An adventure in reading the Christian Bible and Tanakh.

I started this blog as part of a personal challenge to read the Hebrew and Christian Bible consecutively.

Purpose

I aim to read the "Old Testament" in the order it was written in the Tanakh. I hope to look at all overlapping chapters from three perspectives: Jewish, Christian, and agnostic/humanist. Obviously, my approach will change once I reach the New Testament, but I still aim to read the NT from both a Jewish and Christian perspective.

How can I do this, you may ask? Well, I don't by any means claim to be completely unbiased and objective, in my opinion that's theoretically impossible. The bigger question is, why am I doing it this way?

Why am I doing this?

The short answer is that I was raised in a conservative, Christian household (ELCA Lutheran), married a Jew, am raising my child Jewish, and my personal beliefs fall somewhere on the unitarian/humanist/agnostic spectrum. Let's call this an in-depth exploration of the beliefs of my family. Even though I was raised in a Christian household, I have never actually read the entire Bible. Or even most of it.

I don't have any specific timeframe to complete this task, but do aim to update with posts as I go. My writing style will be honest and blunt; I don't plan on doing any major editing prior to posting. I want to record my first reaction and thoughts to what I read, not later analysis.

This is a personal journey. I welcome all comments and thoughts, but please refrain from judgement and evangelizing. I try not to judge anyone else's beliefs and respect all opinions (there are plenty of variance within my own family!), I ask that you do the same to me.

The main sources I am using are the New International Version Student Bible, which I received when I was in college; the Tanakh, New JPS Translation according to traditional Hebrew texts--this is my husband's Hebrew Bible. I also have two older bibles I will utilize occasionally: a King James Bible that was my grandmother's, and a very old Hebrew Bible that belonged to my husband's grandfather. I can't read Hebrew, so that's see how that goes! I will also draw on some websites, such as Chabad.org, Aish.com, Religioustolerance.org, and Bible Gateway.

Let the journey begin!