Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

Doug Chaplin has written a post asking whether “Bible Alone” is an oxymoron.  For my title, I couldn’t resist.  It is one of my favorite lines from the movie Renaissance Man when he is trying to teach his students about oxymoron.  Check it out:

Anyway, I agree with Doug.  I know … surprise, surprise (I am Catholic after all).  I think that “Bible Alone” is a bit of an oxymoron; however, I do think that some Protestants do feel the weight of this and try to deal with it.  And, I also do not think that a Catholic or Orthodox or Anglican theology saves one from the circular reasoning that seems apparent (at least to me in the concept of Bible alone).  For more on that you can see HERE an example of what I mean on the related issue of the canon.  Anyway, click on over to Doug’s post and let him know what you think.

Okay, I can’t be the only Christian who thinks parts of the Bible are boring, can I?  I’m listening through the Old Testament currently.  And, I thought I was going to slip into a coma this morning because I was listening to the beginning of the Book of Numbers.  I understand the whole “the Bible is not boring, Avatar is boring thing,” though for the life of me I can’t stomach listening to John Piper anymore (BTW, isn’t it possible that both the scripture and Avatar could be interesting? Not an either or thing in my opinion.  Avatar was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time).  People are trying to say that the scripture is really interesting.  And I agree, or else I wouldn’t have invested a significant portion of my life studying the Bible both as an individual and in a formal academic setting.  But, I think we have to at least be honest that there are parts of the Bible are BORING.*  A list of my top three are:

1. The beginning of Numbers
2. The beginning of Chronicles
3. The instructions for building the tabernacle in Exodus

What do you think?  What parts of the scripture do you read to put yourself to sleep at night?  Or, am I just being impious?

* By “boring” I do not mean unimportant.  Certainly genealogies are not my cup of tea, but I understand that they would have been of the utmost importance to an Ancient Israelite.

Thanks to “Qohelet,” one of my commenters for letting me know about this link.  I would mention that his blog is well-worth checking out if you get a chance.  This is a link to a free PDF Bible the World English Bible version.  This could be very helpful as this is the same  as the audio version of the Old Testament I link to on my free audio Bibles page.  Therefore, you could be listening to and reading the same text.

Here is a quote from John Riches in The Bible: A Very Short Introduction, which I think is instructive for those who throw the term Bible around:

So, to put it simply, the term ‘Bible’, as a collection of sacred texts, is first used for the Christian scriptures, in their different versions. Only later is it used of Jewish scriptures in a manner which is designed to distinguish the Hebrew from the Christian scriptures. Thus the Bible, in most recent usage, is ambiguous: it may refer either to the Jewish or the Christian Bibles, in their various forms.

Okay. Someone has way too much time on their hands, namely the creator of TheBrickTestament.com.  A considerable number of Biblical stories are laid out with Legos.  You really need to go check this out.  I have seen a lot of people link to this before, but have never really taken the time to go look.  One word of warning, however, would be that the creator of the site does not seem very well disposed toward the Bible at times, or one might even say overall.  One of the stories is titled “God Makes Promises He Won’t Keep.”  Nonetheless, the actual Lego depictions are quite interesting with many of our modern cliches about God intertwined with people dressed in ancient garb (e.g. God is depicted as an old man with a white beard).  Click the link following link to check out the Old Testament stories in Lego.