Deuteronomy 31:30–32:47

Deuteronomy 31:30–32:47: Moses’ Song

Deuteronomy 31:14–29

Deuteronomy 31:14–29: Israel’s rebellion predicted—again!

Deuteronomy 31:9–13

Deuteronomy 31:9–13: Reading of the law commanded

Deuteronomy 31:1–8

Deuteronomy 31:1-8: Joshua to Succeed Moses

Deuteronomy 30:11–20

Deuteronomy 30:11–20: The choice is yours…

Deuteronomy 30:1–10

Deuteronomy 30:1–10: Forgiveness

Deuteronomy 29

Deuteronomy 29: Renewal of the Covenant

Deuteronomy 28:15–68

Deuteronomy 28:15–68: Curses for Disobedience

Deuteronomy 28:1–14

Deuteronomy 28:1–14: Blessings for Obedience

Deuteronomy 27:9–26

Deuteronomy 27:9–26: Curses From Mount Ebal

Deuteronomy 27:1–8

Deuteronomy 27:1–8: The Altar on Mount Ebal

Deuteronomy 26:16–19

Deuteronomy 26:16–19: Follow the LORD’s Commands

Deuteronomy 26:1–15

Deuteronomy 26:1–15: Firstfruits and Tithes

Deuteronomy 23:15–25:19

Deuteronomy 23:15–25:19: Miscellaneous Laws

Deuteronomy 23:9–14

Deuteronomy 23:9–14: Preventing uncleanness from entering the camp

Deuteronomy 23:1–8

Deuteronomy 23:1–8: Exclusion from the “Assembly”

Deuteronomy 22:13–30

Deuteronomy 22:13–30: Marriage Violations

Deuteronomy 21:22–22:12

Deuteronomy 21:22–22:12: Various Laws

Deuteronomy 21:18–21

Deuteronomy 21:18–21: A Rebellious Son

Deuteronomy 21:15–17

Deuteronomy 21:15–17: The Right of the Firstborn

Deuteronomy 21:10–14

Deuteronomy 21:10–14: Rules for marrying a captured woman

Deuteronomy 21:1–9

Deuteronomy 21:1–9: Atonement for an Unsolved Murder

Deuteronomy 20

Deuteronomy 20: Rules for going to war

Deuteronomy 19:15–21

Deuteronomy 19:15–21: Witnesses

Deuteronomy 19:1–14

Deuteronomy 19:1–14: Cities of Refuge

Deuteronomy 18:14–22

Deuteronomy 18:14–22: Prophets

Deuteronomy 18:9–13

Deuteronomy 18:9–13: Detestable Practices

Deuteronomy 18:1–8

Deuteronomy 18:1–8: Rules for Levites

Deuteronomy 17:14–20

Deuteronomy 17:14–20: Rules for an Israelite king

Deuteronomy 17:8–13

Deuteronomy 17:8–13: Difficult cases of law

Deuteronomy 16:21–17:7

Deuteronomy 16:21–17:7: Worshipping Other Gods

Deuteronomy 16:18–20

Deuteronomy 16:18–20: Judges

Deuteronomy 16:13–17

Deuteronomy 16:13–17: Feast of Tabernacles

Pastor Anyabwile

I had previously written that we had Pastor Anyabwile as a guest preacher. According to his blog, he enjoyed his trip.

Deuteronomy 16:9–12

Deuteronomy 16:9–12: Feast of Weeks

Deuteronomy 16:1–8

Deuteronomy 16:1–8: Passover

Deuteronomy 15:19–23

Deuteronomy 15:19–23: The Firstborn Animals

Deuteronomy 15:12–18

Deuteronomy 15:12–18: Freeing [Israelite] servants

Guest Preacher

Yes, I know, I haven’t found time to update this blog for a few days, to continue on with Deuteronomy. (Even though I did somehow find time to post a huge rant…) I’m hoping to get back on track “soon,” because my Bible reading schedule suffers when I don’t keep up with this aspect of it.

