Theological Daze

These books should not be dismissed as outright boring or full of old and irrelevant laws about temple worship and regulations, or a way of life now consigned to history. The first half of Leviticus is pretty rooted in its time and culture but from around Chapter 16 of its 27 chapters there is a lot to be mined. 16 starts with the Day of Atonement which is of immense importance in understanding Christian theology and in following chapters we can read about loving your neighbour and caring for the poor, cancellation of debts, and also the seasonal cycle as the harvest celebrations are itemised. Numbers, despite its rather dreary title is an interesting book. It takes us into the narrative of the wilderness journeying with its twists and turns and adventures. It provides the rational for the extended wilderness wanderings in chapters 12 to 14 and gives us the strange tale of Balaam and the ass that spoke in 22-24. The census from which the book takes its title occurs at the start. Don...

After the initial 3 chapters of Genesis we launch into the family tree first of humanity in general and then of Israel in particular. The point of these for us today is not whether they are historically accurate so much as what principles do the stories attached to the various players in these stories tell us about God, relationship with him, and the lives of these early pioneers of faith. So whether you like to take the stories as a literal account of the generations or not, we can all read them as vehicles which carry important truths about faith and people and God. You can also trace in them a kind of development of understanding about God and faith. So for instance we have one motif about God which can be described as "The God of the Fathers". This is how he is known to the earliest characters in the sagas of Genesis. He is local, tribal, and one among many, but he is their God: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This understanding develops and climaxes in the revelati...