Matthew: Chapters 5 to 8

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CHAPTER 5

Now for one of the main events – the Sermon on the Mount!  It’s three chapters long and is simply put “Jesus Christ’s Greatest Hits.” Sure, he has plenty of other famous statements in the Bible, put do they ever come off at such a fast and furious pace as they do here? 

People have been attracted to him so far as a faith healer.  That’s given him plenty willing to hear him out, so he goes to a hill where they can hear him.  And he starts off with the Beatitudes.  Good idea.  Always give them some real A-list material to grab their attention right off the bat.

The Beatitudes are the “Blessed are the ___” things. For example, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  In all, Christ blesses: the poor in spirit, they who mourn, the meek, they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, and they who are persecuted for righteousness.

That’s a pretty nice cross-section of people to bless.  Looking at the list, this appeals to people who are out of power and/or down on their luck.  It’s not appealing to the content who are healthy and happy.  What need do they have some prophet or messiah?  They’re already doing well.  Twice Christ appeals to those who seek righteousness.  Who would seek that the most?  Those who feel we sorely lack it.  Those are rarely the movers and shakers in society. They can already do something about it.

The weird one is “the poor in spirit.”   What does that phrase mean?  You’d expect that a religion would want to focus on those strong in spirit.  They are the ones who it sounds like the most faith.  I suppose poor in spirit means the ones with the blues.  They are down in the dumps, but fear not – God will come to help you as well.

Christ moves on and says something else famous.  He calls the people “the salt of the earth” and then says something I don’t get.  If salt loses its taste, can it be seasoned?  No, it’s good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled afoot.  Uhhh…huh?  These are the people you’re talking about, Jesus.  I guess he means that this shouldn’t happen to him, but it’s not really clear. 

Oh, since he’s making analogies, he also calls people “the light of the world.”  That sounds nice.  He says, “A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.”  I suppose that’s the basis of John Winthrop’s City on a Hill sermon he made when the Pilgrims landed at Boston in 1630.  That speech itself served as the basis for another speech – Ronald Reagan’s 1980 talk upon receiving the presidential nomination. 

The next part indicates that the gospel was likely written after St. Paul’s time as Christian leader.  (Not because it shows a big St. Paul influence – just the opposite.  It shows an idea so opposed to Paul’s thought that it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have denounced this gospel for being so wrong).  Christ makes clear how he relates to the old Laws of Moses: “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Yeah – St. Paul had the exact opposite approach.  He believed Christ’s crucifixion freed us from the old Jewish laws. 

In fact, so far Matthew has shown a positive mania to align Christ with the laws and the prophets.  Whenever he can, he shows how Christ upholds the prophecies that came before him.  Thus we get his unlikely birth in Bethlehem, and even his fleeing to the sea after John the Baptist’s arrest as a supposed fulfilling of Old Testament notions.  Matthew and Paul have very different approaches when it comes to Christ.

Christ next shows he not only supports the law, but intends to go beyond it.  Does the old law say not to kill?  Well Christ says that’s not enough. You can’t even be angry with your brother.  If you ever, best you make up first and then give an offering at the temple second.  For if you give an offering first, then God may not accept it.  The thought process behind this is simple: it’s what you feel that matters most of all, not what you do.  So being angry is the same as murder, because the feeling leads to the action, so deal with your feelings first.  For that matter, since feelings mean more than actions, that’s why the sacrifice should be made secondary.

And Christ goes on from there to give a host of similar ideas.  Not only is adultery bad, but if you sin in your heart, that’s the same thing.  In fact, Christ goes so far as to call for self-mutilation.  If your right eye causes you to sin in your heart, rip out your right eye.  If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.  WHOAH!  This is as radical as radical gets.

And really, the main theme of this section is how radically stringent Christ’s morality is.  This is as high a standard as humanly possible.  In fact, it’s higher than what’s humanly possible, which strikes me as a bad thing.  It’s no wonder why all Christian denominations try to handle the impact of people being unable to achieve these values rather than try to force people to live up to them. Jesus goes on and denounces divorce.  If you marry a divorced woman, you commit adultery.  You only get one marriage. 

Oh, and oaths suck.  All oaths.  The old law said don’t give a false oath, but Christ wants to be clear: don’t give oaths.  Instead, you should, “Let your `Yes’ mean `Yes’ and your `No’ mean `No.’”  Hey – that’s a nice Brownsville Station song!  This is radical, but it’s something the Quakers will attempt. They’ll oppose taking oaths for just this reason; it calls into question their word at other times.

Next, Christ takes his radical morality to the notion of revenge.  Christ denies the notion of “an eye for an eye” and instead calls for no resistance.  If someone strikes your right cheek – you know what comes next, right? – “turn the other one to him as well.”  Turn the other check.  No matter what someone does to you, don’t fight back.  He doesn’t give a rationale for this.  He just doesn’t think you should fight back. 

This chapter ends with Christ explaining why you should turn the cheek – it’s so you can love your enemies.  He denies the old notion that you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  He wants you to love all, even you enemy.

