Anthony Thompson’s Reviews > The Orthodox Study Bible > Status Update

2nd Chronicles done. Josiah seems like a good guy.

Kingdoms and Chronicles are brutal. I'm ready for the Old Testament to be anything else but genealogies and King lists.

The Torah has nothing on Homer which predates most of it.

First Chronicles is nine chapters of slogging genealogies and then David goes, let's count the Jews, and God goes *NO* and then offers him one of three punishments, and David chooses 3 days of God's wrath in Jerusalem over being pursued for a year by his enemies, and then an Angel (UFO) just stands over Jerusalem with a sword (laser) and nukes the city for 3 days. There's a lesson there about his judgement vs man's.

Absalom!

So what I grew up knowing to be 1 and 2 Samuel are Kingdoms 1 and 2 in the Orthodox Bible, which is 10 books longer than the Protestant one.

We had to study them as kids, and while David's infidelity with Bathsheba makes it into the cut, the quite moving epic of Absalom, his son, did not. I'm largely unfamiliar with it, beyond being able to reference one sermon in the echoes of my memory about Joab.

Judges and Ruth.

Samson was a bit of a menace. Striking down ten thousand men with the jaw of an ass.

Deuteronomy. I'm done with the Pentateuch.

Moses! The Patriarch who is closest to whatever the Bible considers concurrent times. Born to Egyptian Nobility, led his people to wander in the desert for forty years, set the Israelites on a campaign of dominion, and then was rewarded by God with the sight of the finish line in the distance before dying. The most historical patriarch is the only one with a mortal death.

Numbers down. Moses wields yet another serpent staff. That makes two for the Satanic Panic crowd.

Balaam's prophecy is super interesting. I think I've only heard it sermonized once, but it's almost straight out of a Fantasy novel.

"Behold, a people like a lion’s cub will rise up
And will exult like a lion."

The foundation of Zionist argument lies there.

Leviticus done.

"A man or a woman who is a ventriloquist shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones, for they are guilty."

Just when I was getting bored.

I never realized that verse from Leviticus about not laying with a man came after a lengthy series of specific prohibitions on incest. Almost as if they knew if they said, "Don't unclothe family" people would find wiggle room.

So the Jewish law as laid out in Exodus is actually fairly progressive for a mid-eastern patriarchy from thousands of years ago. It's just when Moses' Lord shows up and demands people be killed for him that it sort of loses the vibe.

Someone said, "Look for spaceships when you read the Bible."

They're goddam EVERYWHERE.

Exodus ends with a cloud the Jewish people follow around cloud by day, fire by night.