Last night, I started working towards one of my personal goals for this year -- reading through the Bible. I did it once before when I was in middle school, but this time I am reading for understanding, not just reading for the sake of getting through the Bible. I am reading the Bible in 90 Days (although, honestly, I will be lucky to finish in 90 days), which is basically a Bible with start and stop markers every 12 pages. So, if I can read 12 pages a day for 90 days, I will have made it through. They have workbooks and small group studies, but I am just focusing on getting through the one book first.
So after my first 12 pages, taking me from Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 16:16, here are a few observations for your commenting pleasure:
1. Some say God's "day" is different from our "day" -- that the seven biblical days could have actually been years, hundreds of years, or even thousands of years. Yet, the Bible says there was a morning and a night and that was a day (Genesis 1:8, 1:13, 1:19).
2. Where did Cain's wife come from?
I have a few more, but when I went to look up Bible references, I noticed someone stole my "work" Bible. Who does that? Who steals a Bible??? Not that I really mind, because the people up here need it a lot more than I do. I will edit later tonight with my other questions/observations.
9 comments:
"Yet, the Bible says there was a morning and a night and that was a day" Bingo! Plus, I have always felt that by saying it could have been a 100 years or whatever limits God. God is the maker of all things, he defeated death, so why couldn't he creat the universe in that amount of time.
I too have always wondered where Cain's wife came from. I have heard from many people (of varying denominations) that 'other people' were more than likely daughters of Adam and Eve. Since the Bible doesn't say, I leave it alone.
Great goal, reading/studying the Bible all the way through. Be careful at limiting yourself to 90 days though. You don't want to rush it for the sake of finishing, but you already know that.
After a re-read I found Genesis 5:4 -- Adam and Eve did have daughters. So Cain clearly married a sister.
Wait until you get to Leviticus...fun times! I'm doing the One Year Bible right now (not quite as aggressive as your strategy) and I'm learning all about burnt offerings and sin offerings for intentional sins, inadvertant sins, unclean items, unclean animals, unclean people (which are described in detail based on the type of rashes, boils, burns, scars, and puss they have). It's a lot of fun!
Ah yes, the law books. Aren't you glad that (thanks to Jesus being our sacrifice) we don't have to do any of that?
When I read through the Bible, I confess I got bored and skipped past the law books. However, once I got into Samuel and Kings, I discovered that these books play an important part (I went back and reread them) in understanding Israel's history as well as providing a deeper appreciation for our salvation.
The law books played an important part in Israel's history as well. Without these books that specifically worked through public health issues, they could have all died in the wilderness or all come into the promised land covered in rashes. This was actually interesting to me that they had so much detail in discriptions of health issues both these as well as what types of food they could and couldn't eat. However, they are tedious to read because they continually repeat the same treatments and even grossed out my physician wife a bit when we got to the skin diseases, which I thought was kind of funny.
Not trying to contradict your day=exactly 24 hours comment but...
The Torah was written down only after existing a couple thousand years as oral history. It was not written as a science text nor a book of answers. It's the story of God and Israel.
It's more like a photo album than an annotated timeline. That's why some stories are repeated and perhaps why many stories are not found in chronological order. It is arranged thematically and according to the Hebrew mind.
It doesn't mean I don't take the Bible literal because I think it's "stories". I take it very literal. But I never allowed myself to get hung up details that were not important tothe Hebrew culture.
The word yom means a period of time not exclusively a 24 hour period. Saying something has a day and night sounds to me like each period of time (yom) had a distinct beginning and end.
Again, I'm not hung up on the details here. If I get to heaven and find out dinosaurs really were Jesus Horses and paleontologists got together to form the biggest scientific conspiracy in history, I'll be ok with it. If God tells me 6 days meant 60 billion years, I'll be cool with that too.
Either way the core of the narrative was that God is the Creator and that I was made in His image different than the animals.
I don't want to limit God either, especially to the human constrants of language written or otherwise.
It is kind of creepy to think of Cain hooking up with his sister.
Actually, when we get to Heaven, we probably won't give any of this a second thought.
You're right Robert. We really won't care.
Too bad that answer didn't get me out of a 'homework' assignment for school in which we had to come up with 'questuions for Heaven'...
:)
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