First creation story
Second creation story, fall of man
Hitting the reset button with Noah; the tower
Noah's sons
Abraham's exploits, the promise, and an intimate meeting with God
Hagar, and more of Abraham's exploits
A son! Abraham's big finish
Isaac has sons, one is a cheat and runs off with Abraham's promise
Jacob has kids; he and Laban pull some fast ones
Jacob comes to know God through a wrestling match, returns home.
The setup: Joseph is sent to Egypt
Jacob's family reconciled, saved, and relocated.
Jacob's blessings, Joseph's last words
Genesis: literal history or metaphor?

As I finish reading, taking notes on, reflecting on, and posting about each book of the Bible, I plan on writing a post or two reflecting on common issues people have with that book, along with a post summarizing and linking to all the posts about one book. This is the first of the summarizing posts and is related to Genesis.

Genesis, a mix of origin myths and ancestor stories (among other things) is the first book of the Bible. It is very long and its content is very foreign to a modern Western culture. However, it is still very purposeful and thoughtfully themed, with a thick thread that is easy to follow. This thread revolves around God's beautiful creation, the fall of that creation into corruption, including the corruption of man, and God's calculated first steps in returning the creation to harmony, especially as his plan involves one man, Abram, and his son, grandson, and great grandsons.

Parts 1 to 3: The Creation of Earth

The first story in Genesis is a creation myth that is poetic and orderly and beautiful. God makes the world almost like he's stretching a canvas and then painting a picture on top. Humans are created in God's image and their purpose is to rule earth and multiply on it. Everything is great.

The second story is another creation myth, this time it's mostly about mankind's creation. A man is made, and is put in a sweet garden to work, and can live forever, eating from the tree of life. He needs a friend so after he names all the animals God makes him a wife. They're naked but it's a good thing. God warns them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or else they'll die.

A serpent tells the woman that if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they won't die, but they'll be like God, knowing good and evil for themselves. The woman and her husband eat that fruit, and it only goes down half like the serpent. Yeah, they know good and evil, but it makes them ashamed of their nakedness. Plus, they do end up dying. Not only that, but God puts a curse on a ton of stuff, from the serpent to childbirth to marriage to farming. Things don't heal over time as one of their sons actually murders the other one. One of HIS descendants murders two people and is proud of it. Yikes.

A third story is then told (see above linked post) in which it is reiterated that God made man in his image. Generation after generation passes, and eventually man is totally corrupt and evil. God is sorry he ever made earth, except for one righteous guy, Noah.

This is the story of the creation of earth, according to Genesis. I also wrote a post in which I talked about my thoughts on the literal vs. metaphorical interpretation of the Genesis, and that is worth checking out at this point.

You can see two main things in these first two posts / three stories: God is consistently good, just, powerful, and creative. Meanwhile his creation starts out great, but becomes evil through the acts of Adam and Eve and through the passing of generations.

Parts 4-6: Noah and his family

At this point the story turns to one man: Noah. He is the only person left on earth worth a lick. God reveals his plan to Noah for restoring harmony to earth: he'll destroy absolutely everything with a flood, but will save Noah and his family and some animals in a big boat. It all goes down like God says, and at the end, Noah worships God and God makes a promise to never do this kind of thing again. He tells Noah's family to fill the earth like before, and to stop killing each other.

After that, Noah's family line is traced, and just as humans begin filling the earth, they decide they'll make a name for themselves and not fill the earth by building a huge tower out of brick. They don't get too far before God spreads them all over the earth himself and confuses their languages. Noah's family line is then reiterated, right down to a man named Terah, who has a son named Abram.

So it is seen that God is still the same all-powerful God, very concerned with restoring creation to how he first made it. So he starts over. But he doesn't totally neglect man, saving one man very much on purpose and basically giving man a fresh start with his commands at the end to not murder and to fill the earth again. A few more generations pass and mankind is already fighting against this, trying to stay in one place and follow his own path. God does what he can to proceed with the plan but of course he won't destroy earth again. We end with geneologies leading to Abram, but the story leaves us hanging on what God will do next.

Part 7 - 8: From Abram to Abraham

God gets to work right away, telling a guy named Abram to move to where God shows him, telling him that HE will make Abram's name great, will bless him, give him tons of descendants, give him the land he will show him, and will bless all nations through him. Abram then has a series of exploits in which God blesses him greatly or reiterates his promises, and Noah often responds by giving God credit or worshiping him.

