Below is an early version of a diagram which I developed a few years back after first hearing the term “henotheism” in a theology course at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary and after some discussion of ecclesiology at that same institution. Who else but me is going to try to express in a simple diagram on […]
(Note: This is another in a series of postings of material used in a Confirmation class) Attempts to read through the Bible, beginning with the creation stories in Genesis and proceeding through the inspirational and perhaps comforting accounts of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph, and Moses often […]
After the death of King Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel divided and engaged in civil war, Northern Israel against Southern Judah. The warnings of Samuel about kingship were validated as both were led by a series of mostly bad kings. But the Bible story depicts the continuing “steadfast love” of God throughout their trials […]
Everybody who grew up going to Sunday School in a Christian church knows the stories of the boy Samuel being called by God three times but thinking the calls were from the priest Eli, of Saul being anointed by Samuel as the first king of Israel, of David slaying Goliath, and of Solomon solving a […]
There is that old Bible trivia question: Who in the Bible (besides Adam and Eve, of course) had no parents? Why, Joshua, the son of Nun, of course. Joshua took over from Moses and led the people in some degree of conquest of the Promised Land. Then Joshua died, and things got pretty messy with […]
Moses, his prophetess sister Miriam, his spokesman Aaron, and his successor Joshua are the dominant characters of the Old Testament books of Exodus through Joshua. Abraham had just gotten up and gone when God told him to do so, but Moses started a new tradition by explaining why God had made a bad choice and […]
Once Abraham shows up at the end of Genesis 11, the rest of the 50 chapters cover his life and the lives of the other patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people including his wife Sarah, their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca, and their troublesome twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, with minimal and non-exclusive […]
Here is a brief and possibly helpful outline of the four major Biblical events in primeval or ancient or prehistorical times covered in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Whether these stories are taken as literal truth as some fundamentalist Christians do or as revelation of eternal truths told and eventually written in the genre […]
In Genesis 12:1, God told Abram to get up and go, and Abram, setting an example for us all, got up and went, taking his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all their possessions, and headed for the land of Canaan. Abram, later to become Abraham, lived under a promise that God would bless him […]