recently turned in my finals (Dec. 1) and now I’m waiting on my grades for those classes. I think I did well on the finals and I really enjoyed those classes. In January, I start my second term of classes.

Well, that’s pretty much it. I’m too busy for the internet and that’s a wonderful thing.

I’ll post again when I’ve got some free time. Have a Merry Christmas! Remember that Jesus is the important One here, not materialism.

I spent my Thanksgiving vacation sick in bed so I decided to start over with my Bible reading as I’ve just been reading all over the place lately. In 5 days I read the first four books of the Bible and was it ever an eye opener to read it that quickly. Normally it would have taken me months to get from God’s promise to Abram to when the Israelites started entering Canaan. But after reading about His promise one day and seeing it fulfilled the next day, I wondered if that was more how God sees time.  One verse really stood out – Genesis 12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land….” Had I been in Abram’s place, I probably would have assumed God meant my kids, certainly no later than my grandkids. But wow – it was some 685 years and how many generations later?! Of course, now we can easily read and realize that God knew what He was doing. Abraham’s descendants had grown to such a number that they were able to fully occupy all the land that God wanted them to have and along the way many nations were exposed to God’s sovereignty.

I think I’ll give that some thought when  I find myself  impatient with how long it takes God to answer my prayers.

Leviticus and Law in Post-Culture War America

As the pool of candidates narrowed in the 2008 Presidential Election primaries, pundits noticed a peculiar strength in eventual victor, Barack Obama. The 47-year-old African American was perceived by many as a peacemaker who would bring an end to the so-called “Culture Wars” which had dominated American politics since the Vietnam War. Laying aside whether or not one believes this really was Obama’s intention—and to what extent he has been successful—it is remarkable that our country has reached a juncture where such a perceived intent could be a political strength.

The factors contributing to this change of public heart are diverse and disputed, but at least one underlying cause is shifting views on the nature of personal morality and societal ethics—especially amongst those voting for the first time in the 21st century. Reflecting from within the Judeo-Christian tradition, I believe we can find a fresh relevance for our ancient texts in this environment of cultural redefinition. In particular, the portrait of Holiness as defined by ritual purity, individual behavior and social justice as found in the Law passages of Exodus and Leviticus offer a unique moral vision to the upcoming post-culture war generation.

The command from God to Moses in Leviticus 19:2 “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy,” presupposes two audacious ideas:

1) that the personal decisions of an individual has lingering effects on the Holiness of the community, and
2) no amount of personal Holiness can cleanse the stain of an individual who participates in an unjust system.

These two ideas—often held as conflicting by both sides in the culture wars—demand we revisit our definition of “Holiness.” What contemporary implications exist for a text which discusses premeditated murder in the same language as the unrestrained slaughter of created animals (Lev. 17:6) or a holiness code which equates the consequences of sexual immorality (Lev. 18) with those of defrauding the poor (Lev. 19)? Is the idea of a Jubilee year—and the specific notions of Sabbath and debt forgiveness—pertinent to a society of runaway resource exploitation and restless consumption?

Obviously, one cannot lift a context-less English translation from a printed page and call it a “relevant ethic” any easier than one can create a papier-mâché rod from its pages and demand he be called “Moses.” Yet, we do the text, our traditions and ourselves a great disservice when we delegate the messages of these Pentateuchal passages merely to the realms of ancient cult or antiquated superstition. As our societies revisit the entrenched battles and political labels of previous generations, the ancient law of the Pentateuch can provide us with refreshing perspective on ageless questions.

On law and gospel in the Pentateuch:

The gospel–that is, the notion of justification by faith–is God’s means for our fulfilling the law. This immediately strikes one as “Pauline,” but not in the sense of reading Paul’s theology back into the Pentateuch. The theology of the Pentateuch is “Pauline” in the sense that we must read the Pentateuch’s theology into Paul. Paul’s line of thought about the law and faith is drawn from the theology of the Pentateuch and the prophetic authors of Scripture who read the Scriptures “day and night,” no the other way around.

–John Sailhamer, The Meaning of the Pentateuch, p. 608

Genesis gives us the in-your-face picture of God’s authority. He is the one in the beginning and only from Him does everything else come. He is the Creator who can rightly affirm that all that He has made is good. This is repeated over and over in the narrative. “God saw that it was good.” That is God’s Word on His creation. It is the declaration of His authority. He made it and saw it was good. Who else was there to make such a judgment? He owned that position as well. He was the only One who had the power to create and He was the only One who had the knowledge and authority to see it as good and declare it so.

