Author: freineke

I enjoyed going more in depth on the Kings of Israel. I especially enjoyed it because in fourth grade I was in the children’s choir at my church and I played King Saul in our yearly play. My “portrayal”, if you can even call it that, was King Saul being very angry and aggressive, which was not reflected at least in what we read for class. I always get excited when I hear people reference King Saul because of this but I didn’t have the same emotional attachment to him when reading the David and Goliath story. We have a recorded version of my play and when I go home I would be interested to compare that satirical and childish version of King Saul, to what we read in the Bible. I predict many differences as we know there are many differences between what we are told about the Bible as children versus as adults, one example being the beheading of Goliath.

In all honesty this lecture and pre-class material didn’t really captivate me. The topic that I found most interesting is the ancient archaeology and its relation to the Bible. This is especially interesting when you dive into groups that think the Bible is inerrant. What do they do when errancy is proven in the Bible using the scientific process. They then have to deny one of the two most influential creations for modern society, in my opinion. I also think the archaeology section is interesting for what it actually is. Applying the archaeological concepts to the bricks found and trying to figure out what time period of the Bible they would fit in is fascinating. My favorite part is how they searched for the bones of the livestock the ancient people killed and figured out they were Israelites because they were Kosher. I can only imagine how excited the research team was when they got the information to make that conclusion.

This was my favorite lecture so far because of the portion where we talked about biblical economics, I’m an economics major. The situation we talked about with ancient peoples selling themselves to slavery in times of need was a crazy thing to think about, even if we did talk about how slavery wasn’t as bad then. When I think of American society and really all of western society the number one priority I think of is our civil liberties, to give them up is the very last thing I would do on this planet. When you really dive into it and think about the moral differences in today’s society and then it makes sense. We discussed a lot of the differences between now and then in class, but for our morals to be so different when we come from the same religious roots is fascinating. It doesn’t seem like God would change the things he wants humans to practice so this begs the question of who’s truly following God’s word best.

The Slave Bible was the most interesting part of both the reading and the lecture for me. What the abridgement of it tells me about those who enslaved people and give them this new Bible is that they know that they were wrong in their actions of enslavement. If you have to take out 80% of a book in order to justify something to a group of people with very limited reading abilities, then you must know that there isn’t much substance to your argument. It extra doesn’t help that it’s the most holy scripture to Christians. If we know one thing it is that when reading the Bible you need context. This applies to all issues in the Bible, not just slavery. The vastly different interpretations of the Bible by people who dedicate their whole lives to it show how the version of the Bible we have today is already vague in many parts and so removing as much context as they did is just about nullifies everything. This to me is just about the most unholy thing that you can do, use the Bible to blind a whole group of people from the true word of God.

I had several interesting thoughts when looking into Sodom and Gomorrah. Within the past year at my church at home we had explored this story and other stories that some biblical scholars have interpreted to have a stance on homosexuality. This deep dive put to rest any uncertainties I’ve had regarding the issues. I think that groups that denounce homosexuality, specifically in a biblical sense, are really only looking at the scripture at face value. When we look at the organizations described in the article about Sodom and Gomorrah and the internet I see a lot of problems with them. The biggest of these problems is that they seem to be looking for something in the Bible that agrees with the formulations that they have come up with, generally speaking the opinion that they straight out don’t like gay people whether it’s blatant or not, rather than truly trying to interpret what the text means. With all the parables and proverbs in the Bible we know that the authors were not strangers to figurative and sometimes vague writing and it seems to me that these people really don’t want to know the true word of God but rather back their own opinions using his text.