Christian Blog Templates

I must say, I get a little disappointed in the Christian community sometimes.

Deuteronomy 15:1–11

Deuteronomy 15:1–11: Cancelling debts

Deuteronomy 14:22–29

Deuteronomy 14:22–29: Tithes

Deuteronomy 14:1–21

Deuteronomy 14:1–21: Food, and worship

Deuteronomy 13

Deuteronomy 13: Worshipping other gods forbidden

Deuteronomy 12

Deuteronomy 12: One Place of Worship

John Calvin on the “Prosperity Gospel”

I’ve been on vacation for a while, and have been neglecting my blogs. But I came across a post on the Pure Church blog today, about John Calvin on the “Prosperity Gospel,” and I thought I’d share it.

My favourite quote from this quote is:

The good things given by God are but a path to lead us to him, a ladder to ascend on high, not a tomb in which to bury ourselves.

Deuteronomy 11

Deuteronomy 11: Love and Obey the LORD

Deuteronomy 10:12–22

Deuteronomy 10:12–22: Fear the LORD

Deuteronomy 10:1–11

Deuteronomy 10:1–11: New stone tablets

Verse of the Day

I’ve made a minor change to the blog template; I removed the old Flash “verse of the day” thing I used to have in the sidebar—which didn’t match the blog’s colours, or even the size of the sidebar—and replaced it with a new one from the ESV website.

The new version uses an RSS feed, instead of Flash, meaning that the item in the sidebar matches with the look and feel of the rest of the blog. If you don’t know what “RSS” is, then… well, you probably don’t need to.

Translating Specialized Terms

I didn’t even notice it, but I have now put up more than 200 posts to this blog. (This is post # 203.) I wasn’t sure if I would stick with it, but, overall, I have. I may actually get to Revelation after all…

However, although I’m sticking with the blog overall, I’m not always posting every single day. (My pesky life gets in the way, sometimes.) And I may or may not get a chance to post today. But, to keep you occupied, I found an interesting post on the ESV Bible Blog, about Translating Specialized Terms. You may not find it as interesting as I did—but, then again, I assume that about this entire blog in general.

Deuteronomy 9:7–29

Deuteronomy 9:7–29: The Israelites are not righteous

Deuteronomy 9:1–6

Deuteronomy 9:1–6: God didn’t choose Israel because of the Israelites’ righteousness

Deuteronomy 8

Deuteronomy 9: Do Not Forget the LORD

Deuteronomy 7

Deuteronomy 7: Drive out the nations, and don’t be ensnared by them

Deuteronomy 6

Deuteronomy 6: Love the LORD Your God

Deuteronomy 5

Deuteronomy 5: The 10 Commandments

Deuteronomy 4:41–49

Deuteronomy 4:41–49: Cities of Refuge, and the Law

Deuteronomy 4:32–40

Deuteronomy 4:32–40: God is the Only God

Arguments Christians Should Not Use

I found this article, Arguments Christians Should Not Use, on the Skeptical Christian site. (Actually, I found the link on the Withering Fig blog, and followed it from there.) I think it’s a good article, so I recommend it.

I should note that I’ve never been to the Skeptical Christian site before, so I don’t know about the rest of the site, but this article at least was worth reading, so perhaps the rest is, too…

Deuteronomy 4:15–31

Deuteronomy 4:15–31: Moses warns against idolatry

Blog Template

There’s a very good chance that I’ll be changing the template for this blog; I’ve noticed some strange things happening with it, for the last couple of days, and I think the problem is that some pieces of the template (CSS files, images, JavaScript, etc.) are hosted on someone else’s site. (See this page, from the person who created the template—or at least parts of it—for an explanation, but basically, his servers are getting overloaded.) It’s too bad, because I kind of liked this template, but I’m sure I’ll find another one that I also like.

