Mentioning the Brick Testament reminded me of the alternate representations of the Bible out there. For your amusement:
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Old Testament
Today’s reading describes the building of Solomon’s palace as well as some of the furnishings for the temple. It reminds me strongly of the description of the Tabernacle from Exodus. Solomon’s palace was a much more complicated structure than the temple and, so got a lot more description. I enjoyed the read, but there’s nothing really to comment on.
I did, however, find great pictures of what the palace and temple metalwork may have looked like… from the Brick Testament (in particular the sections on The Temple of Yahweh and Solomon’s Palace). I love legos.
New Testament
More history review, but now with some commentary. We go from Moses’ vision of God in the burning bush through Solomon’s building of the temple. Here is an excepts that I am guessing makes up part of the build up to Stephen’s point:
So God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected when they demanded, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Through the angel who appeared to him in the burning bush, God sent Moses to be their ruler and savior. And by means of many wonders and miraculous signs, he led them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and through the wilderness for forty years. [Hmmm, rejected ruler who gave miraculous signs, I wonder who could be seen as a contemporary analog of that.]
Psalms and Proverbs
We may throw the dice,
but the Lord determines how they fall.
Actually, no, not really.
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Old Testament
Remember how God told David not to build a temple? At the time, God promised that one of David’s sons would become king and that son would build a temple. Accordingly, Solomon begins construction of the temple today. Which means architecture geeking!
He gets the wood from Hiram of Tyre in exchange for food for the king’s household. This was paid as an annual tribute of wheat and olive oil. I wonder if that payment lasted for the duration of the building of the temple or extended beyond that.
We next get a detailed description of the layout of the temple. We can sum it up with a picture:
The top view is a cutaway of the side, the bottom image is a top down view. In the back you can see the holy of holies which was (as far as we can figure the dimensions) 30’x30’x30′. The important part is that the dimensions are all equal. Outside of that is the holy place, which was 30’x60’x45′ (width x length x height). Rooms were built onto the outside of the temple on beams that were not connected to the temple itself. The interesting characteristic of these rooms, which the top cutaway does not show, is that they actually got wider on the higher levels! Each level was 7.5′ tall, but the rooms in the first level were 7.5′ wide, on the second level 9′ wide, and on the third level 10′ wide.
The interior of the temple was, according to the description, quite splendid. Carved wood paneling overlaid with gold. Very shiny.
The temple took 7 years to build.
New Testament
Remember Stephen from yesterday? He was on trial for being blasphemous. Today he starts his self defense with a review of the history of the ancient Israelites from Abraham through Moses’ flight to Midian. I am sure he’ll make a point eventually.
Psalms and Proverbs
Today’s psalm is one of those ones that I am is wonderful if you believe in a God who is guiding your life.
We also have interesting proverbs today, all about trouble makers.
With narrowed eyes, people plot evil;
with a smirk, they plan their mischief.
If only evil were so easy to detect. It is just as likely to be plotted behind a smile as behind narrowed eyes or as likely to be planned behind a kindly word as a smirk.
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Old Testament
I have decided (for the moment), that the descriptions of Solomon are not meant to represent an actual person. Instead, Solomon is the personification of a period in which Israel was prosperous and admired by other nations. The gift of wisdom he receives from God today and the wealth and fame that he wins because of that wisdom represent Israel’s triumph.
Now, that is not to say that the character of Solomon does not represent an actual person. It may very well represent the ruler of Israel during some remembered time of prosperity. What I doubt is that the king himself engendered all of the wonderful properties applied to Solomon. Instead, this seems like a case of attributing situational success to an individual who had little, if any, real effect on that success (like how CEOs often are given way more credit or blame than is justified given their actual influence).
Oh yeah, and Solomon has a bunch of officials. Yawn.
New Testament
Just like Moses when he appointed officials to help him judge the Israelites, the apostles learn the importance of delegation.
Just like with Jesus, Stephen has his character blemished due to some liars. This story and the similar story of the false accusations at Jesus’ trial should really make you wonder about the credulity of the first believers and those around them. This was obviously a society where people believed things easily. A couple liars could convince people that an individual was not to be trusted. Given that the contemporaries of Jesus were obviously so easily swayed, why should we believe that there was truth to the miraculous stories about Jesus and his followers? Maybe those stories were just lies or legends that came to be believed by a credulous society.
Psalms and Proverbs
It is good for workers to have an appetite;
an empty stomach drives them on.
This seems like one of those proverbs that has probably been abused by those who want to justify bad working conditions.
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Old Testament
Today’s reading relates how Solomon consolidated his power by showing that he was willing to have anyone who opposed him murdered. I dislike him already.
