Julia M. OBrien

I've just encountered powerful curriculum on Joshua.  It's entitled Joshua:  A Journey of Faith and is the 2009-2010 Horizons Bible Study for Presbyterian women.

One of the fascinating, if maddening, aspects of biblical interpretation is that the story embraced by one community as the greatest good news is often rejected by another as the worst bad news. Take the Exodus story, for example.

What good can come from challenging David's status as a hero?

Do you have trouble staying asleep?  Doze off just fine but in a few hours find yourself wide awake, ready for conversation, a little TV, maybe a snack?

According to William Holladay, you're in good company.  You may be experiencing what ancient people knew well: segmented sleep.

I just published a new session in my Reading the Bible as an Adult project:  Bathsheba, Tamar, Absalom, Solomon:  David's Family Curse? The entry deals primarily with the trans-generational dynamics of 2 Samuel 11-18, how the themes of David's later life spill over into those of his family.  I talk about David's fukú , the language that Junot Díaz  uses in his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to describe a family curse. But there's a lot more to discuss  in these stories of David and his children, including the way that different people and different cultures think about rape.

My web-support friend alerted me to this sermon on youtube.  It's based on a phrase that appears in the King James Version, though not in other translations (including the New King James):  "the one who pisseth against the wall."  Watch it for yourself before reading further, so that I don't spoil the surprise (or not) ending.

Why read the Old Testament? For me, the best reason of all is that it has great stories.

Another reason to read the Old Testament: the power of its big ideas.

In an earlier blog, I suggested that the Old Testament is important for more than just providing background. Why else should people read the OT?

A lot of folks treat the Old Testament as "background" reading for something else.  For Christians, it's treated as the prequel to the New Testament, the part you have to read in order to understand the stuff you want to read. Who is Melchizedek and why does the book of Hebrews link him to Jesus?  Why was circumcision important to Jews of the first century?  What does atonement mean?  What's a covenant? The Old Testament offers the answers for the New Testament reader who wants to know.