God created Adam and Eve and he put them in the Garden under His authority. In chapter three is where we find the temptation and fall. The prohibition of 2:17, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,” is the test of whether they will submit to God’s authority. In agreement with Goldsworthy, nothing in the text should make us think that the fruit of the tree itself possessed some magical quality that gives the knowledge of good and evil to whoever eats it. Do not be distracted by a picture of a shiny apple hanging from a naughty tree. The issue is authority. God clearly said “freely enjoy all of these, do not eat this one.” There is the good and evil—obey God or turn against Him.

We see this in the text. For the first time since the repetition in chapters 1-2, someone saw that something was good. However, the someone was not God, and the something was not good. The creature saw what God prohibited to be good. This is a clear, definite denial of God’s authoritative judgment and goodness. Adam and Eve became their own ‘gods’ and saw and called for themselves what was good. This is the Fall.

I ordered the following books this evening.  I’m trying to read more history to help me with a history project as well as post-graduate studies.  Any observations or suggestions are welcome.  I had wanted to purchase more tertiary sources such as the IVP black dictionary series but it was my birthday so I got the ones I wanted instead of needed.  I thought a picture of the Seyoon Kim book would summarize the content of the purchases for the most part (aside from the Sailhamer and Walton books).

1. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the OT - John Walton (368 pp.)
2. In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity – Oskar Skarsaune (455 pp.)
3. Judaism in the Greek Period – G. H. Box (239 pp.)
4. Jesus and the Rise of Early Christianity – Paul Barnett (448 pp.)
5. Introduction to OT Theology: A Canonical Approach – John Sailhamer (332 pp.)
6. Pentateuch as Narrative - John Sailhamer (544 pp.)
7. Christian Origins – Jonathan Knight (455 pp.)
8. Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in Paul and Luke – Seyoon Kim (228 pp.)
9. History of Rome – Michael Grant (537 pp.)
10. Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Context: The Argument of Romans - Thomas Tobin (496 pp.)
11. Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus – Klyne Snodgrass (846 pp.)

“The big idea of the Pentateuch is the importance of living by faith.”

–John H. Sailhamer, The Meaning of the Pentateuch (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 22.

Before we can really meaningfully understand what is going on in Genesis, we need to establish some sort of context. The book itself makes the most sense as the introduction to the rest of the Pentateuch as written by Moses. I realize there are other options for authorship, but to be frank, most are ridiculous ad hoc explanations derived from some sort of higher criticism source theory. If you want to argue, we can argue, but for clarity sake, let’s take the traditional view that Moses wrote this sometime between the Exodus and his death. I am surprised with all the fanciful options out there, no one has yet proposed that Moses wrote this after his death.

So Moses wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch and that gives us a date of somewhere around 1400BC for the writing. That is a rough enough estimate to work for our purposes here, but it brings up a significant observation. With this kind of date for authorship, it is by no means the first written account of creation. Indeed, as far as Ancient Near East (from now on ANE) backgrounds go, the actual writing of this account comes after most other accounts.

Now, the critical scholarship assumption is then that the Biblical authors borrowed from these other myths, making itself rather mythological. However, this does not necessarily follow from the above, and there are two other viable options.

First, Moses came from a similar cognitive environment as the other authors, specifically those in Egypt. This will become very crucial to remember in a moment, so file it away for a little bit. Beyond just Egypt though, Moses and the Israelites would have shared a way of thinking about reality that was in common with the other cultures around them. They were certainly unique in many aspects, but they were also very similar, and in one particular way that is necessary to clarify when talking about creation accounts.

Before anyone can meaningful discuss creation, you must establish what it means to create, and in order to do that, you must establish what is means for something to exist. We in the 21st century have our own ontology (metaphysic or philosophy of being) and what we generally fail to realize is that we import it into our reading of the the first chapter of Genesis.The failure on our part is to realize we do not share the same understanding of ontology as the ancient world.

We have a substance or materially based metaphysic. We are primarily concerned with the essence of something, something to us exists when it occupies space. It has some kind of material substance that can be classified in some way.

