The Pentateuch

I'm also going to keep you updated on the Bible. So ignore this post, Eric Collier.

I've finished the first five books. And so far the Bible is a wild ride. I have a fancy pants scholar's bible from Oxford. Fourth edition NRSV, with the apocrypha, something like that.

There were several stories that I knew of and that I knew were in the bible, but that I had no idea where they really were in the timeline. Like the Tower of Babel, for instance. It's in Genesis. Babel is/was a place where they built the tower. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, also in Genesis. I had no idea that Lot and Abraham were related at all.

I was terribly confused about the differences between the story of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah and the story of Abraham and Isaac. The basic gist is that God comes up to Abraham and says that the sin and inequity and etc of Sodom and Gomorrah are calling out to him and he's real upset about it and says he's going to smash the cities. Abraham talks God down, and says that woah woah woah, there's gotta be some innocent people in there, so you can't kill all of them, right? and God kind of takes a deep breathe and says he'll spare the city for a bit if Abraham can find fifty people and then Abraham haggles with him for a few verses and God finally says that okay, if Abe can find at least ten people (I think ten, maybe five?) in those two cities then He will walk away.

So God has a temper and Abraham is the voice of reason.

But then not very much later in the book God says to Abraham: You gotta kill Isaac. Abraham doesn't say word one in the way of protest. Just nods and accepts it. Especially screwy when Isaac is Abraham's only son and God promised to give Abraham and heir (if certain conditions were met, which they very much were).

God seems to be the more consistent of the two between these two incidents; He's got a temper, he wants everything to be his way, he's testing people all the time to make sure they are up to par.

But Abraham seems like two completely different people. I don't get it.