One thing that oddly happens in this chapter: early on he says he comes to fulfill the law, but at times he openly contradicts it.  Turning the cheek, not giving oaths – these things go against traditional law; as Christ himself notes.  But he still wants people to do it.  How does he square this with his claim to stand for the old law?  I guess he means that we should appeal to the higher morality in the law – love and forgiveness, not revenge.  That’s my best guess.

CHAPTER 6

Christ brings his particular moral slant to charitable donations.  It’s not enough that you do it, you have to do it for the right reasons.  A person who does it to show off, someone who wants everyone to see him give aid – fuck that guy.  He may as well not even do it because his motivations are all wrong.  He wants people to be impressed with him, when the focus should be on helping the needy.  When you give to charity, you should do it in such secrecy that your left hand doesn’t even know what the right hand is doing.  Huh.  So that’s where that line comes from.

The same goes for prayer.  When you pray, do it in your own room, behind closed doors, and in secret.  People who show off are hypocrites.  They want people to look at them while they pray; making the focus themselves instead of God.  In other words, Jesus Christ really doesn’t think much of Tim Tebow.  Similarly, fasting shouldn’t be done really showy, either.  The overriding theme is humbleness towards doing the right action.  It’s the action, not the actor.

But since Jesus brought up prayer, time for Christ to bust out the proper way to pray – The Lord’s Prayer.  It’s so famous it’s hardly worth quoting.  The main themes are paying homage to God and then giving thanks.  From him, comes all.   So fittingly, right after the prayer, Christ tells us that we must forgive others. If you don’t, why would God forgive you?  It all comes back from him.  Again – be humble.  Always be humble. 

Similarly, don’t be greedy.  Those who focus on treasures on earth will get theirs.  In fact, Christ even says, “No one can serve two masters” so you must choose between God and mammon.  Damn – you can’t swing a dead cat in this speech without hitting a half-dozen famous lines.

There is one weird thing in the middle of the money section.  He tells you that the lamp of the body is the eye, so take care of it.  Ummmm .. .. Christ is really into optometry?  I don’t quite get that part.

As the chapter nears an end, Christ starts combining threads.  He makes some general statements opposing materialism.  Why do you care about your clothing?   Why do you care about the next day? Don’t.  “O you of little faith” don’t worry about that.  God will provide.  “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”  This passage really goes against America.  We’ve long been a nation of strivers who aren’t content with what we have but always seek more.  People noted that about us in the 1830s and it is still true now.  Going by this passage, this nation really falls short of Christ’s goals.

CHAPTER 7

The last chapter of the Sermon of the Mount gets off with a famous line: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged.”  I’ve usually seen it as “judge not lest ye be judged yourself”.  I guess that’s the King James Bible.  Christ follows this line up with maybe the oddest point in the Sermon – he compares it to two people with splinters in their eye.  Don’t try to help the other guy if you have a splinter in your eye.  Huh?  Great speech so far, Jesus, but that line sure was a clunker.

But it’s back to great lines.  Don’t give holy things to dogs or pearls to swine.  Oh, that’s where that line comes from.  It’s actually a bit nasty.  It seems to go against a lot of the ideas here that you should always give of yourself.  This wants you to not give some things.  Heck, it can be used to nullify the call not to judge others.  A person can judge you a swine and use that as a reason not to help you.  How can you reconcile them?  (This speech is so good, I feel the need to try to reconcile the parts that are at ends to me).  Well, I don’t think it refers to charity.  Always give aid to people who need it.  But don’t put yourself out giving help to loathsome people – and we all know so people like that – you don’t need it and won’t do right with it.  In other words, don’t break your neck helping Donald Trump.  Maybe it means something like that.

That said, the next part strikes me as transparent bullshit.  Christ says prayers will be answered – “seek and you fill find.” That’s a nice line and I have no problem with it per say, but it leads to a section that concludes, “heavenly Father give good things to those who ask.”  This goes against the Book of Job, one of my favorite books.  Life isn’t always a moral wonderland.  I can make a partial defense.  Though prayer may not have a 100% success rate, it can help. Hell, even people with mental illness show an improved tendency to recover if they are religious and pray for help.  It can help.  But it’s not guaranteed. 

Oh, and we get to the Golden Rule.  It’s a sign just how good this overall speech is that it’s just another great moment within it.  This might be the key to Christian day-to-day ethics, and it’s easy to overlook because Christ keeps saying so many wonderful things.  But you can see why this line is so central.  Throughout the goal is to act well to others, to strive for the highest level of thought and behavior – so of course it can all boil down to “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.” 

Also, like Amos in the Old Testament, Christ’s philosophy is heavily centered on just treatment of each other. 

There is a bit more Sermon on the Mount left, but it’s something of an anti-climax.  He’s winding down, and has hit almost all of his main famous lines. He compares following his way to entering a narrow gate.  He denounces false prophets – who are like wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Ah, still got time for a few more great lines, I see.  And Christ notes that just because you think you’re a true disciple of his doesn’t mean you are.  If you assume that you are, you might get your comeuppance from Christ himself.  That is a profound reason for the self-righteous to pause and reflect. 