Eventually Abram and God share a powerful scene in which Abram doubt's God's promises of many descendants because his wife Sarai is old and barren. God tells Abram his descendants will be slaves but will come back to take the land, and as a sign, God moves a firepot between some sacrifices.

Nevertheless, Abram takes his slave as a wife because it doesn't seem Sarai will ever have a kid. God says that Abram's slave's kid, Ishmael will become a great nation too, but that Sarai will indeed have a kid. God then makes it a covenant (the blessings, land, descendants, and and blessing all nations) by giving Abram circumcision and by renaming him Abraham and his wife Sarah. Meanwhile not only is Abraham very blessed by he seems to be best friends with God, able to talk with him about anything, with God listening.

Eventually, Sarah does have a son, Isaac, and Abraham now believes God's covenant so much that he'd be willing to sacrifice his son, the son OF the promise, when God tells him to. He finds his son a wife and dies at a good old age.

Meanwhile Ishmael does indeed become the father of a great nation as well.

This part of Genesis focuses on on Abraham exclusively instead of all of mankind, and God not only makes world-big promises to Abraham, but he begins to carry them out in incredible ways and single-handedly carries Abraham from a place of pseudo-belief in what God says to a place of complete trust no matter what the circumstances. God also becomes absolute best friends with Abraham through the process.

Part 9 - 11: Isaac and Jacob

Isaac, to whom God gives the same covenant He gave Abraham (and gets even richer than Abraham), has a couple kids and accidentally hands his blessing down to the younger, deceitful one, Jacob. Jacob runs off in fear of his brother's wrath, and God appears to him, confirming that indeed he has received the covenant from Isaac that Abraham originally got.

Jacob then spends a lot of time with his Uncle, getting four wives, having 12 sons and deceiving and being deceived by Uncle Laban lots of times.

Jacob heads home with his numerous family members and possessions, but when he hears his brother is about to meet him, he panics. He literally wrestles with God all night. God blesses him and changes his name is Israel (struggle with God), telling him he will indeed be blessed and his descendants will be a great nation. His brother meets him and hugs him, and Israel returns home to his dad.

Jacob's brother is shown to have lots of kids and be blessed as well.

Throughout the stories of Isaac and Jacob, God's covenant with Abraham is passed down, so God is working through generations of people. Isaac and Jacob are both made very rich by the covenant. Jacob is given more stage time and is brought over time by God from a state of decietfulness to a state of mature trust and respect for God.

Part 12: Jacob's family

Jacob's sons aren't to nice to the favorite son of Jacob, Joseph, and long story short, he is sent to Egypt as a slave and no one knows he's alive but his brothers. He is continutally blessed in Egypt despite years of hard times and ends up basically the prime minister of Egypt. With God's help he's well prepared for a seven year famine and when it kicks in Egypt is doing great and making money off the whole world by feeding the nations.


Jacob's sons go to Egypt to get food because of the famine and Joseph recognizes him, after getting them to bring the youngest to Egypt, he is emotional in front of them and reveals himself as Joseph. They are afraid but he insists it is God who sent him to Egypt not them, so that he might save his family from starvation. Jacob is delighted to hear his son is alive and they all move down to Egypt.

Jacob, about to die, gives his sons their share of the blessing, especially praising Joseph and giving him a double share of the nation that will one day rise out of the person Israel's blood line. Jacob dies and they bury him back in the land God sent promised to Abraham (Canaan). Eventually Joseph dies but he reminds the Israelites that they belong in Canaan and that one day when God sends them back, to take his (Joseph's) bones back to Canaan with them. Then Joseph dies.

In the final part of Genesis, there is more character development as God brings Joseph's older brothers from a state of violence and deceit to humility and regret over their mistreatment of Joseph. Meanwhile God uses Joseph to save his family by bringing them to Egypt during the famine, which is just the place God told Abraham his descendants would become slaves. As the book ends, Jacob's kids are starting to grow into a nation, the Israelites.

The book ends in great anticipation, because God's covenant with Abraham, the focus on the book, are absolutely certain (because of God's character) and yet mostly not yet there. Yes, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were greatly blessed. But they are not a great nation yet (although that seems to be emerging), they're not yet in the land, they haven't taken the land, and all nations haven't been blessed (although many people comment on how blessed they are). It's like the tiny buds of the covenant are seen but there is much more to come.

