In case you’re wondering where I’ve been (all ten of you who read this), two weeks ago I broke my leg and had surgery, and was in the hospital for 6 days. Since coming home I’ve had a lot of opportunity to read our next work, the Book of Isaiah. I’ve read it three times, [...]
Archive for the ‘Early/Pre-Christian Lit’ Category
Exodus: God’s Purchasing Order
Posted in Christian Literature, Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Exodus, Hebrew Literature, Moses, Scripture or Spiritual Writing, The Bible, The Pentateuch, The Torah on August 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Part of the reason I had such trouble with Exodus is evident once you get to chapter 25. Prior to that, it is this enormous human drama: freedom from slavery, the wrath of God, the doubt and determination of his chosen Prophet, and the birth of a nation that endures to the present day. Then [...]
Exodus: Why Moses?
Posted in Christian Literature, Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Exodus, Hebrew Literature, Moses, Prophets and Prophecy, Scripture or Spiritual Writing, The Bible, The Pentateuch, The Torah, Uncategorized on August 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I realize that the tools I am equipped with for evaluating a text are woefully lacking. The things they taught me about character analysis in AP English and in my screenwriting courses during college assume certain things about why people tell stories and what an author is “trying to say” through a character that don’t [...]
Exodus: On Holiness
Posted in Christian Literature, Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Exodus, Hebrew Literature, Scripture or Spiritual Writing, The Bible, The Mediterranean World, The Middle East, The Pentateuch, The Torah on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Oh, hi. It’s been what, five months? Reading continues apace, although the blogging is way, way, way behind. This is partly for the usual reasons: work, family, long-distance running, laziness. It’s also because I’ve now embarked on the part of the list that contains holy scriptures, stories taken as dictated by the divine in at [...]
Thoughts On Old Testament God
Posted in Christian Literature, Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Genesis, Hebrew Literature, Scripture or Spiritual Writing, The Bible, The Torah on February 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Once upon a time I was a public school teacher. When you are a public school teacher, you are generally also what’s known as a “mandatory reporter”. This means that if you suspect child abuse, you are legally obliged to report any evidence to the appropriate authorities. During this close re-reading of the Old Testament, [...]
Genesis: What People Think of When They Think of “The Bible”
Posted in Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Exodus, Genesis, Hebrew Literature, Scripture or Spiritual Writing, The Bible, The Pentateuch, The Torah on January 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Having been raised and educated in a religious school, it’s pretty surprising to me when I talk to people about the Bible and discover that outside of the story of Christ, the only Bible stories they know are from Genesis. There are 66 books in the King James Version of the Bible, or 73 if [...]
Reading The Bible
Posted in Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Genesis, The Bible, The Pentateuch, The Torah on January 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I read the Bible very often at school when I was young. It was a Catholic school, so the translation was not the King James Version, but some neutered edition for children that avoided very hard words and skipped all the sex, incest, and bloodthirstiness. The nuns drilled it into us that the Bible was [...]
Getting Biblical
Posted in Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Genesis, Hebrew Literature, Isaiah, Scripture or Spiritual Writing, The Bible, The Book of Job, The Pentateuch, The Torah on January 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
For the next few weeks, I’ll be reading some of the most widely-quoted and alluded-to books of (what we Christians call) the Old Testament. After that, I’m off to the races on a number of other sacred writings in cultures that I, frankly, have little to no experience with. So if I say something profoundly [...]
Hesiod Wrap-Up
Posted in Ancient Greece, Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Hesiod, Poetry, The Mediterranean World, Theogony, Vintage Straw, Works and Days on January 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
As you probably gathered from the last post, I found Works and Days sort of hilarious. It’s basically this tract of unsolicited advice, aimed at the author’s no-good brother. It goes off on several tangents about Prometheus and Pandora (whose box was actually a jar), and then details exactly how and when to farm your [...]
Works and Days: Ask An Ancient Greek Farmer
Posted in Ancient Greece, Early/Pre-Christian Lit, Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days on January 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Dear Ancient Greek Farmer: I’m working in my dream career, but now it’s a nightmare. Sometimes it feels like my life is just work, work, work. I never see my family. I lie awake worrying about what needs to get done at the office the next morning, and then imagine it going all wrong when [...]