Christ wants his church to be built on those who not only listen, but also act as he says they should.

I like how Matthew wraps it up.  After the Sermon on the Mount is finished, Matthew reports, “When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.”  I’ll bet they were astonished.  This is fantastic stuff.  It’s up there with the best moments of the Old Testament – and we’re just seven chapters into the New.  In a Bible full of great ideas, rhetoric, and speeches, this one is the tops.

CHAPTER 8

OK, I like how this chapter begins.  Now that the Sermon on the Mount is over, Matthew begins by telling us, “When Jesus came down from the mountain” – like Moses!  Get it?  God gave Moses the law from the mountain.  And now Christ – y’know, the Son of God – gives laws from the mount, and comes down.  Well played, Matthew, well played.

Anyhow, much of the rest of the chapter is Christ healing people.  He heels a leper and tells the leper to keep this quiet.  Well, that fits with Christ’s admonishment in the Sermon to not be all showy in your piety.  However, this is clearly coming immediately after the Sermon, and so there should be a lot of people around to see this miracle.  Ah, never mind.

Next Christ heals the servant of a Roman centurion.  It’s interesting because the official tells Christ – look, you don’t have to actually touch the guy.  Just say you’ll heal him and I’ll take your word for it.  Christ then applauds the man’s faith, saying, “in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”  Yeah, that’s a shot being taken at the Jews – and a compliment to the Gentiles.  Though Matthew seems respectful towards Jewish law, he also has some problems with the Jews. 

Welcome to early Christianity, where the split between Jews and Christians has already begun.  Christians are sure that Jesus was the savior promised them in holy scripture – Matthew makes this point as often as he can (including in this chapter, where he quotes some random bit of Isaiah about how the messiah will take away their diseases) - the Jews themselves don’t buy it.  Well then, either the Christians are wrong or the Jews lack faith.  Obviously, the Christians put the blame on the Jews, and you can an example of it here with the centurion story.  It gets even darker, as Christ says of his fellow Jews, “the children of the kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  Oh, I think this qualifies as indirect evidence that Matthew was written after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.

One final thing – by making the Roman the good guy, the new religious is showing its willingness to gain supporters among the gentiles.  Yeah, that approach has a future before itself.  Boy, does it ever.

After healing some more people (including Peter’s mom), Christ makes one of his more extraordinary statements.  He calls for people to follow him, and to prioritize him over all else.  A man says he’ll follow Christ, but first must bury his dad.  “Follow me and let the dead bury their dead.”  Clearly, Jesus has an ego.

After a few more miracles, the chapter ends with a weird story I can’t quite follow.  He’s with some people possessed by demons and some pigs and the people of the town here what Jesus did and beg him to leave.  Up at the end, I figured that Christ was healing people and making everything good, so I was really thrown by the end where people told him to amscray.  

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Matthew: Chapters 1 to 4

Click here for the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi.

CHAPTER 1

Here we go – New Testament time!  The introductory notes tell me that this is the most widely quoted and generally best regarded of the gospels, which is why it is placed first.  It was also long thought to be the first one written, but modern scholarship now think that it came after Mark.

Attributed to the apostle Matthew, the general sense is that this can’t be true.  Aside from the fact that the odds are the apostles were illiterate; this one seems to rely on author sources instead of his own memories.  (And you’d expect the actual apostle to rely more on his own memories).  It leans heavily on Mark and the lost Q-source, a group of sayings that are common to Matthew and Luke.  Mark is believed to have been written after the destruction of the Temple, and this one is maybe a decade after that, after Mark had already been disseminated widely enough to become a source for a new gospel. 

Anyhow, the story begins with Christ’s lineage, going all the way back to Abraham.  There is some attempted paralleling.  It’s 14 generations from Abraham to David.  14 more from David to the Babylonian Captivity.  And 14 more from that to Christ.  (Note: that means the average kid was born when his dad was 40, which is hard to believe for the era, but no matter). The 14-generations thing is clearly done for effect.  In fact, it takes 14 generations in the middle group because Matthew left out several kings mentioned in Kings I and Kings II.  So that’s an error, but it’s one done intentionally for thematic purposes.  The point is every 14 generations a big change happens – and Christ is the latest big change.

Oh, by the way, the entire genealogy actually makes no sense if you think about it.  This genealogy, as most do in that era, traces the family back through the father.  Fun fact: Christ isn’t really the son of his father, Joseph.  Christ is a miracle birth born to Virgin Mary.  Therefore Christ isn’t actually related to anyone listed above like this. 

My first thought was – well, our notion of Christ comes from a combination of the four gospels.  Maybe this one talks about his ancestry, and then the other gospels say Mary was a virgin.  But no.  Right after this ancestry, Matthew point black tells us that Mary was a virgin and the child conceived through the Holy Spirit.  We also get the Old Testament Bible quote that explains the virgin birth: Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.”  Well, that’s what it says here, but looking back, my Bible has the following for Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.”  They got the Emmanuel name right – but Christ’s name isn’t Emmanuel, but Jesus.  (Actually, it’s Joshua, Jesus is just a Greek form of Jesus). 