I believe Genesis intends to end with that sort of mindset.

Ah, after 10 synopsis posts, we are on the final leg of Genesis at last. Parts 1-3 (two posts) told of the harmonious world God created with a man in his likeness in charge and man's corruption and fall. Parts 4-6 (2 posts) told of God starting over and sending Noah's family out to populate earth, with similar results. Parts 7-8 (3 posts) detailed God's epic promises to Abraham and how God blessed Abraham through life while simultaneously bringing Abraham to a place of faith through the birth of his son Isaac. Parts 9-11 (3 posts) Told of Isaac's wealth, and of God passing Abraham's covenant down to Isaac and then to Jacob, who God also brings through a process to bring him to a place of faithfulness to God.

And now, part 12 (this will be 3 posts as well).

Synopsis

Joseph, Jacob's 11th oldest son (older only than his full brother Benjamin), is 17, and is dad's favorite. His brothers hate them because of jealousy, because he brings a bad report to his father about them, because he gets a sweet coat, and, oh, he tells them about a couple dreams in which all of them plus his parents bow down to him.


Alright, so when they're way out far from home keeping the flocks, he goes to check on them for dad and they plot to kill him. The oldest, Rueben, tries to save him, but in the end he ends up being sold as a slave to Ishmaelites. (They trick dad into thinking he was killed by a wild animal.)

(Meanwhile, Judah has an interesting story with God striking a couple of his sons down and him eating some humble pie for using a prostitute and holding his third son from his oldest's widow, who ends up having Judah's kids.)

The Ishmaelites take him to Egypt and sell him to an Egyptian official named Potiphar. God is with Joseph and he's basically put in charge. Potiphar's wife would love to have an affair with Joseph, and since he isn't having it, she accuses him of trying to rape her. So he gets thrown into prison. But here God is with Joseph again and he is so successful he is basically put in charge of the dungeon as well.

This is where it gets interesting. Two of Pharaoh's servants are thrown into prison. After a while they both have dreams and by God's power Joseph interprets them both correctly: one is given his position back, and the other one is executed. Although the cupbearer (the one who is given his job back) promises Joseph he'll remember him and get him out, he forgets.

A couple years later, the Pharaoh has two dreams that nobody can crack, and suddenly the cupbearer's memory is jogged. They bring Joseph up right away, and he interprets the dreams, giving credit to God for the interpretation: Egypt will experience seven years of bountiful harvest followed by seven years of famine.

He tells Pharaoh that Egypt will need someone wise to fix it so the seven lean years are bearable, and Pharaoh can't think of anybody better than Joseph. So Joseph goes from an inmate to more or less the king of Egypt with the Pharaoh as a figurehead. Joseph stores up an absolute insane amount of grain during the first seven years, and when the famine comes, Joseph is able to begin supplying the whole world with grain.

Analysis

There's a few interesting points with this, the first third of Joseph's story. For one thing, it's clear by now that morals have developed in Genesis to mean something. At first, Genesis was just a series of stories and adventures with no moral lesson to learn. Since that, though, Genesis has gotten progressively concerned with morality, and by Joseph's story it is very important how he stays pure and doesn't lie, and it is bad how Judah denies his son's widow a husband and it's a disgrace that he uses a prostitute. I'm not sure when this light switch went on. Meanwhile Joseph is giving God credit left and right.

This part of the story is definitely the set up. It's funny because all of what I read today is 90% of what people know about this story, while the other 2/3rds of the story only make up 10% of our understanding of the passage. I guess it has to do with how quickly events move along. However, I'm guessing the main point Joseph's story (beside a moral exposition) is showing how Israel gets to Egypt. So this part of the story is really just the set up for actually making it happen over the next few pages.

One last note: Jacob/Israel still has his blessing/promise/covenant from God, and has not yet passed it on.

Response

I'm beginning to feel like an outsider. Early Genesis was beautiful commentary on the nature of man and God and our relationship. God's character was further demonstrated through Abraham and his family's story. But as his family continues down the road and Israel has his twelves sons and they'll be on their way to prosper in Egypt soon, the whole thing is transitioning to a story about the Israelite nation, of which I am not a member. I anticipate that a lot of the First Testament is going to seem like an exciting story that I'm viewing from the outside in. We'll see, though.