In the ancient world on the other hand, they had a function-based ontology. In other words, something existed when it had a function in an ordered system, or when it had been given a purpose and a name. For this reason, all their creation accounts generally move from chaos to order and from an undifferentiated unity to a plurality of things with names and functions. It is not so much an idea of nothing material existing and the something then being materially created. That is how we are prone to think of creation, but that is not what the ancients had in mind. A quote by John Walton may help to summarize:

“Creation takes place by giving things order, function, and purpose, which is synonymous with giving them existence.” Ancient Near East Thought and the Old Testament, pg 185.

In another book by Walton (Lost World of Genesis One, 2009), he surveys the major creation accounts from the ANE and points out that in all of them, nothing is materially made (at least in any sense ex nihilo). Of note in this survey was the Egyptian writings (The Memphite Theology, Papyrus Leiden I 350, as well as various Pyramid and Coffin texts that talk extensively of creation) as well as the more well known Enuma Elish.

The question then is not whether or not Genesis 1 breaks the mold and presents the first and only account in the ANE that demonstrates material creation, but rather, could the Israelites have even understood such a concept? Given the function/purpose based ontology that pervaded every other ANE culture, it is not likely that God revealed a metaphysic to Moses that turned the flat earth of the Israelites upside down (we’ll return to that later), but rather God contextualized his revelation in way that the Israelites would have easily understood.

All of this way to show that similarity in creation accounts does not have to mean borrowing or copying, but rather the creation accounts all reflect a common cultural background and understanding of reality that was function based rather than material based. As such, the creation accounts end up coming out sounding similar, which is also due to a similar style of writing.

Now the second option to consider is one of polemic. In this instance, we are going to argue that Genesis is intended as a polemic against the Egyptian creation account. As such, it can (and will) be shown that Moses used the structure of the Egyptian accounts, but with major revisions, new ideas, and disastrous indirect implications for the Egyptian deities. He used their form, but said something entirely different than we were saying. Moses entered into the dialogue that was going on between rival cultic centers throughout Egypt (Heliopolis, Hermopolis, Memphis, Thebes) and as they had attempted to one-up each other, he struck the decisive last blow to which they could not even offer an answer.

This summarizes to some extent the main point to keep in mind about the disjunction between our modern understandings of existence and the ancient one. Also, creation accounts should be seen as written in some kind of dialogue with one another, none of them so far as I can tell, were written in a vacuum. They were aware of the other stories out there, Moses specifically so, and would use some of their language and imagery to make different points, or to undercut the other culture’s story. This is precisely what Moses is up to in Genesis 1, but before we get to that, we need to clarify a bit further the background from which Genesis emerges before we start examining the text itself.

To that end, we need to discuss cosmic geography (how one understands the world) before we can talk about cosmogony (how one understands the origin of the world), and that will be taken up in Backgrounds (B).

Although Christians and Jews have traditionally believed its author to be Moses it seems that many today deny that Moses made a significant contribution to the text of Genesis. The Documentary Hypothesis, which holds that the Pentateuch is a collection of four originally independent sources, necessitates multiple authorship. It is based upon the observation that there are distinctive literary styles within the Pentateuch, for example the precise name the author uses to refer to God. Proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis go further and argue that each source has its own distinctive theology. Thus some sources understand God as distant (transcendent) whilst others see him as a personal God that is nearby (imminent). The Documentary Hypothesis represents a highly reductionist approach. Every variation within the text has been seen as proof of multiple authorship. But surely the same individual can write in different styles? The same person can write both a theological essay according to its norms, as well as keeping a personal diary which has a totally different literary form. We need to approach the text as a whole, for that is how it has come down to us. Yes, Moses can’t have written all of the Pentateuch when it concludes with an account of his death, but the text itself says that Moses had a significant role in writing some of the material for it (Exodus 24:7, Numbers 33:2 amongst others). As Tremper Longman III concludes: ‘it is not possible or useful to divide the Pentateuch into pre-Mosaic, Mosaic and post-Mosaic material.’

In both my masters studies and in my growing experience as a lecturer I have spent a great deal of time in the Old Testament.  I am aware that many Christians find drawing from this portion of our canon a challenging or even droll experience.  As a result it has been, in the opinion of many, much neglected, particularly in church and devotional life.  I do not wish to write in depth about why this should be, but rather to examine in brief one reading of the Old Testament narrative that has freshened up my own perspective, both academically and devotionally.

