Chapters 1&2 Discussion:

I found it very interesting that the Old Testament is an anthology, according to the book this means that it is a collection of writings produced and assembled in stages over more than a thousand years. The books are not necessarily in order of occurance/ order they were written in. Also some writings didn't even make it in for example the book of the wars of The Lord in numbers according to the book. This is interesting to think that over the course of time people arranged the books of the Bible. Because of this, I learned that different chapters of the bible are included in some religious writings but not others. For example, the Hebrew bible (Torah) VS. the Protestant Old Testament. Both are made up of different chapters and order of the Bible than the other. This shows too, that people arranged the writings to which ones they wanted in the Bible of their faith. In chapter 2, I learned how important it is to have knowledge of the history included in the Old Testament such as geographical history, in order to understand the text. I also thought it was very neat that ancient Israel was only about the size of Vermont. With all the stories in the Old Testament about this land, it seems like it would be much bigger than the size of Vermont. My question is how and why did the Bible get broken up into chapters and some religions decided to only put some writings in and not others?

This discussion shows that I am an analytical thinker and a questioner. I found it very interesting and analyzed the given information from the chapters. However, I still had a question in the end and wanted to learn more.

Chapters 3&4 Discussion: I thought it was interesting how Enuma Elish describes its own theory of the gods and how the world came about. I wonder how we made the day of rest Sunday when the 7th day really could've been any day of the week. However, it surprised me that each version all reflected back to general terms and based off of the same point. For example, each theory or version had some kind of Adam-Eve story and that God created the world in the beginning. The explanation for this diversity I found disturbing was in chapter four when it says that each version looks at these factors in its own way but uses "canonical criticism" which is just based off of the text. Also, just how each version is different from the other and its so in depth it causes people to question the text and their own belief in the writing. That is disturbing to know that knowledge can sometimes cause people to question what they've always believed in.

This discussion post classifies me as not only an analytical thinker, however, a creative thinker when talking about the Sabbath day making a connection with the seventh day, and to wonder at the disturbance of knowledge causing us to question our faith.

Chapters 20 & 21 Discussion: The exiled people maintained their identity as God's people by trusting Him to help them and get them through the hard times. The people left in the land maintained their identity as God's people by thanking Him for the blessings of staying. I think the hardest challenge was the exiled people trying to keep their faith in God when all was falling apart.

This post shows my analytical thinking as I analyzed how the exiled people must have felt struggling to keep their faith in God when everything was falling apart for them.