Genesis is getting closer to the end, and it's becoming evident that God's covenant with Abraham is not going to be completed at the end of the book. Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are all definitely very blessed. We'll see how much there is of blessing all nations, making a great nation, and giving them the land is fulfilled by the end of the book. If they're not all totally fulfilled, then I will say that at least Genesis is a book that is very much looking toward the future.

I've been enjoying Genesis so much more by reading more of it per day and really charting out the unfolding story of the whole book. It's good reading and it's the beginning of a very passionate story that makes up the rest of the Bible.

The last couple parts of Genesis I read were about the descent of mankind into corruption and violence. One explained that despite the sweet deal God set up for man and woman, they chose the Knowledge of Good and Evil over following God and have since faced all kinds of painful consequences, most notably death and murder. The other showed that while God created man in His image, throughout the generations man eventually spiraled down into absolute evil. God is deeply troubled that he made man and decides to get a fresh start on earth, destroying mankind. However, "Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord."

Synopsis

So what is there to say about the story of Noah? One thing to note is that it's not like Evan Almighty or that movie with Tony Danza; there's no doubt about what God is saying; God is still talking to humans like any other human would, out loud, and there is no question about that.

Noah is righteous, while the rest of earth is corrupt. So God explains his plan to Noah and tells him to build his ark and take his family and a ton of animals inside while God floods earth, killing everything. Noah obeys, and it all goes down just like God says, with ark dimensions and time periods being very specific.

Noah comes out and offers a burnt offering to God. God smells the aroma (!) and decides he will never destroy the earth like this again by speaking in verse. The existence of rainbows is explained as a sign of this promise. God then has a few things to say:

Once again, increase on the earth. Seriously, fill up earth with humans. Keep being in charge of the animals, even eating them. Remember, you're made in my image, so STOP MURDERING EACH OTHER.

Then there is a story explaining why Canaan would be cursed (?) and eventually Noah dies.

Analysis

I think it is notable to say, as most people know, that there is an absolute ton of global flood stories out there. I say this not to vouch for the historical accuracy of this account, but to note that this story is different from the others in a lot of ways. For one thing, mankind is destroyed to eradicate evil, not on a whim or something. Second, mankind is saved because of God's provision for Noah and his family, not against God's will or without God's knowledge. Third, Noah is kept safe and eventually put back on land because of God's care for him, not because God is starving and needs a sacrifice to eat. And fourth, Noah makes an alter to God out of praise and thankfulness instead of being afraid.

So, as opposed to some message about the grand canyon or fossil records, here is the message I'm getting from this story:

Mankind was totally evil and the earth was better off without humans.
God cannot bring himself to totally destroy humans and saves a good one.
God uses great care to protect animals and Noah's family and sparks off a new creation at the end of the story, warning them about murder creeping back in.
God is still as much in control as he's ever been, despite the evil of humans.

Overall, the story is a success. Mankind is saved, and corruption is cut off. However, the original problem is not solved. Man is still cut off from the tree of life and is at odds with God on some level, not ruling earth the intended way. This should be interesting.

Response

So what kind of personal response can I offer at this point? I think the main challenge at the beginning of Genesis is two-fold: What is my perspective on my own nature, and what is my view of God's character?

My own nature, according to the Bible, is in the image of God and a ruler on earth in God's kingdom. Yet my nature is also at odds with God and causing every major problem on earth. It's a compelling tragedy, with no easy solution in sight, even with God on the case. I think anyone confronting true faith in God must wrestle with this idea for a long time.

A lot of my culture would like to deny this idea and argue that mankind is beautiful right now and exactly what it's supposed to be. Genesis does sense an original intent for goodness and beauty in our species but then again we are totally filled with corruption. I think when I am most keenly aware of the true world around me, I agree with Genesis.

As far as who God is, he is all-powerful, he is all-knowing, and he cannot stand evil. Even so, he talks personally with humans, he walks, hears, and smells, and he demonstrates care for humans despite responding to their evil as well. This is hard to grasp because living in a somewhat Christian-oriented culture, we think we're all on the same page with God, but in a lot of ways God responding to my own evil by making provisions for me is radical.