David dies with surprisingly little fanfare given how much we have read about him. Before he dies, he tells Solomon to kill pretty much everyone who was still around who had ever gone against David. In particular, David wants Joab killed for having killed Abner and Amasa. David also wants Shimei killed for the time Shimei cursed him while he was fleeing from Absalom. Note that Shimei was one of the few who supported Solomon over Absalom.
Through Bathsheba, Adonijah asks Solomon to give him Abishag, the girl who had been used to keep David warm in his old age. Solomon sees this as a plot on the throne and has Adonijah killed. Again, isn’t Solomon a lovely man?
Solomon then has Joab killed. Joab flees to the altar of the Lord for safety. Solomon has him killed while he is still at the altar. I am shocked that Solomon would kill someone next to the altar of the Lord. We have seen people flee there for safety several times, so it is pretty clear that this was supposed to be a traditional place of refuge. To fly in the face of that and to shed human blood in a time of peace by the altar seems despicable.
Solomon is slightly more subtle in his murder of Shimei; I guess even he realizes the danger of straight up murdering one of his few original supporters. Solomon tells Shimei that he must build a house in Jerusalem and always live there. A few years later, he leaves and returns, and the king has him killed.
This killing is all performed by Benaiah, the former captain of king’s gaurd and Solomon’s apparent henchman. Benaiah replaces Joab as the commander of the army.
I suppose all this killing was a political necessity, but still, I find Solomon to be a despicable murderer who has no qualms shedding blood to achieve his personal goals. Remember, history is written by the victors, so his winning of the throne may not have actually had David’s approval and may, instead, have been a bloody victory achieved by killing all who opposed him.
New Testament
Speaking of bloody, today we see the beginnings of violent repression in the Christian church. Ananias and Sapphira sell their land and give only part of the money to the apostles. They lie and say that they gave it all. Peter detects their lie and they both fall down dead. After this,
Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened.
The lesson: lying to the apostles is worthy of death.
The apostles heal many miracles. Some of them sound even more miraculous than what Jesus did:
As a result of the apostles’ work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter’s shadow might fall across some of them as he went by. Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed.
Apparently, Peter’s shadow was healing people.
We also read about more confrontations between the apostles and the Jewish high council. They continue to dislike each other.
Psalms and Proverbs
Nothing of particular note today.
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Old Testament
New book today! Like with 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings are actually one literary work divided into two parts. Wikipedia says,
The authorship, or rather compilation, of these books is uncertain. The date of its composition was perhaps some time between 561 BCE, the date of the last chapter … traditionally Jeremiah was credited the author of the books of Kings.
However, the book(s) plainly acknowledge several source texts in several places, and it is hence self evidently a compilation from earlier sources rather than an original work. A superficial examination of the Books of Kings makes clear the fact that they are a compilation and not an original composition. … As well as the text’s own admission, the idea of the text being composed from multiple earlier sources is also supported by textual criticism.
The subject of the book is the reigns of a bunch of kings after David. Apparently, the book also has a number of textual peculiarities which show that the book was not composed as a careful and deliberate history.
Today we read about David’s old age and decline.
King David was now very old, and no matter how many blankets covered him, he could not keep warm. So his advisers told him, “Let us find a young virgin to wait on you and look after you, my lord. She will lie in your arms and keep you warm.”
So they searched throughout the land of Israel for a beautiful girl, and they found Abishag from Shunem and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful, and she looked after the king and took care of him. But the king had no sexual relations with her.
I think this passage really shows how much David’s health had declined. David, the man with many wives and concubines, has a lovely young virgin to keep him warm and does not have sexual relations with her!
Despite David’s decline, he had not yet named a successor. His son Adonijah won the support of David’s military leader Joab and the priest Abiathar. However, others did not support Adonijah.
I find the prophet Nathan’s behavior here interesting. The text never says that Adonijah had declared himself king. It says that he boasted that he would make himself king and that he was working to win support, but it does not say that he had actually declared himself king yet.
Nathan, however, told Bathsheba (and later David) that Adonijah had declared himself to be king. Nathan also tells Bathsheba to
Go at once to King David and say to him, ‘My lord the king, didn’t you make a vow and say to me, “Your son Solomon will surely be the next king and will sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’
However, we never saw such a vow, that I remember. Were Nathan and Bathsheba trying to take advantage of David’s old age and likely failing memory to get Solomon on the throne?
Whether or not the vow ever happened (and realistically, why would David have promised that Solomon would be king when he had so many older sons?), David believed that it had and made Solomon king.
I think Adonijah’s behavior further supports the assessment that while he was willing to make himself king in the absence of any move by David, he was not intentionally setting out to rebel.