Anyhow, Jesus is born.

CHAPTER 2

Here they are – the Magi!  The footnotes tell me this word first referred to Persian priests, but then came to mean anyone with more than human knowledge.  These guys are astrologers.  

And we get the story of the star of Bethlehem.  My footnotes helpfully inform me that back in the day there was a belief that a new star was created whenever a king was born.  That explains why King Herod is so freaked out when the Magi (his astrologers) give him the news.  Oh, if you’re wondering, Herod ruled from 37 to 4 BC.  That puts a time stamp on this story.

The story itself is silly.  The Magi go out looking for the star, and it guides them to a house in Bethlehem.  Oh come on!  Ever tried to follow a star?  They’re not moving.  If it is moving, that should really be what gets your attention, not its brightness.  (And this is all overlooking the non-science that is astrology).  Well, they enter the house.  No, not a manger, nothing like that. Joseph and Mary have themselves a nice house.  I guess that’ll be a different gospel.  Well, the Magi give them gold, frankincense and myrrh. 

The Magi are supposed to report back to Herod, but think better of it.  Herod is infuriated, and he figures the future king has been born in Bethlehem, and orders all male children under two years of age to be killed.  For the record: there is no evidence of any such order occurring outside Matthew. The order wouldn’t make much sense.  Why would Herod be so frightened?  Even if he believed in astrology and all that, he’s still got time.  People can believe in astrology and still assume it won’t 100% dictate the future.  (Clearly Herod thinks that’s the case, or it would be futile to kill all the young male babies).  But it sure makes Herod look horrible, and he already had a horrible reputation when this book was written). Also, it’s utterly pointless.  Christ never is a king on earth anyway. 

Well, the angels tell Joseph and Mary to vamos to Egypt, and so they do.  And all those kids left behind in Bethlehem who are killed?  Man, they are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They’re acceptable losses.  Yikes.  Joseph and Mary stay in Egypt until Herod dies, and then go to Nazareth. This, Matthew tells us, fulfills an old prophecy that the Messiah “shall be called a Nazorean.”

What to make of this story?  A few things.  First, it announces that Christ is a big deal even when he’s a newborn.  More importantly, it tries to show Christ as the fulfillment of a bunch of prophecies.  The prophet Micah said that the messiah would come from Bethlehem.  I missed that when I read the Book of Micah, but looking back – yep, there it is: at the top of Chapter 5.  So you need Christ to be born in Bethlehem.  Problem: Christ was widely enough known in his own town as a lad from Nazareth that you need to explain how someone born in Bethlehem ended up in Nazareth. This story, with the murdered babies, accomplishes that.  There was something in Jeremiah about the hope from the future coming from Egypt, so this story has Christ’s family spend his earliest years in Egypt.  As for this prophecy of the Nazorean, well, my footnotes tell me that nowhere in the Old Testament does Nazareth rate a mention.  I thought I saw it in Isaiah, but apparently not.  This might just show our author’s imperfect knowledge of the old scripture.  Oops.

CHAPTER 3

Enter John the Baptist.  He’s supposed to be Christ’s cousin, but I don’t see that anywhere here.  That must come from a different gospel.  Here, John the Baptist is just a preacher in the desert, a latter day Elijah.  The Elijah comparison is made pretty clear, as John lives in the desert eating locusts and honey; just like Elijah did during the Kings I famine. 

John has a basic message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  Two things about that.  First, this involves maybe the most famous mistranslation in the Vulgate.  The Vulgate was the Catholic Bible written in Latin by St. Jerome that was the common Bible for 1,000 years.  But Jerome got a few things wrong, including this one.  He didn’t have John say “Repent!” but “Do penance!” This isn’t just a minor issue, as the Catholic Church traditionally made good works central to going to heaven instead of faith.  Doing penance is works-based; repenting is faith-based.  The mistranslation was a core pillar of support for Catholic theology – and then just before the Reformation they learned it was a mistranslation.  Oops. 

Second, John is calling for the end of the world as we know it – and calling for it soon.  Yeah, get used to that.  Plenty more where that came from in the Bible.

John helps introduce us to some key themes.  First, this is where we first meet the Pharisees and Sadducees.  John helpfully calls them “You brood of vipers!” so right away we know that they’re bad guys.  Nice to get that cleared up so quickly. 

Oh, and John helps gear us up for the coming of Christ.  He tells his audience, “I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I.  I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  So look out world – Christ is coming.  That’s actually a scary way to introduce Christ, if you think about it.  He is mighty, he will baptize you with fire (!)  This is after his birth was so important that the stars themselves took notice.  I tell you what, so far this doesn’t sound like a guy who will end up on a cross.  Yeah, we all know how the story ends, but right now he sounds like an ass kicker extraordinaire. 

