February 21, 2009, 11:01 am by dc-agape.

As I am about to finish the Gospel of Mark I must decide which Books to read next.  I have added a new tab to top of my blog page titled “Holy Texts”.  On that page is a list of the books I will be reading from.  These books include the NIV Study Bible.  This book is the Protestant version of the Old and New Testaments.  I have also included the Holy Qur’an.  This particular translation is translated by Maulana Muhammad Ali; it includes much commentary which is extremely helpful.  The Holy Qur’an is an addition to the Word of God (at least to the Muslim faith).  Another book that I have included is the Jewish Apocrypha.  This is an extension of the Old Testament still used by the Catholic Church.  Obviously up to the split between Protestants and Catholics these books were still used by the entire Christian religion.  They are no doubt part of the Word of God.  With that in mind, which parts of the Word of God have been removed by the Traditions of Man from the Word of God?  The authors/collectors of both the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls were also followers of YHWH.  How can we discredit these Holy Books?  Can we be certain that YHWH removed them, with the help of orthodox Jews and Christians?  Or were they removed from the Word of God by the Traditions of Men?

Paul gives us one answer to these questions:

1^st Thessalonians 5:21 Test everything.  Hold onto the good.

Paul wrote this letter to the new converts in Thessalonica.  We can hope that any missing books from the Word of God were tested and only the good were placed in the Bible.  But this verse can be applied to our own selves as well.  This means that we must test everything.  That everything includes the “Gnostic” Christian and Jewish writings.  As a result, I will be adding both the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls to this experiment.

To the future: the Gospel of Mark will only take me about a week to finish.  What will I read next?  I believe that the opening 7 verses of the Holy Qur’an will be well worth being the next reading.  Even though it is only 7 verses, called the Sūratu al-Fātihah, it will take at least two posts.  It turns out that the Maulana has provided an 86 page introduction.  I want to cover that as well as the Sūratu al-Fātihah. 

Following these approximate two post I want to cover the Damascus Document from the Dead Sea Scrolls.  From my research on this document this will take a number of posts.  It would seem that the Damascus Document is rather convoluted and difficult to follow the twists and turns of the different authors and different topics.  It is an important document for it explains with great detail the religious life (and possibly the secular life) in the time of ~1 century BC.

I will then move onto the Prayer of the Apostle Paul and then the Apocryphon of James.  I am going to read the Prayer of the Apostle Paul because it is short and was placed at the beginning of the Nag Hammadi Library by the scribes who compiled the library.  The Apocryphon of James will be the first “Book” of the Library and is very similar to the four Gospels in the Word of God.  It is also know that the Apocryphon of James (TheologyWebsite.com) was written at about the same time as the other Gospels and attributed to James the half-brother of Jesus.

Posted in Traditions of Men, Holy Qur'an, Word of God, Inerrancy - My Ass, Readings, Introduction | Print | No Comments »

February 21, 2009, 7:50 am by dc-agape.

 Genesis Chapter 13

     Genesis chapter 13 starts with bragging about the wealth of Abram, which was mostly stolen from Pharaoh.  The fact that Abram got his livestock under morally questionable conditions makes you wonder how he acquired all of his wealth.  This line of thought leads me to wonder about his moral superiority over his neighbors. 

    Abram and Lot have so many animals that they cannot pasture them together.  Since they are nomadic, they continuously move with the livestock and at some point finding enough food becomes overwhelming.  Here is where Abram and Lot split up.  Abram gives Lot the choice of going in any direction.  Lot decides to go towards Jordan, because the land is very fertile.  Unfortunately this is also in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a later story.  Humorously, our study notes tell us that this was a selfish act unlike Abram choice to go the opposite direction.  As a result, Abram is the chosen one of YHWH.  Yes, that’s right.  Abram is the chosen of YHWH because he let another man chose which direction Abram would take.  If Lot had chosen not to take the area of Jordan, we might be reading about the Lot’s offspring instead of Abram’s children. 

     We end the chapter with YHWH’s promise to Abram that his offspring will be like the dust of the earth, in other words uncountable.  Well that’s a mighty promise.  Anyone who had more than one child in those days now has offspring that number in the millions possibly billions, because of the exponential growth of population (check out the link to see how that works). 

Posted in Genesis, Readings | Print | 2 Comments »