Adonijah was afraid of Solomon, so he rushed to the sacred tent and grabbed onto the horns of the altar. Word soon reached Solomon that Adonijah had seized the horns of the altar in fear, and that he was pleading, “Let King Solomon swear today that he will not kill me!”
To me, this does not read like the actions of a many intentionally working to defy the wishes of his father. It reads like a man who, perhaps mistakenly, was trying to take advantage of a confusing political situation.
New Testament
The theme of today’s reading is that Peter and John are hated by the authorities and they don’t care.
Peter and John claimed that they were able to heal the man through the name of Jesus and because the man was healed, many came to believe. However, this brings up an interesting point. Just because they were able to heal the man, should we necessarily believe that they were able to heal for the reason that they claimed? Certainly, if they were able to consistently heal with Jesus’ name and others were not able to heal in other ways, that might lend weight to their case, but a single incident (giving the very generous assumption that it actually happened), is interesting but not compelling.
We also get another passage reiterating the property sharing practiced by the early community of believers.
All the believers were united in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had. The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God’s great blessing was upon them all. There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need.
Psalms and Proverbs
Today’s proverb is nice:
Kind words are like honey—
sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.
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Old Testament
Weird story today!
Once again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he caused David to harm them by taking a census. “Go and count the people of Israel and Judah,” the Lord told him.
[David has his men take the census]
But after he had taken the census, David’s conscience began to bother him. And he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly by taking this census. Please forgive my guilt, Lord, for doing this foolish thing.”
The next morning the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, who was David’s seer. This was the message: “Go and say to David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I will give you three choices. Choose one of these punishments, and I will inflict it on you.’”
So for no reason that we know of, God is mad at Israel. Because of this, he tells David to take a census so that he can later get mad at David and punish Israel. Once again, God is proving himself to be a jerk.
David chooses a plague (actually, his answer could be interpreted as choosing plague or famine, but God decides on plague).
So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel that morning, and it lasted for three days. A total of 70,000 people died throughout the nation, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south.
70,000 people? That’s a major tragedy right there. But ignoring that, if God wanted to punish the Israelites, why did he cause David to do something that would give God an excuse to punish him. Was God afraid his reputation would suffer or something?
New Testament
Peter heals a lame man and then preaches at the Jews in the Temple, and I do mean preaches at them:
For it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of all our ancestors—who has brought glory to his servant Jesus by doing this. This is the same Jesus whom you handed over and rejected before Pilate, despite Pilate’s decision to release him. You rejected this holy, righteous one and instead demanded the release of a murderer. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. And we are witnesses of this fact!
Someone might want to let Peter know that even if what he was saying was true, it was not going to make anyone more open to hearing his message. There’s a time and a place to discuss blame, and the opening words of your “please convert” speech probably is not the place.
Psalms and Proverbs
In fact, Peter could probably learn from this proverb:
The wise are known for their understanding,
and pleasant words are persuasive.
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Old Testament
Oh, we were in the middle of David’s song of praise. So… more poetry today. David’s exaggerating his virtues a bit though,
I am blameless before God;
I have kept myself from sin.
Ummm, Bathsheba (not to mention mass exterminations, but God seems okay with those)? I mean, okay, there’s some poetic license allowed, but this is a bit much.
Also, this bit
Foreign nations cringe before me;
as soon as they hear of me, they submit.
Yeah, maybe before David ran away as soon as his son declared rebellion. As soon as they hear about that, they’re going to think David’s a wimp.
I also think that David seems to have a lot of faith in God’s “everlasting” covenant with him given how picky God ended up being about his covenant with Saul (and the threat or two God has already made to David).
After the poetry, we get to read a description of David’s most awesome warriors.
New Testament
During Pentecost the Holy Spirit came down upon a bunch of believers in the form of a flame and gave them the ability to speak other languages. Some people who hear them think it’s amazing, others, amusingly, think the speakers are drunk. Peter replies to this criticism by claiming (a) 9am is way too early for people to be drunk and (b) Jesus and stuff.
Peter also claims that David was a prophet. Now, maybe that comes latter in the OT readings, but so far, David has not shown much qualification for being a prophet. A warrior and a leader and a politician, yes, but not a prophet. I guess, though, that if Peter doesn’t call him a prophet, he cannot claim words attributed to David as prophecies, and if he cannot pretend the psalms are prophecies, a significant portion of the so called fulfilled prophecies become irrelevant.
The early community of believers would, I believe, be called communistic or socialistic by the modern religious right:
And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need.
Psalms and Proverbs
A psalm of praise for Jerusalem. I do not remember having had a psalm like this before. Variety!
