Scripture Readings
The Holy Bible (King James Version)
Old Testament
Intro
When I was very small, my mother kept a big, old, decorated, old-fashioned family Bible in the living room, in the middle of the very bottom of a bookcase that I no longer remember the dimensions of. It was probably either one of the ones we still had years later, or an assemblage of plywood and cinder blocks. Either way, I don’t think this was a bookcase full of books at the time--though there were such things in the house--but this may have simply been a set of shelves holding a varied collection of things, some of which may have been books, and of which the only thing I remember clearly from the time was that family Bible, Old and New Testaments.
It lay flatwise, face up, with the ornate words “Holy Bible” very large and filling up the front cover. It was a white (or perhaps off-white but likely had begun life as white) cover that had accents in what looked like gold leaf or gold paint in some places. I’ve since seen it a great many times, but whenever I think of that Bible I picture it in my mind the way I always remember seeing it as it sat on that bottom shelf.
My siblings and I had been read to from scriptures at bedtime and at church, and I recall we used to have some picture books that featured selected stories from scriptures. I always remember the one for the Old Testament had the stories of Esther and also Joseph who was sold into Egypt by his older brothers. I’m sure I could name many other stories that were in there, but of the stories included in the picture books, those are the two that I particularly remember for certain, and remember first. I think we had those picture books from before I could read the words in them, but honestly I don’t remember when we got them or when I learned to read. I also don’t remember if I started trying to read the Bible by myself soon after I learned to read, or if it was quite some time later.
What I do remember, though, is that when I did start to read the Bible by myself, it was years before I had my own copy of the Bible, no one was telling me to read the Bible by myself (from what I recall, I decided to do it on my own), and I read from that big, fat, fancy family Bible on the bottom shelf in the living room of the house we lived in at the time.
Sometimes I’d read more often, sometimes less, and I’d read different amounts at different times, but since it can be hard to pick up where you left off if you mark the page with a ribbon but have nothing to mark the verse, I would usually try to read at least one chapter at a time and read in chapter increments, starting at the beginning of Genesis and moving on page by page and chapter by chapter. Starting out, I often did not remember or understand some of what I read, but I followed along with the basics of the stories of what happened to the people and their families and where they lived. Back in those days, I always would get lost eventually, whenever I went long enough without reading that when I came back to it I couldn’t remember what had been going on. So then I would start back again at Genesis chapter 1.
To start with, I would generally get as far as Noah and the flood, or that was my primary goal; with practice over time, I could manage to work my way through all of Genesis and even all of Exodus… but back then while I was still small, I never did get past the combined might of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The lists of laws, observances, and census-taking that all seemed to never end or lead into any stories about Biblical heroes would eventually get me feeling lost again in one place or another and I’d start the Old Testament all over again back at Genesis chapter 1. I don’t even know how many times I read that first book of Moses, but I guarantee you it’s more times than I’ve read the other ones.
I’m not sure if I ever made it through to the book of Joshua while I was still reading from that family Bible; it may not have been until well after I got my own copy of the Bible to read and highlight and take to and from church with me. But eventually I did read all of the Old Testament from front to back, and then the New Testament as well. And a number of times since, including now at least twice in Spanish. I haven’t kept count and I’m sure there are a lot of people who have read the Bible all the way through more times than I have, but it is certainly something that I have felt was well worth the time and effort to do repeatedly. One can learn new things every time, if reading with an open heart.
It has been a while since I last read the Bible all the way through from cover to cover, and I feel it is high time I do so again, I also feel I should share some of my thoughts about what I see in the pages of scripture. I begin, as ever, with the Old Testament, book of Genesis, chapter One.
Please note that I read from the King James version, and furthermore my commentary is intended to be a partial expression of some of my personal thoughts and feelings on what I read, and not to be taken as official representation of the views of any other person, group, or organization.
[edit, 22 August, 2018:
Something that is a given for me but might not clearly go without saying for everyone else and therefore I realized I ought to make a point of acknowledging, is that I do not know everything, do not claim to know everything, and do not expect I will ever know everything in this life. I am always learning more, or attempting to do so, and any opinions or thoughts expressed by me have the potential of being revised later on when I have learned more about something or other. This is especially true of anything that I label as being speculation or theory, or that I (in any context, not just here) strongly suggest is just a thought, just something I'm thinking about, or something I think 'could' be.
However, this is different from when I say that I Know something or I Believe something. If I say I believe something, then I mean it more firmly than anything that I am simply speculating about, and I will always have multiple firm reasons for believing whatever it is, reasons that I accept as being more convincing than passing speculation about some theory or other.
When I say that I know something, I mean it more strongly and definitively than when I say I believe something. For example, when I say that I know there is a God, I know it as a fact that I am as certain of as I am of anything else in the world, up to and including my own existence.]