I enjoyed reading the Enuma elish. I think that it is interesting learning about this lore because I used to be very interested in the Percy Jackson book series so I knew a lot about the ancient Norse, Greek/Roman, and even some about Egyptian mythology. It’s also interesting to learn about this because I’ve heard many stories about the Babylonian exile but not what what the Babylonians believed in. Reading this passage you can see some similarities and many differences between Judeo Christian and Babylonian creation stories. Right of the bat they are semi similar in the fact that the stories start before there was anything and Apsu/our God creates something. After that the stories grow different from each other. The many Gods of the Babylonian faith is definitely something different from the Judeo Christian beliefs. I see parallels between Ea and Zeus as they’re both multiple generations down from the creator, but are the most powerful. Something I see different between the Enuma elish and Greek stories is the eerieness of it all. I suppose I wasn’t consuming the same sort of translations of the Greek stories but diction in the Enuma elish like, “Transmitting the sleep it then made Apsu sleep,” and “He shot therethrough an arrow, it pierced her stomach,
Clave through her bowels, tore into her womb.” It just gives me an uneasy feeling that all sorts of other texts don’t produce for me.

One thing from the readings that I found most interesting was in the reading about The Bible and Children when it says that the author of 1 Timothy says that childbirth is punishment to women for Eve’s actions in the Garden of Eden. It’s interesting because it goes back to this side of God that we don’t think about often, and that is his angry side. It is weird to think about an all powerful and loving being burdening women for all of time because of the first one’s actions. I think maybe what is really happening behind this story is a misogynistic man was interpreting The Bible and put his skew on it.

What is an even weirder idea is right after talking about women being punished for Eve’s actions, it’s said that The Bible discourages child bearing. This is such an odd idea because if you think of the nuclear contemporary family, you think of them holding Judeo Christian values and being very ethical, at least that’s what I think. Another reason this is an odd idea to me is when I think of spreading Gods love I think spreading it through children, and I don’t think I’m alone on that.

Hagar was the part of this reading/lecture that I enjoyed the most. I just find her character interesting aside from the theology that may be linked to her. A lot of the time we don’t think of the slaves or servants of amazing people, like George Washington’s slaves or JFK’s secretary. I may be wrong because sometimes it gets hard to hear on the zoom call, but it’s pretty amazing how much we could talk about her, and her relationship with Sarah and Abraham without even discussing Ishmael fully. I find it interesting how all three of the Abrahamic religions stem from the same family. When you fully think about it, it’s not that surprising since really all humans have a common ancestor if you go far back enough but that’s beside the point. The point is how we see a much stronger, healthier relationship between the Christians and Jews of today, then between the Muslims and either of the former. If we put everything politically and historically aside about the three, there may be a correlation from the exile of Hagar and Ishmael from the bloodline that would end up starting Christianity and Judaism.

I really enjoyed exploring the take of Adam and Eve being figurative story about the transition from childhood to adulthood. It makes perfect sense to me. We see so much metaphorical writing in the Bible, with stories like Jonah that are also outlandish to the modern mind, which make this story seem manufactured to tell humans a story. I also don’t think that this new meaning nullifies the creation story aspect of it either as double entendres exist for a reason, to make you think. I think there are things to learn for humans both ways you perceive it.

In regards to the Pentateuch and its writers, I think there is no way that it is not multiple writers. All the inconsistencies in the writing styles proves that it wasn’t Moses solely. There is no real reason for Moses to have this inconsistencies, that he must’ve consciously chosen to make. Even if at one point in time Moses did “write” all the stories, there was most certainly somethings that were lost in translation as the Pentateuch was formed after his death. Therefore even if it did originate from his mind it has been warped into something else, shown by the inconsistencies in his writing.

I found this lecture especially interesting. I have explored the discrepancies in the creation stories in the past very topically but I enjoyed learning about it deeper. The part that interested me the most was looking at the order that God made everything. I think the sequence of his creation is one that can be expanded upon a hundred fold. The most interesting ordering is that he made the sky, seas, and solid ground before the heavenly bodies. When we look at the Big Bang Theory we think of Earth as being not particularly special and late in the game, as to where this prioritizes Earth over everything else. This also gets back into the talking point of what scientifically happens vs the maybe stories, maybe not stories that are told in the Bible to show humans a lesson. Whenever we talk about this in class I tend to think about my Uncle that is a Professor of microbiology and his adamant position against religion and how if you know science, you wouldn’t practice religion.
Another thing that interested me during the lecture was the concept that God had to create space in order to fill it with things like Earth. This concept is beyond confusing to think about there being such thing as no space and the extent of Gods power. It puts it into perspective of his unlimited power really.