I'll blog about part 5 and 6 of Genesis later today, which features man building a tower and Noah's family line.

Last post, after reading Genesis' first creation story, I commented that it seemed too idealistic. God creates everything and it's all just great. Of course most of us know that it's not going to stay that way very long in Genesis, and will quickly spiral down into a broken world we're more familiar with. That's where I found myself as I read part two of Genesis.

I say part two because it each begins with "This is the account of..." which according to the introduction to Genesis in my Bible, marks a new section. Thematically it seems reasonable, because the second creation story is a lot different from the first. Here's a table I made comparing the two:

Feature	First Story	Second Story
creator	God	The Lord God
time frame	6 days	unimportant
order	Light, sky, plants, sun, birds, animals & humans	unimportant
man's purpose	made in God's image, rule earth, multiply	work the garden, live forever, name the animals
human creation order	unimportant	man, then woman
scope	details of physical earth creation, purpose of man, goodness of what God made	explanations of parts of life, creation and fall of humans, before the fall vs. after the fall

Note that a big part of the scope of the second story that is absent from the first story is comparing before the fall vs. after the fall. I'll get to that in a second.

Also interesting are all the every-day-life explanations this story has: how animals got their names, why snakes don't have legs and are hated by women, why we have sex, why childbirth hurts, why marriage is hard, why farming is hard, why we have clothes, etc.

These are a fun part of the story and of course are not all... historically accurate... to say the least. But one particular explanation is the far more important and the central theme of this creation story. It is the explanation of why we die.

Here's the synopsis of Genesis part 2: God needed somebody to work the garden, so he breathes life into a man. The guy gets a pretty good deal living in the garden and hanging out, walking around with God. In fact, after naming the animals, God makes a woman for the man out of his own body, which he is so happy about that he breaks into poetry and bam, we have an explanation for sex. However they will die if they eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Why don't I hear about the name of that tree more? It is not the Tree of Evil that's off-limits but the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. All I can say is that the humans must not have had a clue about the difference between good and evil, and perhaps they weren't created to have such knowledge. The serpent and God seem to confirm this in their speech.

As in all stories like this, a crafty animal (in this case the snake) fools them into eating from that tree. Immediately they recognize and are ashamed of their nakedness. They also hide from God. Besides those two things, check out all the problems this causes: childbearing is painful, marriage is oppressive, the ground is hard to farm, people will not live forever, they are separated for good from the Tree of Life, and to top it all off, one of their sons kills his brother. Four generations later, a descendant who is married to two women proclaims that he has killed two men and is proud of it.

The contrast is stark; instead of working and living and walking alongside God and each other in harmony forever, humans move away from God, hide from him, kill each other and eventually all die.

Part 3 starts after that, and I might as well summarize it because it's similar and short. This part reemphasizes that God made humans in his likeness and blessed them. It then lists Adam and tons of his descendants, so that by the time a very very long time passes and a man named Noah is born, the humans are 100% corrupt and evil. They are so evil compared to how God created them that God is sad that he ever created humans and decides he will wipe them out; however, there is one little hitch in his plan, and that's that Noah found favor in God's eyes.

So part one of Genesis was about the beautiful perfect harmony and beauty of earth and man that God created. Part two demonstrates that by choosing to figure out good and evil for themselves, humans screwed everything up and went into a downward spiral. And part 3 is basically the same, except demonstrated through the passing of time rather than one single act.

So, what have we learned so far? What is the Bible about so far? God has been the main character, and he is a very personal, real, character who walks, talks, feels, etc. He is portrayed as totally good and unbelievable powerful, as everything he creates is perfect and he even helps humans when they fail, by protecting Cain and making skin garments for Adam and Eve.

Meanwhile, man, who was supposed to be a ruler under God, made in his image, rejected God's way in order to choose his own. This has lots of bad instant results and even worse ones down the road.

Now this is a story I can get into. This is the world I see around me. Humans have serious problems. According to the Bible, the problems exist because we turned from God and are cut off from the tree of life. It's an intriguing idea and one that our rights-oriented, I'm-the-victim culture would not appreciate. Anyway, the foreshadowing at the end of part three indicates that God is planning on wiping out humans in the next part. Sounds like a plan; the whole exercise was a disaster, really.