Well, Christ asks John to baptize him, and John thinks that is entirely backwards.  “I need to be baptized by you,” John says, “yet you are coming to me?”  Yes, in fact, he is.  So John does it and God announces to all that this is his son, who is proud of.  Yeah, a lot of parents make a scene at their kid’s ceremonial rite of passage. 

CHAPTER 4

Now that Christ has been claimed by God, it’s time for Satan to take a crack at him.  Satan leads him into the desert for 40 days, where Christ fasts.  (Why does he fast?  That’s not clear – he just does.  Why does he let Satan lead him out there?  It’s not made clear.  I guess Christ wants to hear what Satan will say.  He’s willing to negotiate – even with the devil).

Satan gives Christ three temptations.  First, he tells the fasting Christ to turn stones into bread.  No dice.  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Nice line.

Next, Satan tells Christ to prove he’s God’s son.  Jump off a building, and let angels save him.  OK – uh, Satan?  This one sucks.  Whose idea of a temptation is to tell someone to jump off a building?  Christ doesn’t bite, saying one shouldn’t test God.  Trust him, instead. 

Finally, Satan offers Christ a lot of land.  OK, this is a good one, Satan.  Much better than that last lousy temptation.  But this temptation is also rejected.  “Get away, Satan!”  Well, he’s given Satan a fair hearing, and decided against him.  Now Christ will stay safely away from him from this time onward.

Instead, he begins his ministry.  Apparently while Christ was in the desert, the authorities arrested John the Baptist.  It happened offstage and we never really hear why, but regardless, John is now off the scene.  Christ goes off to the shore.  Matthew tries to provide some cover for Jesus.  He says he’s doing it to help fulfill a prophecy by Isaiah that a light will arise from the coastline, but this reads like a weak post-facto justification.  The guy Christ had gone around with (and who it appears inspired Christ to begin his work) has just gone to jail and Christ skips town.  I can see why Matthew would want to claim that it’s to fulfill a prophecy, but it looks like Christ is laying low.

He doesn’t lay low long, and begins his ministry shows just how much John the Baptist influenced him.   His first words are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  That’s John’s line.

Now it’s Jesus to put together his Christ posse.  He picks up four right here.  He gets brothers “Simon who is called Peter.”  My, what a confusing way we have for referring to St. Peter.  Also, he takes Pete’s brother, Andrew.  They are fishermen and Christ gets them with the famous line, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  He then picks up another pair of brothers, James and John.  They are also fishermen.  We’re told, “they left their boat and their father and followed him.”  Aw, that’s a shame – they abandoned their father.  Well, four down and eight to go. 

Christ begins his work, and he is initially a faith healer.  He cures the possessed, the lunatics, paralytics, and those racked with pain.  This is an aspect of his ministry I find most interesting.  How does this work exactly?  Is it just mental problems that sometimes manifest themselves physically?  I know there have been other faith healers, but the concept of it strikes me as … weird.

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Matthew main page

Chapters 1 to 4
Chapters 5 to 8
Chapters 9 to 13
Chapters 14 to 17
Chapters 18 to 21 
Chapters 22 to 25
Chapters 26 to 28 

New Testament Main Page

Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Luke
Gospel of John
Acts of the Apostles 
Romans
Corinthians I
Corinthians II
Galatians
Ephesians 
Philippians
Colossians
Thessalonians I
Thessalonians II
Timothy I 
Timothy II
Titus
Philemon 
Hebrews 
James
Peter I 
Peter II
John I 
John II 
John III
Jude
Revelations

Ranking the Books of the Old Testament

Now that I'm done with the Old Testament, a look back before beginning the New Testament.  Because -- it's fun! 

1. Genesis – OK, so it’s a cliché to pick Genesis as the best chapter.  But it happens to be a really good choice, too.  This gives us a litany of famous stories – the creation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Flood, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.  We get it all.  And it’s almost all fantastic.  Much of these characters are flawed and problematic, but that’s part of what makes it so fascinating.  The Bible is at its best when it’s at its most human, and these guys often come off as human.  Several of the Genesis stories are excellently written as well.  If you know much Biblical scholarship, it’s even more fascinating as you can know why (for example) there is an entire chapter that exists just to assassinate the character of Jacob’s fourth son, Judah.   The Bible really serves up a tremendous opening reel with Genesis. 

2. Samuel II – This book is all about David.  We met him in Samuel I, and he dies at the beginning of Kings I, but this book is all about his reign as Israel’s king.  In other words, this is a fascinating tale of a larger than life individual.  You get a real sense of the person – warts and all.  By acknowledging those warts, it makes the highlights even more notable.  This book contains my single favorite chapter in the entire Old Testament: Chapter 16.  Here, David is on the run from his usurping son Absalom.  While on the run, a personal enemy sees David fleeing and starting heckling.  And here David – a man often too vain and cocky for his own good – shows some definite character development and insight but tolerating the heckler.  (Note: much of my enjoyment of this chapter is ruined early in Kings I when David tells Solomon to have the heckler killed.  But I can pretend that part doesn’t exist when I think back to Chapter 16 of Samuel II). 