The portion of Old Testament literature to which I now turn is the Pentateuch or Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian canon, traditionally associated with the authority of Israel’s most revered teacher, Moses).  This literary unit, as we have it in our hand, is a more or less continuous narrative relating the story of the creation of the world, the origins of sin and the formation of the Hebrew nation.  It is generally agreed that the traditions and stories that make up this lengthy and complex narrative were edited into their final form sometime in the 6th/5th century BCE during the time of the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people.  It is therefore likely that these five books of Moses provide for us not a disinterested picture of the events which they contain, but stories which have, at least in part, been filtered through the lens of the exilic experience.  In some sense, in their final form, they can be seen as a product both of and for a displaced generation dominated by a foreign empire.

In the ancient world (and arguably still today), the credibility of a nation’s gods tended to depend largely on the prosperity and success of that nation.  Israel was in many ways no exception to this pressure.  Furthermore, for Israel perhaps the key tangible reminder of their association with YHWH was the land promised to their ancestor Abraham.  Presence (and prosperity) in the land was a key indication of blessing.

In exile this promised life was shattered.  Challenges and attacks whilst in the land of Canaan could come and go, but removal from the land (complete with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple) devastated virtually all visible signs which would distinguish them as the people of YHWH.  Deported to Babylon, they were surrounded by, though not entirely immersed in, a culture shaped by stories different to their own and directed toward the worship of gods other than YHWH, factors which together communicated an alternative reading of the world.  Furthermore, this alternative reading came to them from the victors.  It is not surprising that many felt and gave into the pressure to adopt and immerse themselves within their new environment; to cease to be a person of YHWH and to be (find their identity in) something other.

But many did not.  It is, of course, not insignificant that the Babylonian approach (as opposed to Assyria) to conquered peoples was to allow them to retain some cohesion in exile including continuance, to a certain extent, in their practices of worship.  This meant that the people of YHWH were in exile together.  With this picture in mind, it is perhaps not too surprising that during this period, much of the Hebrew scriptures were shaped and formed into something akin to how we have them today.  What were they doing?  Those who remained faithful to YHWH had been gripped by a specific interpretation of the exile that sustained them through it and their efforts were spent in shaping and carrying forward stories which expressed this faith in the midst of a culture that was hostile to it.

For these exilic generations the Torah was a vibrant testimony of faith which held out the offer of counter-formation, that is, the opportunity to be formed as a people around the worship of YHWH as the true and supreme God.  Elements in the Torah which speak to this ongoing challenge are many, but let me point out just two.  Firstly, there are good grounds to view much of the prologue of Genesis (chapters 1-11) as an appropriation and radical reshaping of stories and traditions present in the broader cultural context.  In speaking the language of origin stories, akin to Enuma Elish, the Torah unmistakably presented a challenging alternative to the claims of the seemingly dominant world around them.  The God of the Hebrews is in fact YHWH and YHWH, according to Genesis 1, is in fact the supreme and effortless creator of the world.  Equally, the great Babel of Genesis 11, almost certainly a reference to the revered Babylon, does not in fact mean ‘the gateway to heaven,’ but refers instead to foolishness and confusion.  What appeared as the centre and pride of the ancient world was not as supreme as it may have appeared.  These are just a few examples of how Genesis 1-11 would have challenged the Jews to see their surroundings through different eyes.  It may seem that Babylon is supreme, but look again.

Secondly, though it often goes unnoticed, it is surely significant that the Torah, consumed as it is with the promise of land, ends in its narrative outside of the land (see Numbers and Deuteronomy).  The land of promise is within reach, but not yet grasped.  Many challenges still lay ahead.  It is a small leap indeed to suggest that the exilic Jews were keen to shape and be shaped by this story.  For first generation exiles, even Moses himself died without seeing the land but was careful to invest himself into the generation that would.  For second generation exiles, though they had not seen many of the great works of God, their faith was stirred by the faith-filled remembering passed on to them which in turn served to point them ahead to future blessing, even in the face of profound challenge.

With the decline of Christendom in the west, the “given” world which the church inhabits grows increasingly foreign to the Christian story.  In Babylonian fashion, the “gods” of the dominant culture rear their heads, often in disturbingly compelling ways.  It seems to me that the time is right for the church of the West to re-appropriate the culture-challenging story of the Torah.  How could this be done?  A good start would be to enter the story of the Torah with fresh eyes, to see it as alive for our present as the Jews in Babylon saw it alive for their’s.  We could then launch out along similar lines by drawing attention to the claims made by the stories of our own cultures.  Consumerism and consumption, for instance, have a story from which they spring and by which they seek to shape particular types of people.  Surely this and other stories of the “given” world could be called into question through exposure and countering.  We may also, in the tone of Numbers and Deuteronomy, remind ourselves of the way in which we occupy a place still outside of the land, but with the land in grasp.  The kingdom has come, but is still to come.  Challenge lives in the between, but so does divine promise.