So my main point is this: if you notice strange problems with the site, just bear with me, until I get a chance to use a new template, and hopefully they’ll go away.

Deuteronomy 4:1–14

Deuteronomy 4:1–14: Moses begins recounting the law

Deuteronomy 3:21–29

Deuteronomy 3:21–29: Moses Forbidden to Cross the Jordan

Deuteronomy 3:12–20

Deuteronomy 3:12–20: The “Transjordan” tribes

Deuteronomy 3:1–11

Deuteronomy 3:1–11: The Israelites Defeat Og

Deuteronomy 2

Deuteronomy 2: The Israelites approach the Promised Land

Edwards on New Christians and Spiritual Growth

I found this series on the Pure Church blog, and decided to post links here.

From the first post, here’s the introduction:

On June 3, 1741, Jonathan Edwards wrote a letter to Deborah Hatheway. Mrs. Hatheway was converted during the awakening in New England and, since her church was without a pastor at the time sought Edwards’ counsel on how to grow as a new Christian. Edwards replied in a short letter with 19 things Hatheway should think and do. The letter is reprinted Michael A.G. Haykin’s A Sweet Flame: Piety in the Letters of Jonathan Edwards. For the next couple of posts, I’ll quote some of the advice that Edwards give.

And here are the actual posts in the series, from Pure Church:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

I found this very useful; I hope you will too.

Deuteronomy 1:26–46

Deuteronomy 1:26–46: The Israelites refuse to enter the Promised Land

Deuteronomy 1:19–25

Deuteronomy 1:19–25: Spies Sent Out

Deuteronomy 1:9–18

Deuteronomy 1:9–18: The Appointment of Leaders

Deuteronomy 1:1–8

Deuteronomy 1:1–8: Moses begins his speech

Numbers Summary

I get the impression that a lot of people tend to skip over the book of Numbers, or just skim through it, when they’re reading through the Bible. Based on the name, I think they assume that it’s full of censuses (censii?), and, as it turns out, a lot of the material that isn’t related to a census is related to laws, which most of us find pretty boring.

Numbers 36

Numbers 36: Zelophehad’s Daughters Revisited

Numbers 35

Numbers 35: Towns for the Levites, and Cities of Refuge

Numbers 34

Numbers 34: Dividing up the Land

Numbers 33

Numbers 33: Stages in Israel’s Journey

Numbers 32

Numbers 32: The “Transjordan” Tribes

Bible Maps

I was about to start blogging about Numbers 32—which I will do next—but I figured that I really needed to find a good map, first, to illustrate what was happening. So, as I tend to do, I went to Google, to look for some.

The first search result I came across was to a site called BibleMap.org. Although it’s not useful for my current purpose, it’s very cool: It has a search box, where you put in the Bible verse you want to look up—ESV or KJV—and then it searches in the text you’ve chosen for any names of places; cities, countries, whatever. It then superimposes those places onto a satellite map of that area, using Google Maps! See the screenshot for an example:


Now, I don’t really know how useful this will be; as you’ve noticed, in the view below, since it’s using Google Maps, it’s using the names of modern-day countries and cities (with the Old Testament references superimposed on top). However, if you were reading, for example, Numbers 21, and wanted to see where the lands it’s talking about are, in relation to today’s world, you could easily do that.

Numbers 31

Numbers 31: Revenge Against the Midianites

Numbers 30

Numbers 30: Rules for Vows

“Satan has asked to sift y’all…”

The new ESV Bible that I got on the weekend is already helping me, in that it made a particular passage a bit more clear. It’s Luke 22:31–32, which reads like this in the NIV:

³¹“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. ³²But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

There is also a footnote for verse 31, that indicates that the first “you” is plural, in the Greek. There is no plural word for “you” in English—unless you count “y’all”—so that’s why the verse reads “you” in English. (I do actually use the word “y’all,” sometimes, even though it’s not a term that we tend to use here in Ontario.)

