The Bible: Out with the Old, in with the New

One testament down, one to go and boy I'll tell you they didn't make those last books a walk in the park. The old testament seems to be made up of four different kinds of content:

1. Crazy stories
2. Informative instructions
3. Historical accounts
4. "Beautiful Hebrew poetry"

1 and 3 are by far the most interesting parts, 2 can be kind of funny but whenever I run into a book that's prefaced by "Book x is regarded as some of the best Hebrew poetry" I know I'm in for a snore. You know what does not translate well to English? Hebrew poetry. These last few books are full of it too. The poetry just comes of as a mess of words describing some vague prophecies. 'Israel will be destroyed because it is so sinful. Then the LORD god will build it up again because he's such a peach.' x 50. These prophets are all crazy doomsayers. Those people who stand at street corners preaching the end of the world were born at the wrong time. Back in ancient Israel they named a book after you.

Jonah is the only prophet worth mentioning. I liked that he didn't want to be a prophet plus there was a little bit of content 1 with the whole eaten by a whale thing. There's some bizarre metaphor about gourds at the end that just left me kind of confused but that aside it was a pretty good story. There was even some actual examples of god being a forgiving guy instead of the usual jerk.

Proverbs was one of my favorite book. It's essentially just a list of advice [supposedly] from King Solomon.
It ranged from good and useful:
"If you stop learning you will forget what you already know"

"The start of an argument

    is like a water leak—

    so stop it before

    real trouble breaks out."

to ridiculous:

'Don’t be so lazy that you say,

    “If I go to work,

    a lion will eat me!”'

...but at least still somewhat relevant

Song of Solomon was a weird one. It was like someone just wanted to stick their love poem in the middle of the bible. The version I'm reading justified it by saying the whole thing was a metaphor for the love God has for his people. You can be the judge of that

SoS 4:5

Your breasts are perfect; they are twin deer feeding among the lilies

SoS 8:10

I am a wall around a city, my breasts are towers

Read a little bit into the New Testament but only half way through the first book. Jesus contradicts a lot of the stuff in the OT but is constantly claiming to be reinforcing it. 

"You know that you have been taught, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you. When someone slaps your right cheek,^[i] turn and let that person slap your other cheek."

That eye for an eye stuff was straight from Moses. Ned Flanders once said "I've done everything the Bible says — even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!"  You really can't win here, what parts of the bible are you really supposed to follow. Does Jesus trump everything in OT? Ah well, NT is pretty interesting so far. This is probably the best approximation out there

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1tg46ScP8w&t=1m47s