3. Ecclesiastes – This is one of the ringers in the Bible.  It basically tries to explain how people can live good lives without reference to God.  (Yeah, you wouldn’t expect something like that in the Bible).  It’s a call for balance, and frequently struck me as the unofficial Buddhist Bible book.  This is often the favorite book of non-believers, and I can see why.  It’s also terrifically written – it’s the source for the Byrds song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”  It speaks with a very distinctive voice.  Even though it’s just a dozen chapters long, it felt a little too long.  After the first half-dozen or so chapters, you’ve gotten the gist of it.

4. Samuel I – This is a great book.  While David is the big star (he is David, after all), for me this is all about Saul.  This book is the rise and fall of Saul as he really does get off to a great start, but falls to pieces once Samuel starts badgering him.  I thought Samuel came off like a real dick, but I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority on that one.  This one would rank a little higher, but there are some oddities and duplicated stories latter on.  Parts of this book are clearly taking two different versions of the same story and combing them. 

5. Ruth – This might be the most likable book in the Bible. The characters are all likable and root-for-able.  It also features one of the great speeches in the Bible, when Ruth tells her mother-in-law Naomi, “Where you go I will go.”  The plot is a bit thin at times, but it’s nice to read a story of normal, likable people leading their normal lives and overcoming their difficulties. 

6. Job – On the one hand, it’s far too long and extremely repetitive.  But you know what?  It might be the deepest book in the entire Bible.  It takes on a big question – why does God let bad things happen to good people?  Its answer can be seen as a cop out – who are we to question to ways of God?  But it struck me as the only real answer.  You can’t give a happy-feely answer to this question; that would be bullshit.  The Book of Job has a lot of guts to bring up this question and refuse to insult our intelligence with a bullshit answer. 

7. Jonah – The only famous Minor Prophet, Jonah has got to be a fictional story.  So what?  It’s a great fictional story.  The whale is the most famous part, but as it happens it might be the least interesting part.  The Bible is at its best when it’s at its most human, and Jonah – fearful and petty – comes off as a fully-formed human being.  You can get a lot of comedy out of how he reacts to God’s decision to spare the city of Nineveh.

8. Kings I – This has some really impressive highs.  Solomon’s speech dedicated the Temple is a great moment, in part because he opens up the door to God to people other than just the Children of Israel.  Later on, Elijah steals the show with his big showdown with the priests of Baal.  (And what happens next is fascinating as Elijah flees to Mt. Sinai only to be rebuffed by God).  It’s also fun to pay close attention to Solomon’s actions as king and realize he’s actually a lousy ruler. 

9. Amos – One of the best of the Minor Prophets, Amos focuses of justice more than any other Old Testament figure.  No wonder Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Amos is both his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and the “I Have a Dream” speech.  As a non-believer, Amos is easy to relate to because you don’t have to believe in God to believe we should all treat each other justly.

10. Song of Songs – This is one of the great ringers in the Bible.  It doesn’t belong in the Bible at all.  It’s not about God, but a secular love poem.  But it’s a glorious one. Not all of it makes sense, but OK.  Maybe I’m ranking this a bit too high, but when you read all the way through the Bible, there is nothing more refreshing than to suddenly come across a writer with a fresh and different voice – and Songs has one. 

11. Judges – If you’re looking for a book full of insightful moral instruction, please stay far away from Judges.  This is a wild series of tales that are occasionally uplifting (Gideon is one of the root-for-able people in the Bible), but much of this is a moral train wreck.  You get a man sacrificing his own daughter to God, Samson starting problems with the Philistines just because he’s an ass, and the slaughter of the tribe of Benjamin at the end).  But while this isn’t any good at moral instruction – wow is it ever a memorable and enjoyable series of tales.  The last line – “In those days there were no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own sight” sums up the problems of the era. 

12. Jeremiah – He is the most misanthropic prophet in the Bible.  Ah, no wonder I liked him!  He is a truly ineffectual prophet in his own days, but without him, the Jewish religious likely dies off.  His statements that the people deserve to fall to Babylon will make it easier to interpret Jerusalem’s fall after the fact.  This is also the most plot-heavy prophet book (aside from Jonah).  You get a much stronger sense of Jeremiah as a person than any other prophet. He can be petty and lose sight of the big picture, but I always like the Bible best when it’s at it’s most human, and Jeremiah is a fully-formed human.  Added bonus: he is arguably the author of Deuteronomy and the writer (or at least compiler) of the historical books after it, making Jeremiah possibly one of the most important people in the Bible.

13. Nehemiah – This is an underrated Bible book.  Nehemiah is one of the Bible’s great problems solvers.  He’s building the walls to Jerusalem under tough circumstances and getting it done.  He is eminently practical as he goes about his job.  He’s the best problem solver since Joseph.  The two of them should go out bowling. 