It reads like this in the ESV:

³¹“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, ³¹but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

For the most part, the wording for both of these is similar. However, there is a footnote in the ESV version for verse 31 that I found more clear than the NIV’s footnote:

The Greek word for you (twice in this verse) is plural; in verse 32, all four instances are singular

(This is why I included the verse numbers in the quotes, above, which I don’t normally bother to do.)

In other words, if I were to paraphrase, Jesus is saying this:

Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you, as wheat, but I’ve prayed for you, Simon, that your [Simon’s] faith may not fail. And when you, Simon, have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

I never picked up on this before, even with the NIV footnote that indicates the first “you” is singular. I had always read this as completely singular, that Satan had asked to sift Simon, but what Jesus is actually saying is that Satan had asked to sift all of the disciples.

For me, this gives a whole new understanding to this verse. When Jesus was crucified, he knew that the disciples were going to be struck a heavy blow, but he was specifically commissioning Simon (who we usually call Peter) to strengthen them. He knew that Peter was going to deny him, but still, he was the one tasked with strengthening the other apostles.

Numbers 29

Numbers 29: Rules for Special Days

Bibles

I decided, this past weekend, to go looking for a new Bible. My Bible, since I was 17 or so, has always been a New Student Bible, which I [mostly] like, but I felt it was time for a new one. Mostly because I’ve already read all of the notes in the Student Bible, so they aren’t as helpful anymore—I no longer need to read them, because I know what they say.

The translation used by the Student Bible is the New International Version (NIV), which I like. I find it very readable, and, from what I’ve heard, it’s also a very accurate translation. But I’d been hearing about the English Standard Version (ESV); I forget where I heard about it first, but I know that my pastor switched to that version, for his own use, and I’d also heard about it on the Withering Fig blog. (I first came across the Withering Fig blog because of an article he wrote on 5 Keys to Picking the Best Bible Translation for You, which I liked.)

Just to clarify, I asked my pastor about it again on Friday, as to his reasons for switching to the ESV. To sum up the conversation, this is what I remember:

• The NIV is a very accurate translation, in that it captures what the original authors were trying to say, but it also can fall into more colloquial language, which doesn’t always translate well for every audience. If you’re reading for your own personal learning, and you use the same types of idioms that are used in the NIV, then you’ll probably find it very readable.
• The ESV is also very accurate, but because of the issue mentioned above with the NIV, the ESV is better to preach from. If you’re trying to make the intent of a passage clear to a wider audience, than the ESV is probably better for you. Of course, that’s not to say that it’s not readable; the guy from Withering Fig seems to use the ESV as his translation of choice, and apparently likes the way it reads.
• If you want the most accurate translation, the New American Standard Bible (NASB) is probably the best, although it will not be as readable. For example, Andrea mentioned to me that the NASB always makes it clear when the Bible is using a word that means “men” (multiple male persons) versus “people” (multiple persons of any gender), which can be very helpful, in some situations, whereas other translations might use the word “men” in both places. (Some translations will have a footnote, in some cases, to clarify whether the word is gender neutral or gender specific, although I have to admit that I don’t always read the footnotes, when I’m reading the Bible.)

So I decided to give the ESV a try. From what I can tell, there aren’t yet any “study Bibles” that use the ESV translation, so I just went ahead and got a regular Bible.

As a side note, I was shocked how expensive Bibles are! I got mine for $7.50, which is a “bare bones” soft-cover Bible, with no bells and whistles, but the average price of the Bibles I saw was $40–50. I also saw some that were $80–90, which is just absolutely ridiculous. Aside from price, it also blows me away, when looking through Christian bookstores, to see all of the gimmicks on display from “Christian” publishers. Anything from commonplace gimmicks, like a leather-bound Bible with an imprint of a crown of thorns on it—Christians will buy almost anything that has a crown of thorns or cross logo on it—to over the top gimmicks like the “Duct Table Bible,” which, literally, has duct tape over the cover, to just plain morally terrible gimmicks, like Bibles that are made to look like teen magazines, full of pictures of “pretty” white Christians, embodying all of the same stereotypes of beauty that Christians aren’t supposed to care about. (Let your beauty come from within? No? Anybody?)

