Thursday, January 27, 2022

Long-term reading projects (1 of 2): Hebrew Bible.

It's interesting to be closing in on my goal of reading the entire Bible in translation. As of this month, I have like a handful of chapters in 2 Chronicles left, and then I'm done with the Hebrew Bible. I guess a lot of people start with Genesis, but my goal wasn't to read the whole Bible in any particular order, just to read it all, so I went with the prophets first because I felt like it, and then like Ezra/Nehemiah since I didn't know them at all, and then after polishing off a lot of random writings, I went back to Genesis etc., and am now petering out in Chronicles. I have to admit, I find Chronicles a lot more interesting than I thought - like, I had heard of its depiction of King Hezekiah's Passover, but I had never actually read it, and I found it quite moving, the idea of having an open festival to bring in the wayward northern kingdom, and this as an implicit template for later people to renew ritual practice and religious life after the Babylonian exile had ended. Also, I wonder if it now counts that I've read the entire Bible? After all, I've read the entire New Testament in Greek, so I guess you could say once I'm done with 2 Chronicles, I've accomplished by goal, though I'm definitely going to go back and re-read the entire New Testament in translation, as well as the entire scholarly apparatus, out of curiosity to see what's there.

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