Thursday, February 26, 2009

Reading the Bible

I've been having a good time this year reading my One Year Bible. I will be honest and say that I have never read through the whole entire Bible, though I've probably read 90% of it in my 25 years of being a Christian. Last year I started in June, but that got me in at 2 Kings and Romans, so I was still lacking in a lot! I enjoy reading it with this program because it leaves me with some cliffhangers and I can't wait to get to it the next day and see what happened (especially in the Old Testament!).
The only thing I notice with myself is that I tend to have lots of questions and I'm not really sure where to find the answers. My questions may even be irrelevant, I just get to thinking about the things that happen and imagining the scene which makes me go even farther into it.
For example, the scapegoat in Leviticus... the priest was to take two goats to the Temple, cast "sacred lots" (What did they look like? How are they different than dice or flipping a coin?), and kill one of the goats. He was to lay his hands on the other goat and transfer the sins of the people onto it, and then run it out into the desert to take away the sins from the community. What happened to the goat? How did they keep him from coming back?
I actually keep myself entertained with these questions, but I don't learn the answers!

2 comments:

Amrita said...

Hi Jan, the scapegoat question is answered very well by Mark Driscoll in his book Death By Love.
That book is awesome.

I have to re-read to see what he says about it.

I have confession to make. I bought a One Year Bible 2 years ago but could not read much of it as its in fine print and being visually impaired it strains my eyes. i have asked someone in the US to send me a magnifying sheet. If they do so i will be able to read it.

But there is a One Year Bible Blog which is very good

www.oneyearbibleblog.com

Sending you this link to check out the Fader family in Sudan

http://africanfaders.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Yeah, there's so much that just doesn't get translated to our time and culture - it is hard to find someone who knows the answers to a really obscure question like that!