Anyway, ranting aside, I’m going to continue quoting from the NIV translation on this blog, for the time being. But if I really start to like the ESV translation, I may switch, and start quoting from that, instead. I even toyed with the idea of starting to put all of my quotes in two versions, side by side; perhaps NIV or ESB, and then NASB. However, in many cases, that might be overkill; in some instances, the NASB might make the author’s intent more clear, but in other cases, it won’t add anything. I suppose what I should do is include the side by side quotes when it will help, and just use a readable version in other cases. We’ll see.

Numbers 28

Numbers 28: Various types of offerings

Numbers 27:12–23

Numbers 27:12–23: The LORD Appoints Joshua to Succeed Moses

Numbers 27:1–11

Numbers 27:1–11: Zelophehad’s Daughters

The “Immutability” of God

I saw a good post on the Withering Fig blog, on 1 John 2:17. You can read the post here.

He’s talking about the “immutability” of God—which means that God never changes. (Hebrews 13:8 says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”)

Numbers 26

Numbers 26: The Second Census

Numbers 25

Numbers 25: Israel is Seduced

Numbers 24:20–25

Numbers 24:20–25: Balak and Balaam—Balaam’s Final Oracles

Numbers 24:15–19

Numbers 24:15–19: Balak and Balaam—Balaam’s Fourth Oracle

Numbers 23:27–24:14

Numbers 23:27–24:14: Balak and Balaam—Balaam’s Third Oracle

Numbers 23:13–26

Numbers 23:13–26: Balak and Balaam—Balaam’s Second Oracle

Numbers 23: 1–12

Numbers 23:1–12: Balak and Balaam—Balaam’s First Oracle

Numbers 22:21–41

Numbers 22:21–41: Balak and Balaam—Balaam’s Donkey

Numbers 22:1–20

Numbers 22:1–20: Balak and Balaam—Balak Summons Balaam

Numbers 21:10–35

Numbers 21:10–35: Further journeys, and battles

Numbers 21:1–9

Numbers 21:1–9: Arad destroyed; the bronze snake

Numbers 20:22–29

Numbers 20:22–29: Aaron dies

Numbers 20:14–21

Numbers 20:14–21: Edom denies Israel passage through their territory

Numbers 20:1–13

Numbers 20:1–13: Water from the Rock

Numbers 19

Numbers 19: The Water of Cleansing

Numbers 18

Numbers 18: Duties and offerings for Levites and Priests

Numbers 17

Numbers 17: The budding of Aaron’s staff

Numbers 16

Numbers 16: Korah’s Rebellion

Numbers 15

Numbers 15: Additional rules; a man is stoned for breaking the Sabbath; more additional rules

Numbers 14

Numbers 14: The people are afraid to go into the Promised Land

Numbers 13

Numbers 13: The Israelites reach the border of the Promised Land, and send in spies to check it out

Numbers 12

Numbers 12: Miriam and Aaron get jealous

Template Change

I’ve made a very slight change to the template for this blog. Quotations will now use the blog’s sans-serif font, instead of the serif font.When I say “quotations,” I mean things like this:

This is a quotation.

For the most part, that means Bible quotations, but once in a while I quote other things here, too.

You may not know what “serif” or “sans-serif” fonts are, but it doesn’t matter. The main point is that if you notice this change, and think it’s just your eyes, it’s not. The blog is actually different.