Welcome to Honest Synopsis. It's about reading the Bible straight up, and responding. This introductory post will put forth the purpose of this blog, give background info on me and why I'm interested in finding out what's in the Bible, detail exactly what I'll be doing, list my materials, and ask four things from you the reader.

Purpose

1. This project is for Christians like me who have come to the conclusion that the typical interpretation, application, and explanation of the Bible is more or less backwards and nonsensical, and that in order to understand what the Bible is actually about, we need to read it with fresh, keen, perceptive eyes.

2. This project is for outsiders to Christianity who are genuinely confused or outraged by Christianity and the Bible, and those who think that the God of the Bible and of Christians is an idiot or weak or just cruel, but who are also willing to listen to someone else's alternative thoughts.

The Person

I am a 22-year-old American male in Columbus, Ohio. I am a campus minster intern with a major religious organization. I majored in English and religion at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. I've been a part of mainline denominations, quasi-charismatic churches, home churches, and your basic non-denominational evangelical Christianity-factory.

My professor of Biblical studies and my English literature major have helped lead me to scratch my head regarding how Christians tend to read the Bible. We read it in very short bursts, with no rhyme or reason to where we start or stop. We take parts as literal that should be taken as metaphors, and we take parts as metaphors that should be taken literally. We attach our beliefs to what we read instead of the other way around. We ignore parts we don't like. We have no sense of thread, rhythm, motif, or purpose. We base our Bible-reading experience on our emotional response instead of on what the Bible is about. We treat the Bible like an endless collection of magical self-help fortune cookies.

Why not read the Bible for what it is: dozens of pieces of foreign literature of varying genres, requiring the same basic reading principles as Winesburg, Ohio or Hamlet? Sure, as a Christian, I expect that it's divine and relevant, but if so, it can probably defend itself on those counts. My job is more less to understand what it's saying.

The Task

Over the next year or so, I will read the whole Bible. I will take detailed notes and make lots of outlines and charts and lists of characters and plot threads. I will write summaries. I will look for themes and underlying messages. And I will post what I'm discovering on this blog every day or two. I will also post the responses that the book is drawing from me, and my response to the world view it is inviting me into..

This blog is not an educational tool on Hebrew culture or an exposition on prophetic writing. I am not an expert, nor do I have the time to explain all that. You'll be hearing very short summaries of what I read, what I think it's saying, and how it connects to everything else I've read. I won't skip any parts. And perhaps most importantly I'll discuss what kind of effect it's having on my life.

In the end, I'll hopefully fill several 5-subject notebooks and this blog with what the Bible is actually about. If you're a Christian, hopefully it'll inspire you to do the same. If you're not, hopefully it will answer some questions about Christianity and inform you about what's (actually) in the Bible, and how what is inside it can influence someone's life.

The Materials

I'll be reading The Books of the Bible: A Presentation of Today's New International Version, largely because it doesn't have any chapters or verse numbers, so that I can read the books without being tempted to segment them. It also changes the order of the books a bit.

Supplementing my reading will be Introducing the Old Testament: Completely Revised and Updated by John Drane and Introducing the New Testament: Its Literature and Theology by Paul J. Achtermeier and others. These will mostly be used as a guide for when I'm just confused about what's being referred to, or for when I need some historical or genre-related context.

The Requirements

Christian or not, to be a good blog reader, you'll have to agree to a few things:

• This is a blog detailing what I find the Bible to be saying, on its own terms, from its own perspective. Any opinion or response will be clearly marked. It is not a cynical attack or an attempt to poke holes in these books. I will tell about passages I'm struggling with or what confuses me, but if you'd rather be entertained by people whose goal is to paint God as a mean bully picking on humans or that demons are ridiculous, check out another blog... I am not here to evaluate the plausibility of God's love or demons but to treat them as a major theme and minor characters, respectively, in a piece of literature, the Bible. At the end of my journey I will reflect more on how it all matches my world view.
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• The Bible is not the center of Christianity - Jesus Christ as our only chance at knowing God is. The Bible is simply our most trustworthy source about who Jesus is.
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• I will not be referring to the New Testament much as I read the Old (First) Testament. The authors of the First Testament were not yet aware of the New Testament.
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• Please leave comments.

Ok, this should be fun. I am excited. I hope this humble blog is exciting to you if you give it a chance.