Invitation
Join me in a three-year cycle, working through every chapter, indeed every paragraph of the Old Testament! Yes, this is a serious quest, across three years, but it only takes 10 minutes of reading (or less) each day. And when we are done, you will have picked up each paragraph of this ancient text, examined it carefully, and put it back down.
Each day I post the text of an Old Testament chapters, broken into paragraph chunks, each chunk followed by commentary and reaction. Although the commentary is my own, I lean on the commentaries of scholars such as
- Robert Alter,
- Robert L. Hubbard,
- Derek Kidner,
- The Bible Project,
- The Gospel Coalition
and others. I cite sources and provide a variety of online links for those who wish to pursue a rabbit trail.
Backstory
In 2016 I wrote a daily blog on the New Testament, covering roughly a chapter a day, finishing the New Testament in a year. I did that again in 2017. That study was valuable for me -- it helped me better separate the teachings of the New Testament from the religious claims of my culture, including those claims of American church culture.
Now I propose to again study the Bible a chapter a day, but this time I will be a bit bolder and will make plans to study the Old Testament in detail, looking carefully at a chapter a day!
If I write on a chapter a day, with various digressions on Sundays, I can cover the Old Testament in just under three years. My practice will be to include a Bible chapter in the blog (in blue italics, from the NIV version of the Bible, so that the text is directly in front of us) and then remark on various concepts the chapter as we go through it.
My first blog post will be at 5 am. (CST) on January 1, 2023. Further posts will occur every day at 5 am. Each post will involve 3-5 minutes of reading. We will work first through the Old Testament history: Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, ... (saving Leviticus, and Numbers for later) and ending the year with II Samuel and Book I of the Psalms. In the two subsequent years, I hope to look at the Wisdom books of the Old Testament, along with the writings of the prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.)
Observation before Application
In American church culture, the Bible is often used as a source for a spiritual verse or passage, the reader then quickly leaving the passage to cite some uplifting devotional. Although this devotional approach is good for the new Christian, it is not the intention of the Christian Scriptures and can be a poor way of understanding the Bible. Indeed, it often means that the reader does not really observe what the text says, but too quickly moves to a feel-good moment, sometimes contrary to the original intent of the Scripture. If we are to move to a mature understanding of Scripture, we must first understand what the text says.
The emphasis in this blog will be on observing the text, in trying to understand what it says.
The original writings of the Old Testament (the Jewish TaNaKh) were in a foreign language (Hebrew) and were written by various authors across centuries, long ago. I will use a variety of external resources as we examine the ancient Hebrew text -- more on this later.
So ...
Join me in my study of the Old Testament on New Years day!
Feel free to react to the blog in the comments!
And... happy New Year!