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Old Testament
Not a super interesting day. Sheba of Bicri’s rebellion is put down because he holes himself up in a town where the people are willing to give him (or, rather, his head) over to David. David gets involved in more battles, and he and his men kill more Philistine giants. David sings a song of praise that bears great resemblance to the psalms (probably why the psalms are generally attributed to David).
The most interesting part of today’s reading comes in the description of a famine and cure. God sent a three year famine on the land because of the injustices Saul had done to the Gibeonites (hey God, did you wait long enough there?). David asks the Gibeonites what they can do to make amends. They say that the only thing that will satisfy them is to be given seven of Saul’s descendants to kill. David obliges and they kill the descendants.
Now, depending on whether or not Saul’s sons and grandsons were involved in the injustices inflicted upon the Gibeonites, this may be comparable to punishing people for war crimes or it may be more like murder and/or human sacrifice. Either way, it’s unsettling.
New Testament
Today we start the Acts of the Apostles. The obvious thing to notice about this book is that it is not a gospel. We are done with them!
According to the Wikipedia article. The author of acts was most likely the same as the author of the Gospel of Luke. As with that book, it is unclear whether or not this person was actually Luke. However the author is more likely to be the person traditionally credited than in the rest of the gospels.
“Acts” are a particular genre of writing from this time period which generally describe the activities of people and cities. The various acts of Christianity, including this and various apocryphal books, cover the acts of Christian miracles and conversions.
Although Acts talks about the Apostle Paul, his letters are never quoted, leading scholars to conclude that the author of Acts did not have access to Paul’s letters at the time of composition. The time of composition itself is disputed, with some traditional scholars putting it as early as around 60 AD and others putting it nearer to 100 AD.
Today’s reading starts with a reiteration of the promise that the holy spirit will come to guide the apostles. It also describes the ascension of Jesus into heaven, from which point, it seems, he will no longer make bodily appearances until his return (a useful excuse for why contemporaries of the author no longer interacted with a risen Jesus).
We also read about how Matthias is chosen to replace Judas. This story contains two interesting elements. Once again, the New Testament is treating random lines from the Old Testament as if they were prophecy. In this case, random lines from two psalms are used to justify the replacement of Judas:
Peter continued, “This was written in the book of Psalms, where it says, ‘Let his home become desolate, with no one living in it.’ It also says, ‘Let someone else take his position.’
21 “So now we must choose a replacement for Judas from among the men who were with us the entire time we were traveling with the Lord Jesus
I continue to think that this is a stupid way of justifying decisions.
I also find it interesting the the apostles choose the new apostle by lot. I thought that using selection by lot and attributing the result to God was mostly a feature of the Old Testament writings.
So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they all prayed, “O Lord, you know every heart. Show us which of these men you have chosen as an apostle to replace Judas in this ministry, for he has deserted us and gone where he belongs.” Then they cast lots, and Matthias was selected to become an apostle with the other eleven.
According to Wikipedia, the Eastern Orthodox Church still considers casting lots to sometimes be a valid form of decision making (or at least did less than 100 years ago):
In the Eastern Orthodox Church this method of selection is still occasionally used. In 1917 MetropolitanTikhon was elected Patriarch of Moscow by the drawing of lots.
I personally would not consider lot casting decisive unless I came up with the same answer multiple times (at least 10).
Psalms and Proverbs
Both the psalm and the proverb from today’s reading are rather well known. The most interesting thing is this line from today’s psalm:
The sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon at night.
I never realized the moon was particularly harmful.
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Old Testament
Today’s reading is very confusing, mostly because it deals with a lot of people that I only half remember and never bothered to become familiar enough with to keep straight. So let’s review who they are and their roles in today’s readings:
When David came to his palace in Jerusalem, he took the ten concubines he had left to look after the palace and placed them in seclusion. Their needs were provided for, but he no longer slept with them. So each of them lived like a widow until she died.
New Testament
We finish the Gospel of John today, and with that we finish the gospels! Hurrah! Onto something new. But first we must finish today’s reading.
Jesus appears again to a number of the disciples. As they fish unsuccessfully, he blesses them with fish. One of the disciples recognizes Jesus and Peter swims to him. Jesus charges Peter with taking care of his sheep (three times). Then the author of the gospel claims to have really been there and that, therefore, his testimony is reliable. Remember, however, that the gospel of John is unlikely to have been written by an eye witness.
Psalms and Proverbs
Today’s psalm seems to be a full one, but ends rather abruptly. The last two verses are:
I am tired of living
among people who hate peace.
I search for peace;
but when I speak of peace, they want war!