14. Exodus – Wait – what the hell is Exodus doing this far low?  This is one of those books that everyone knows about.  Hell, this is a Charlton Heston movie!  It has several of the most famous stories and I’m ranking it below Nehemiah?  The hell?  Yeah – look, the highpoints of Exodus rank with the most memorable moments of the entire Bible.  But those highpoints take up the first 15 chapters in a book that last 40.  The back half of Exodus is flat-out the most boring part of the entire Bible.  Oh, it really perks up in a few places – the 10 Commandments, the golden calf – but the main focus is the construction of the ark, and that is horrible.  Leviticus may have a reputation as a very boring Bible book, but trust me, it’s actually quite the pick-me-up after the back half of Exodus.

15. Proverbs – I liked this a lot more than I thought I would.  It’s essentially a book of fortune cookie material, but a lot of those are some damn good fortune cookies they come up with. 

16. Kings II – This has its highs and has its lows. The lows: this book becomes too much a litany-of-dead-kings history where you hear a little bit about a lot of kings, but rarely get a sense of who any of them are.  That’s annoying.  But this book does have it’s real highlights, ranging from the ghastly story of two bears ripping apart 42 children when they mocked Elisha’s baldness to Hezekiah’s prayer in Chapter 20 and God’s decision to grant him an extra 15 years old life. 

17. Tobit – When I read almost all the Old Testament around age 10, this was my favorite chapter.  Looking back, I’m not really sure why I liked it that much, but it is a pleasant story about some good people and has a happy ending.  The main character Tobiah doesn’t do a heck of a lot, but the characters are likable.  It’s a poor man’s Ruth.

18. Isaiah – There is a very well written Bible book.  Any preacher worth half-a-damn ought to borrow from it freely when putting together sermons.  It has some memorable theology, and Chapter 53 sets up Christianity better than any of the other 1,000-plus chapters in the Old Testament.  But it’s also repetitious and full of plenty of generic filler, which is why it doesn’t rank higher.

19. Ben Sira – This is one of those books only Catholics have in their Bible.  I liked this one more than I expected.  Yeah, it’s more random bits of wisdom, like Proverbs or Wisdom.  But I got a definite sense of who Ben Sira must’ve been.  He was a guy who got screwed over in some business dealings and never quite got over it. 

20. Daniel – I don’t know where to rank this one.  It’s all over the map.  It has some pretty memorable images and stories, but they are all randomly thrown together.  It also has a series of visions, and Biblical visionaries never did too much for me. 

21. Hosea  - Here is a memorable Minor Prophet.  Others compare the relationship between the Hebrew and God and declare the Hebrew are wanting – but Hosea takes it quite a bit further.  He marries a prostitute to symbolize the relationship. 

22. Ezra – It’s the first of the two books about rebuilding the Temple (Nehemiah is the second) that end the historical section.  On the one hand, Ezra is a bit nasty as he degrees that the Jews must abandon all the non-Jewish wives they have.  On the other hand, without Ezra, the Jews might melt into the surroundings as a separate people.  He’s the right man at the right place at the right time.  Speaking of being the right man at the right place at the right time, Biblical scholar Richard Elliot Friedman makes a good argument that Ezra is the editor/creator of the first recognizable Hebrew Bible.  He even comes after pretty much all the prophets.  Once Ezra has arrived, the religion is done with its formative years and won’t need prophets because they have the Bible.  That said, Ezra is more interesting to discuss for his Biblical importance than to read.

23. Numbers – The final three chapters of the Torah (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) aren’t known for being terribly exciting.  They are mostly about giving laws.  This is the one with the most action of that trio. 

24. Leviticus – It’s not as boring as you think.  (It’s like Canada that way).  It’s known as the most law-heavy book in the Bible – and it surely is – but it can be interesting if you think about what purpose these laws serve and how they impact people’s notions then and now. 

25. Deuteronomy – This is just a series of speeches Moses supposedly gave.  It’s his final words to the Hebrew before they kill everything that moves in Canaan.  It’s a bit redundant of previous books, but it sure has some memorable imagery as Moses lays out his final curses and threats. Also, pretty much all Biblical scholars agree that this is the book discovered during the reign of Josiah noted in Kings II (giving Deuteronomy the reputation as the “pious fraud” of the Bible – a forgery put out by the Josiah-era priests to justify their desired religious reforms). 

26. Maccabees II – The two Maccabees books are less than the sum of their parts.  They overlap, telling much of the same story, which can be annoying.  But they don’t fully overlap, and have a different focus. This one is more religiously geared and is a little easier to follow, hence the slightly higher rank.

27. Maccabees I – This Maccabee focuses more on the political/military efforts of the mid-second century BC.  Normally, that would make it a better read, but it becomes wearying.  There is a nice since of momentum early on, as there is a clear bad guy who is oppressing the Jews, but then he dies and you get an array of names coming-and-going and it’s hard to care about any of them.  It’s like a litany-of-dead-kings history.  This book still has its moments and its best parts might be better than the best parts of Maccabees II, but it’s still a littler lower than it overall. 

