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    RonPrice  79, Male, Canada - 60 entries
21
Jul 2012
4:59 AM AEST
   

THE OLD TESTAMENT and ME

Note: I have tired to edit-out all the capitalization, but could not figure-out how to do it.-Ron
----------------------------------------------

The Hebrew Bible, called The Old Testament by Christians, is an extraordinarily difficult sequence of books.1 This difficulty, too easily underestimated, is greater now than it ever was, partly because no contemporary reader, however specialized, shares in the psychology of the original readers and writers of The Bible. The first millennium in which anyone read any of the words in any of the books from 1000 B.C. to the time of Christ or, perhaps more accurately, 600 B.C. to 400 A.D.2

My first memories of The Old Testament come from Bible readings in grade six when I was 11 and my mother reading passages from little booklets from the Unity School of Christianity as early as the mid-1950s. �Although some of the quotations had a broad ethical appeal to me even as a boy in my late childhood and early teens, I found the stories abstruse and distant: goats, sheep, tribes, and curious names like Balthazar and Nebuchadnezzar. They all occupied another universe far removed from my little town of 5000 in Ontario in that post-WW2 world of the 1950s. This distance existed then, as it does now, nearly 60 years later.

My individual understanding of The Bible, my biblical interpretations, rely primarily at the age of nearly 70 on my experience of nearly 60 years of intimate association with the Baha’i Faith. My interpretations and those of the Baha’i teachings are provocative, if nothing else.� But I have always found there to be a vast distance from the psychic universe of the biblical writers beginning as early as, say, 900 B.C.2 and the contemporary society that is my world. I know I have lots of company; indeed I rarely meet anyone who actually reads The Old Testament any more.


However abstruse the language of biblical prophecy and eschatology, the prophets of The Old Testament, I believe, were given a foreknowledge of the events of our times in their visions, visions which I’m sure they hardly understood themselves.� �Still, there lies a sure presentation of the times we are living-through, as long as one does not take those prophecies literally.

Yahweh's choice of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants as part of the Chosen People story was a permanent decision, intended to prevail into a time without boundaries, into our time.-Ron Price with thanks to 1Harold Bloom, “Prose and Poetry,” in The New York Times, 17 October, 1982: a review of Dan Jacobson’s THE STORY OF THE STORIES: The Chosen People and Its God, and 2the final editor, or redactor, after the return from the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, put all the books of The Old Testament into something like their present form.3


When this review appeared in1

The New York TimesI had just

arrived in Australia’s Northern

Territory & the heat of summer

was just beginning to make me

run for cover to air-conditioning �

in my office, my home & the cool

air of the car....The Old Testament �

was on my universe’s far-periphery.

There it had always been in heat and

cold since those first stories when I

was in grade six in that little town in

Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe where

everyone I knew was Catholic or Jew

or Protestant, or nothing; yes, mostly

nothing and there they have remained

with that Old Testament far removed

from everyone’s everyday life. Still…

I have time now to try to get into it in

this the evening of my life; �however

complex and abstruse it may be, I want

to make-up for the decades when it had

to remain far out on my life’s periphery.


1Harold Bloom, “Prose and Poetry,” inThe New York Times, 17 October, 1982: a review of Dan Jacobson’sTHE STORY OF THE STORIES: The Chosen People and Its God.
3 See Frank Kermode, “God Speaks Through His Women,” in The New York Times, 23 September 1990: a review of Harold Bloom’s The Book of J.

Ron Price

5 July 2012




1 comment(s) - 05:03 AM - 07/21/2012
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    anwara  59, Male, Malaysia - 25 entries
29
Jul 2010
5:48 PM WST
   

@ home alone

At home alone this morning, taking a day leave from the hectic undirected activities at the office.

Waiting for a Contractor coming at 10:30am to install a new 5Mb broadband package which include cable TV.

Found 2 temporarily free apps (until end of July 2010) for my iPhone 3GS from Pzizz which may or may not help in meditation for sleep and increasing the day energy ...

Plan to spend the day, improving the somewhat cluttered state of stuff at home.
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    nonistormgirl101  27, Female, New York, USA - 2 entries
18
Jun 2008
2:48 PM EDT
   

Dear journal Today is my second day typing in you. I am sooooo happy I am graduating 5th grade. I have a new crush his name is Shalleem he is sooo sweet. Not that cute but he likes romance and all the things I like. We sit next to each other in class. Uh-oh its dinner time and some one broke something in the living room. I hope I dont get blamed for it. Well bye
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    pinkhuntinggirl13  30, Female, Canada - 2 entries
11
May 2008
8:08 AM CDT
   

Wow! My First Online Journal Entry

Wow, I can't believe it! My first online journal entry. I've now been doing my food diary for 10 days! I can't believe how much I eat sometimes and at other times so little! I think I'm going to journal about my weight loss and one day, weight management. It's so exciting. Last time that I weight myself I was slightly over 170 lbs. But, of course, that's been a while. I know that I haven't flucuated though, much since last year.

On a different note, Pre-Calc is so difficult, my mark is 47%. I only need 56% though on the exam to pass. Then it's finished!! It's finally getting warm outside which of course is a welcome change!

At this rate, I think I will never babysit again!! It bothers me so much!!��I mean you can't honestly only need your babysitter for February and March every week and then be done with her and not need her till you feel really bad two years later!!��It actually makes me really sad because I love the boys so much and more time spent with them, the better. Oh, well! It's not like there's anything I can do about it!

I welcome your suggestions, comments and notes and would love to reply! Thanks.

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    distracted  51, Female, California, USA - 5 entries
18
Nov 2007
9:14 AM PDT
   

i have everything i need...

i have everything i need..find what i hold has kept me free..longer then my thoughts have stretched..my days have found amazing events..in my heart there has been heat, the world around me small defeats..common though outstanding means..a passion for what interests me..hind sight aswell as all could find..yet before me all clearly defined..only moments inbetween darkened by great tragedy..but in my heart even when stormy..i find a steady calm is forming ..deep my soul entrenched in awe..the brother and father who out shine them all..lay to rest with the past and pain that just to watch drove others insane..but here we stand against all odds and doubts..the truth we knew now carried out..into the sun that absent so long..those nay sayers all proven wrong..
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