Are you sick, and heavy laden?

I am well into the Christian scriptures in my push to read the entire Bible in a year. This week, I’m finishing up with The Gospels, and as much as I’ve already read the verses — multiple times, and memorized vast portions of them — the words have a new meaning because I’ve spent time with the …

The latest in Hebrew scriptures…

…and yes, I’m still slogging my way through what I was taught to call the Old Testament, but which is probably more accurately also known as the Hebrew scriptures. As I type this, I just finished the book of Jonah — which is just a short four chapters, something I didn’t remember from my earlier …

Jeremiah was a downer

(And if you’re of a certain age, you’re finishing that title with “Was a good friend of miiine.”) Actually, that’s kind of appropriate, especially the “never understood a single word he said…” As I promised myself earlier, I am reading the entire Bible, cover to cover, this year, in little snippets of three chapters here, four …

In last weeks’ reading of the Hebrew scriptures…

So what I’m seeing in Numbers and Leviticus is a God who is inordinately devoted to detail — from the many and varied ways an  unclean person (pretty much, any person with any discharge, and my apologies if you’re reading this over a meal) can be punished/shunned to precisely how to cover the Ark of …

In last weeks’ reading of the Hebrew scriptures:

I am into Leviticus, and the beginning of the book and at the end of Exodus there’s a lot of very specific rules as to sacrifices. In fact, though my inclination is to skip over some of the stuff about goats without a blemish, it struck me that the priests had to be pretty deft …

In last weeks’ reading of the Hebrew scriptures:

(As a reminder, I, the fundamentalist with Mad Bible Skills, have started re-reading the Bible, from Gen. 1, using a guide I loaded onto my phone. Obviously, people read the Bible and find different things. Here’s what I found last week:) I’m in the book of Exodus, where God has come down to tell Moses, Aaron and …

Happy April 15! What does the Bible say about paying taxes?

Jesus did it. He told his followers to do it, too. Paul reminded early Christians that they are “subject to governing authorities,” and as such, they should pay taxes as a matter of conscience, and not just to avoid jail. For more, go here or here or here. In the Hebrew Scriptures, required tithing was …