Numbers 11

Numbers 11: Fire and quail from the LORD

Numbers 10

Numbers 10: The silver trumpets; the Israelites break camp

Numbers 9

Numbers 9: The Passover is celebrated; The LORD’s presence over the Tabernacle

Numbers 8

Numbers 8: Setting up the lamps; the Levites are set apart to the LORD

Numbers 7

Numbers 7: The dedication of the Tabernacle

Numbers 6

Numbers 6: Rules for becoming a Nazirite; the Priestly Blessing

Numbers 5

Numbers 5: Purity of the camp; restitution for wrongs; test for an unfaithful wife

Numbers 4

Numbers 4: Tasks assigned to the Levites

Numbers 3

Numbers 3: A census of the Levites

Numbers 2

Numbers 2: The Arrangement of Tribal Camps

Numbers 1

Numbers 1: A Census

Leviticus Summary

If you’re the type of Christian who spends most of your time in the New Testament, and not so much in the Old Testament, then you probably haven’t spent much time at all in Leviticus. The book is almost completely concerned with rules and regulations that the LORD handed down to the Israelites. There is some action—such as the Glory of the LORD appearing in Chapter 9, or Aaron’s sons being punished for their sin in Chapter 10—but for the most part, the book consists of rules.

Leviticus 27

Leviticus 27: Dedications to the LORD

No post for today

I’m feeling sort of run-down, today, and I just don’t have the heart to delve into Leviticus 27, which is another chapter of rules and regulations. (This is the reason that so many people don’t read the Old Testament—they start at Genesis, like I’ve done for this blog, and try and read it straight through, and then get bogged down somewhere around Leviticus or Numbers. For the same reason, I can’t let this blog become my only time to study the Bible, or I’ll be so bogged down with legality that I’ll forget who Christ is!)

So, in lieu of a post on Leviticus 27, I’ll just put up a couple of quotes from a recent talk by Piper, that I found on the Pure Church blog:

If we create a kind of Christianity that says there is no truth we will simply create a kind of Christianity that colonizes slaves.

When relativism holds sway in a society over time sooner or later more and more people do what is right in their own eyes. And when enough people do what’s right in their own eyes we call it anarchy. There are only two solutions to anarchy. One is revival. Or a dictator.

I don’t normally look at this blog on the weekend—and this weekend is going to be atypically busy anyway—so I’ll probably tackle Leviticus 27 on Monday.

Leviticus 26

Leviticus 26: Rewards for obedience, and punishments for disobedience

Leviticus 25

Leviticus 25: The Sabbath Year, and the Year of Jubilee

Leviticus 24

Leviticus 24: bread for the LORD, stoning commanded for blasphemy

Leviticus 23

Leviticus 23: Special Days

The Sabbath

I was about to start blogging Leviticus 23, and I started writing about the Sabbath. And then it quickly became apparent that it was going to turn into a post on its own, so I made it into one. (Which you are reading right now.) The question I’m investigating here is: Does the Sabbath apply to the Christian? If so, is it different than how the Sabbath applied to the Old Testament Israelite?

Leviticus 22

Leviticus 22: More rules for priestly holiness, and sacrifices

Leviticus 21

Leviticus 21: Holiness for the Priests

Bible Commentary Wiki?

Anyone who follows my main blog will know that I’m somewhat fascinated with wikis. If you’re not familiar with the term “wiki,” here’s a brief definition:

A wiki is a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available content, typically without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.

That definition, appropriately enough, came from Wikipedia, which is an online, collaborative encyclopedia. Wikipedia is the most well-known example of a wiki; if you happen to know something about butterflies, and go on over to the Wikipedia entry on butterflies, you can share your knowledge with others. Or perhaps help correct or clarify a point that the article is already making.

I myself have also started a wiki, about the Ubuntu operating system, which is aimed at helping new Ubuntu users—especially users who “grew up” with Windows—get used to a new way of working. This isn’t a normal wiki, in the sense that it’s not open for public editing—I want to maintain control, at least for the present, to make sure that it’s newbie-friendly—but the downside to that is that it’s still a very bare-bones wiki, because I’m not editing it 24/7.