I conclude these thoughts with a quote from the deeply insightful voice of Walter Brueggemann who I must credit with starting my own thinking in this direction:

As the Western world has been perennially hostile to the claims of Jewish faith, so the emerging contemporary world of commodity grows more signally hostile to the claims of the Christian faith as well.  As has not been the case in the long Christian hegemony of the West, now the church is having ot think and act to maintain a distinct identity for faith in an alien cultural environment.  While the church will characteristically attend to the New Testament in such an emergency, a study of Torah already alerts us to the resources for this crisis that are older and deeper than the New Testament…The preaching, teaching, and study of Torah is in order to “set one’s heart” differently, to trust and fear differently, to align oneself with an alternative account of the world (Little 1983).

(Brueggeman, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination, 27)

I’ve been thinking about the idea of focusing on the ‘narrative’ of the Pentateuch since the news of Sailhamer’s newest book reached me a two days ago. Simply put: it bothers me.

Without going into too much detail at the moment (partly because of midterms and papers that are due and partly because I plan on blogging more about this in the near future), there are a few things that bother me the most about the focus on ‘canonical’ or ‘narratival’ readings of the Pentateuch.

First, it puts too little stress on the historical context of the strands of tradition that ultimately became canonized in the Pentateuch. To ignore questions and implications of the historical contexts of these strands usually leads one to see uniformity in content or a unified literary product. While there was no doubt redactors and, perhaps, even a ‘final redactor,’ there are still many variances in both content and literary structures in the Pentateuch.

Second, people use the idea of a unified content or unified literary product that “result” from a ‘canonical’ or ‘narrative’ study of the Pentateuch to argue for Mosaic authorship. This, to put it mildly, is slightly smarter than the average guest on the Jerry Springer show.

Third, paradoxically to the first point, these ‘canonical’ or ‘narratival’ readings of the Pentateuch canonize a certain historical context (i.e., when the Pentateuch, in its ‘final’ form, was promoted to Scripture in the minds of Jews and, later, Christians) and make that the preeminent or, perhaps, only legitimate historical context through which to view the Pentateuch. Torah, just like the Bible itself, has many historical developments that can shed light onto why the Hebrew Bible looks the way it does and says the things it says. Understanding the historical context of the different strands of tradition that were woven together to make the Pentateuch is just as important, if not moreso, as understanding the final product with its own historical context. The point here is that while the ‘canonical’ or ‘narratival’ readings can (and sometimes do) claim to be disinterested in historical context, they implicitly choose a particular historical context through which to understand the Pentateuch. The argument has yet to be made as to why that historical context should be preferred.

That’s enough for now; more anon. Any thoughts?

This phrase is predominantly Deuteronomistic and its existence in the Tetrateuch implies a Dtr redaction of the Tetrateuch. Would you agree with this?

This phrase appears in Deuteronomy six times: 6:3; 11:9; 26:9, 15; 27:3; 31:20.

Within the Tetrateuch it’s found in:

• Exodus 3:8; 17; 13:5; 33:3.
• Leviticus 20:24.
• Numbers 13:27; 14:8; 16:13, 14.

Having just finished listening to Exodus twice for my O.T. class, I am so thankful Christ came to make it possible to be righteous.  I started listening to Leviticus today. Sin and Blood everywhere. Makes me thankful that Christ’s blood can do things the blood of bulls and goats cannot. I am thankful that God made Jesus unclean to make me clean.  John said it best;

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” -John 1:16

In preparing a message from Luke 4 on the tempting of Jesus in the wilderness, I keep going back to the Pentateuch (First 5 books of the Bible: Genesis to Deuteronomy). 

In these books (Moses’ writings), the parallels between what happened to Moses and the Israelites and Satan’s offerings and Jesus’ responses (quoting Moses) are fascinating.

Let me encourage you – pay attention to those cross-references. Yes, if you read them all, your amount of time spent reading will increase incredibly. BUT – you will be blessed! The way God’s Word flows as one grand Story is remarkable.  

Appreciate your prayers as I share a message this weekend!

Yours in Christ,

Marty