jchandle writes

  The danger of a little information I used to be really prideful about knowing a lot about the world. In high school, I competed in Policy Debate, which meant I maintained tubs-full of article and book snippets on every conceivable topic linked to an annual debate topic. I also competed in an event that required me to speak extemporaneously on one of three international topics with just 30 minutes of prep time. As an adult, I’ve consistently taken the time to be updated about current events, to use the tools of analysis I picked up in college poli-sci to figure out what makes the world tick in all it’s various ways, and to try to promote good public policy by voting, contacting officials, and writing into the void about my political opinions.  By “used to be” I mean that I was like this until about 6 months into the Biden administration.  The election of Donald Trump in 2017 and the way the Republican Party seemed to conform around him with cult-like passion around the m...

  God the Absurd Then we come to the Akedah–the story of the binding of Isaac by his father, Abraham, in which God commands Abraham to “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). At this point, the LORD has told Abraham so many times he’ll have innumerable posterity through Isaac so many time it’s almost annoying to a reader. Like, WE KNOW. Abraham is going to have posterity outnumbering the sand of the seashore and the stars of the sky. We know they’ll possess the land of Canaan. We know they’ll bless the earth. And we’ve been through quite a bit of fuss over the right bloodline generating this ever-expanding family tree. We also know that shedding human blood is strictly and universally forbidden (Genesis 9:6). In fact the prohibition of human sacrifice is one of the things that the Pentateuch writers seem to claim sets God’s chosen people apart from other ancient near-east civilization...

 What is the theme of the Bible? In the book The God of Israel and Christian Theology, Christian scholar R. Kendall Soulen describes how Christians have traditionally framed the Hebrew Bible in a way that today’s Latter-day Saints will likely recognize. The story of the Bible centers on the creation of earth, the fall of Adam, the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the consummation of all things at the end of the world–Christ’s second coming.  This framing has historically sidelined the way Jews–both ancient and modern–have interpreted their own canon: an interpretation centered on the history of Israel and God’s instructions for living a good life.  But Soulen offers an alternative view that doesn’t have the side effect of marginalizing the traditional Jewish reading of the scriptures. The theme of the Bible, Soulen says,  is the God of Israel’s work as Consummator and . . . God’s work as Consummator engages the human family by opening up an ‘economy of mutual blessing’...

  Two Separate Flood Stories  Okay, if you haven’t read my previous posts, you need to know that much of Genesis is a weaving together of at least two sources: A later source well-represented by Genesis 1 and written by one or more post-exilic Aaronic Priests (P) and an earlier source to whom God is known as Yahweh (J). A good example of the J source is Genesis 2. I know this stuff can be boring or complicated sometimes, but once you get the hang of this stuff, it really opens up new understanding in the Bible.  Starting In Genesis 6, things get more tightly woven. The ancient editor (often known as the Redactor or R)  who joined these two sources together, decided to weave the two stories of Noah and the global flood together into one story, likely to avoid having two flood narratives back to back in the text. This explains why you have two separate motivations for the flood (Genesis 6:5-7 vs. 6:11-12), two separate and conflicting instructions for how many of each ...