In brief:

• The upside to a publicly editable wiki is that you can use collaboration to get a wealth of in-depth information available, much quicker than you could if you were to try and do it on your own. (According to the main page for Wikipedia, since the site’s launch in 2001, there have been over 1,635,000 articles on the English version; there’s no way they would have accumulated that many articles if Wikipedia was maintained by a core set of people.)
• The downside is that you have to give up a fair amount of control over the content of the site. You have to have a certain amount of faith that the people writing these articles know what they’re talking about—and that the articles are worth having in the first place. (How many of those 1.6 million+ articles are written about some guy’s dog?)

If you didn’t click the link earlier, but are interested in the topic, see the “Wikis” post on my main blog, for a more in-depth discussion of this topic.

The reason this comes up is that I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a Bible Commentary wiki. There are a number of good Bible commentaries out there—and probably a larger number of crappy ones—but it would be nice if a definitive, online commentary could be created. As it grew, with time, it would become an invaluable resource for future Christians. (Not sure if the “Tent of Meeting” refers to the inner structure of the Tabernacle, or the whole thing? Well, head on over to the Bible Commentary wiki, and see what they say about it…)

Just as with any other wiki, there would be pluses and minuses:

• With enough contributors, the site could potentially accumulate a lot of in-depth knowledge.
  • Similarly, if there are contentious topics, you could get all of the different viewpoints in one wiki article, rather than having to read numerous commentaries, for all of their points of view. Pastors always have a million Bible commentaries lying around in their offices; if a pastor were editing the wiki on a particular topic, he could include the wisdom from various commentaries in the wiki article.
• On the other hand, just as with any other wiki, the more contributors there would be, the more potential for articles being written which wouldn’t be accurate. Or which would not hold to the Gospel, or which would deny the Trinity, or contain heresy, or… well, think of the million things that Christians disagree about, and you’ll get the idea. A Christian Bible wiki would be concerned with more than just “accuracy;” it would also be concerned with Truth. You think some of the topics on Wikipedia are contentious? Whoo boy, if there were a Bible Commentary wiki, every article would become contentious!

So, I’m still thinking about it, and not sure where the thinking will take me. Maybe I’ll start one, and maybe I’ll think better of it. If I do start one, there’s a good chance that I wouldn’t make it a fully public wiki; maybe just have a core set of contributors, who have proven themselves to know the Scriptures, who can be trusted to give good analysis of what they’re reading.

My feeling is that if you are going to start a wiki, you shouldn’t aim for a lot of content in a short amount of time. Instead, you should concentrate on quality content, and let the site build gradually. For this particular case, if the Lord comes back tomorrow, then it doesn’t matter anyway, but if he tarries for another thousand years, then you’ve got a thousand years to write content that will help others to grow in their knowledge of the Scriptures.

Leviticus 20

Leviticus 20: Various Punishments

Leviticus 19

Leviticus 19: Various Laws

Leviticus 18

Leviticus 18: Unlawful Sexual Relations

Leviticus 17

Leviticus 17: Blood

The Tent of Meeting

After my last post, I got to thinking about the diagram I had put up, of the Tabernacle. My problem is the “Tent of Meeting;” I’ve done the diagram as if the entire structure, including the Outer Court, and the Holy Place and Most Holy Place, are all part of something called the “Tabernacle,” whereas the little structure inside, holding the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, is called the “Tent of Meeting.”

Leviticus 16

Leviticus 16: The Day of Atonement

Verse of the Day

I’ve added a “Verse of the Day” item to the sidebar, from Bible Gateway. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of control over it—it’s got a fixed width, and a black background.

If they ever come up with a more customizable one, that I can fit into the sidebar better, or if I find one somewhere else, I’ll replace it.

Leviticus 15

Leviticus 15: Rules for discharges causing uncleanness

Leviticus 14

Leviticus 14: Rules for cleansing from infectious skin diseases and mildew

Punctuation

This has nothing to do with the Bible; it’s just related to the way I write this blog.

