Friday, July 19, 2013

Why am I doing this?

Good question -- but that doesn't mean I have a good answer.

When 2013 began, I had a project -- I wanted to read the complete works of William Shakespeare, 38 plays, five acts a play.  I decided to pace myself - read an act a day.  Turns out that was a good idea.  I finished it in 190 days - exactly one act a day - on July 9. That left me with an interest to do something similar.

I know - I'll go through the Bible.  On the face of it, that's a strange idea, as I'm not at all religious.  True, but I've always been interested in the Bible.  My interest is more historical and cultural than religious.  It's interesting seeing the development of something so important to world culture and civilization.  Also, I've been more interested in historical-critical appraisals of the Bible - the sorts of thing that note that Gilgamesh also had a flood story, or trying to piece apart the different authors of the Torah - than in anything else.

Besides, I've actually read it before.  I took it up twice.  First, at around age 10 I tried reading it on a long family road trip.  I got almost all the way through the Old Testament in the family's Catholic Bible before stopping.  (Not sure why I stopped, but I did).  Then after college I got all the way through it - Old and New Testaments both.

There was a problem, though.  While I found some parts interesting, my eyes glazed over through much of it, and I'd forgotten most of it as I read it.  The less I got out of a chapter or book, the quicker I tried to blow through it.

And here's why I started with my experience reading Shakespeare.  Pacing - that's the ticket.  I'll try to read about 5-7 chapters a day or so.  There are 1,333 chapters in the Catholic Bible, and that's what I'll go through.  In fact, I bought a new one - the New American Bible, Revised Edition, St. Joseph's Medium Size Edition by the Catholic Book Publishing Corporation. The old family Bible was bad shape from when I read it at age 10.  I suppose there's no reason to stick with a Catholic Bible.  I'm not Catholic and my parents left the church before I was born.  But it does have the advantage of having extra books in its Old Testament, and I'd feel like I was wussing out if I skipped those.

So that's the plan - read 5-7chapters a day until I'm done.  OK, but why the hell blog about? That was not part of the original plan.  Yeah, but things took an unexpected turn.  Let's get back to Shakespeare for a second.  Partially to motivate myself to do it, each day I read Shakespeare, I'd post a (usually) brief statement on what I'd read and what my reactions were on an online message board.  The regulars there didn't mind and some liked it.  So when I started the Bible project, I figured I'd do the same.  I wasn't sure if it would be as well-received.  Maybe they wouldn't want someone talking about religion-type-stuff there.  Also, it turned out I had more to say about it than I did Shakespeare.

But to my surprise, it went over really well.  After about a week, a few suggested I start a blog about it.  I thought that was nuts, but ... yeah, why not?

A few other comments.  First, aside from having read the Bible before, I've read some books about the Bible.  Most notably, I've read a "The Good Book" by David Plotz.  That's a guy who basically did what I'm trying to do - read the Bible cover to cover and record his thoughts.  Plotz, like me, is also non-religious, but interested.  You can see this blog as a low-rent imitator of his work.  One reason I almost didn't start this blog was a I figured it would be too much a rip off of him, and to be sure more than a few thoughts of mine are rip offs of his, but well, people always have the choice to not read this.  And I'll be upfront about that connection as I go along. As much as my Shakespeare project inspired me, so did Plotz.

I've also read some other books on the Bible, most notable several by Richard Elliot Friedman, a big time Biblical scholar.  From him I've read: Who Wrote the Bible? (which is about the Torah), The Disappearance of God, and The Hidden Book of the Bible.  I've read a little about the New Testament: Jesus Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman and Paul and Jesus by James D. Tabor.

Those ideas also are floating  in my head, especially Who Wrote the Bible, though I must admit I'm hazy on a lot of that, having read that about 15 years ago.

For the most part, I'm going in order.  For the most part.  I'm making exceptions for books like Psalms and the other wisdom books.  Based on my previous experience, trying to read all 150 psalms is the Bataan Death March of Bible reading.  I understand that the Psalms are among the most popular parts of the Bible.  But from what I know, people that like reading them don't sit down to read all 150 in order.  Trust me, there's a reason for that.  They become repetitive and wearying - and then go on for another 100 Psalms.  So I'm reading a psalm or two a day to help break them up. If, say, I do all of Psalms but only half of Proverbs before getting there in order, then fine - I'll read 5-7 Proverbs a day until I'm done.  But at least I won't have to get through all of the wisdom books non-stop.

My real name isn't actually Dag Nabbit, but it's the username I have at the other online message board I used to post this stuff, and it just seems weird/arrogant to title this blog "The Gospel According to [my real name]." 

It might be a little weird at first.  I haven't used blogger in years and don't know how to do some basics. (How do I construct links on the side of the page?)   I've already read all of Genesis, the first five chapters of Exodus and a dozen Psalms.  Do I dump them all in at once or what?  I don't know yet.  We'll see. 

I don't know if I'll keep up this blog.  I feel pretty good that I'll keep up reading the Bible all the way through, but it's extra layers of work to write about it - and more layers still to spellcheck and stuff.  That detail work my cost me any blogging enthusiasm.  We'll see.

But that's just it -- we'll see.  

1 comment:

  1. I'll tune in once in a while to see what you think about it all.

    ReplyDelete