28. Ezekiel – He’s not my kind of prophet.  He’s the Bible’s weird and wild visionary prophet.  That doesn’t do much for me.  He does have his moments, though – especially the chapter that inspires the “Dem Bones” song. 

29. Psalms – Many people consider Psalms to be one of the highlights of the Bible.  I don’t get those people.  Actually, I think I do.  Psalms is supposed to go best if you graze, just wander around reading one or two psalms when you’re feeling blue.  It’s not really meant to be read all the way through.  I read them all the way through. It’s the Bataan Death March of Bible reading.  There are a lot of nice psalms here, but you see the same sort of psalm repeated a dozen times each.  And there are some nasty psalms, too – and they also get repeated a bunch. 

30. Nahum – Purely on moral grounds, this one should rank lower, a lot lower; near the bottom in fact.  This one is just a big conga line dance on the grave of Assyria.  Yeah, but: 1) Assyria really was the biggest bully on the block in the ancient Near East, and 2) this is a really well done grave dance.  The doomsday imagery is like something out of a Michael Bay movie – except that Nahum is actually enjoyable. 

31. Joel – This Minor Prophet has some memorable imagery of doom and all that as he talks of a coming apocalypse.  A lot of prophets talk about apocalyptic stuff, but Joel is one of the better ones at it. 

32. Habakkuk – This brief book from the Minor Prophets poses a moral dilemma for God: if you are good, why do bad people prosper?  I give Habakkuk credit for directly taking on that big question, but the execution wasn’t too good, so this one still ranks a bit low.

33. Malachi – This is the last book of the Bible, and I liked it more than most of the Minor Prophets.  I can’t really say why, but I did. 

34. Lamentations – It’s a bunch of poems weeping over the loss of Jerusalem.  They’re basically psalms that aren’t in Psalms.  Lamentations it the breakaway Confederate Republic of Psalms. 

35. Haggai – This is a very short book of prophecy that just tells people to rebuild the temple after the Babylonian Captivity.  It isn’t bad, but it sure is slight. 

36. Zechariah – This is a weak book of prophecy.  The first half are a serious of odd visions, and the second half a bunch of prophesies about how God will be with the Jews. 

37. Micah –I originally had this book a little higher – but then I couldn’t figure out what justified ranking this 35^th.   At seven chapters, he’s one of the longer Minor Prophets.  And there is nothing really bad about it, but there isn’t anything that memorable either.  I guess this is a replacement level Bible book.

38. Baruch – There isn’t much new here.  It rehashes themes that other books have already gone over.  It’s only in the Catholic Bible, and it doesn’t look like Protestants and Jews are missing much by its absence.

39. Wisdom – The only one of the wisdom books to actually use the word “Wisdom” in its name is also easily the worst of the wisdom books.  There are a few interesting parts early on, but most of it is just rehashing (in far too much details) points made previously about why idolatry is wrong.

40. Judith – This is just a dumb story.  Judith kills the head of an enemy army, and all the members of it fall to pieces, stabbing each other.  Sure, losing their leader would cause problems, but this takes it past the point of reasonableness, to put it mildly. 

41. Esther – I couldn’t stand this book.  There is a story and it can be exciting, but I just couldn’t get past the emperor character.  He is both a moral midget and a mental midget.  He isn’t the villain – an underling is – but the emperor is revolting.  His underlying tells him to kill all Jews, so he says OK.  Then his wife says don’t – instead he should kill the underling and all his friends.  So the emperor says OK.  There is no awareness on his part that he’s done anything wrong.  There is just something revolting about this.

42. Chronicles II – The two books of Chronicles are pretty worthless.  They largely just retell the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah.  They almost never add anything new to the story, and are also a more boring read.  Chronicles II bothers to contain at least a few original stories, so it ranks a little higher.

43. Chronicles I – This is the story of David.  It’s mostly the same story as Samuel II, the best part of the Bible.  Not only is almost nothing new added, but plenty of interesting parts are left out, such as Bathsheba.  It’s a whitewashing of the story of David, and that robs the story of its humanity and power. 

44. Zephaniah – There are a dozen books of Minor Prophets in the Bible, but none are as fungible as Zephaniah. It’s short and contains nothing new at all.

45. Obadiah – I just said Zephaniah is the most fungible of all the Minor Prophets, yet I still rank fellow Minor Prophet Obadiah below him.  Yeah, Zephaniah is totally unremarkable, but what is remarkable about Obadiah is negative.  This book – which at one chapter is the shortest in the Old Testament – can be summarized like this: The people of Edom all deserve to die.  Obadiah is just a short, mean-spirited book wishing ill on the Edomites. 

46. Joshua – This book is horrible.  The first half repeatedly, and openly endorses genocide.  Time and time again, we’re told how a city is taken and all people – men, women, and children – are slaughtered to the last person.  The second half of Joshua is among the most boring parts of the Bible.  It’s just a bunch of land distribution, noting a bunch of places and territories that might’ve been familiar to the ancient Hebrew, but aren’t to us now.