On my personal blog—and in email, on chat, and in other contexts—I’ve gotten into the habit of writing quotations marks in the hacker writing style, instead of following American English standards for quotation marks.

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don’t belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck.

The article quoted goes on to mention that the hacker style of writing quotes is now preferred practice in Great Britain—however, in Britain, single quotes and double quotes are used in reverse to how they are used in America. e.g. in America you would write

Said John, “He said ‘I’m going to the mall,’ but I didn’t believe him.”

Whereas in Britain you would write

Said John, ‘He said “I’m going to the mall”, but I didn’t believe him.’

Canadians, who are neither British nor American—but almost both—tend to use American-style quotations. I, on the other hand, have picked up a mish-mash of both; I use double and single quotes where Americans would, but punctuate around the quotes like the hacker style above.

I have decided, however, to try and write this blog, from now on, using American-style punctuation around my quotation marks. I say “try” because the hacker style of writing has become very ingrained; I often find myself, in my professional writing career, having to go back and “correct” my punctuation using the American style.

My reason for doing so here is that I’m afraid some Biblical scholar will find my blog via Google some day, pop in, and start harassing me about my punctuation not being grammatical. Priests and Reverends and Pastors (and whatever other titles you can think of) love education, and it’s exactly the type of thing that I can see them being overly worried about.

Leviticus 13

Leviticus 13: Rules for infectious skin diseases, and mildew

Leviticus 12

Leviticus 12: Rules for “purification” after childbirth

Leviticus 11

Leviticus 11: Rules for clean and unclean food

Leviticus 10

Leviticus 10: Aaron’s sons are killed

Leviticus 9

Leviticus 9: Aaron and his sons begin their ministry, and the Glory of the LORD appears

Leviticus 8

Leviticus 8: Aaron and his sons are ordained

Leviticus 7

Leviticus 7: Rules for Guilt and Fellowship offerings; the eating of fat and blood forbidden; the priests’ share of offerings

Leviticus 6

Leviticus 6: Rules about deception, and burnt, grain, and sin offerings

Leviticus 5

Leviticus 5: Examples of unintentional sins

Leviticus 4

Leviticus 4: Rules for Sin Offerings

Leviticus 3

Leviticus 3: Rules for Fellowship Offerings

Leviticus 2

Leviticus 2: Rules for grain offerings

Leviticus 1

Leviticus 1: Rules for Burnt Offerings

Exodus Summary

As the name implies, the book of Exodus is focused around the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. This is one of the most important events in the history of God’s people; many times, for the rest of the Old Testament, He will refer to Himself as “the LORD who brought you out of Egypt”.

Exodus 40

Exodus 40: The Tabernacle is erected, and the Glory of the LORD fills it

Back up—that was quick!

I have upgraded my Blogger account, to use their new service. However, now that I’ve done so, I don’t like how narrow this blog template is. So I may, at some point in the future, change it again.

In the meantime, this is the template that I’ll be using for a while. It didn’t take too long, which means the blog wasn’t down too long, but I’ll be doing it again, when I find a better template, so I’ll notify you again when that happens.

(Assuming that anyone reads this, which isn’t necessarily a valid assumption…)

Blog out of commission for a while

I’m going to be upgrading my Blogger account, to use the new version of the service, so this blog may be out of commission, or look somewhat strange, until I can get it all tweaked and up and running again.

When it does come back up, it will have a new look to it, which I hope you will like.

Exodus 39

Exodus 39: The priestly clothing is made

Exodus 36–38

Exodus 36–38: The building of the Tabernacle

Exodus 35

Exodus 35: Work begins on the Tabernacle

Exodus 34

Exodus 34: The Glory of the LORD

Exodus 33

Exodus 33: Moses asks to see the Glory of the LORD

Exodus 32

Exodus 32: The Golden Calf