I’m cutting it fine, I admit, but I wanted to take this chance to draw your attention to my The Bible As It Happened, chronological reading plan. It’s that time of year when folk are, perhaps, considering which plan they are going to use to read through the Bible next year; something that every serious…
356 HT: Christianity.com The historic Christian faith was forged in turbulent times and under perilous conditions. The creeds and doctrines that shaped our Christian identity emerged from intense theological battles. There were times of physical violence in the process of defining the central teachings of the faith. For example, the question of exactly who Jesus was. Here…
I recently sent 50 copies of my chronological Bible reading plan to a church in N Ireland and they are going to work through it as a fellowship in 2025! What a great idea; encouraging and holding one another to account and having opportunities to talk about what they are reading. I’ve got some fresh…
If you’re looking for a new reading plan for 2024, or for a Christmas present for someone, why not consider my The Bible as it Happened? This chronological reading plan will take you through the Bible in a year, with readings for 6 days of every week, following the storyline of the Bible as it…
It’s an interesting exercise to put the lifespans and the main characters in Genesis 1-11 side by side, based on the genealogical information we have in chapters 5 and 11 and elsewhere. Note that: One of the significant implications of this is that, with Babel being just 100 years after the flood, and with Noah…
Order, Order! I have, in recent days, been chewing over two trinities of names that occur in the early pages of Genesis and with which we are very familiar because of the order in which they appear. We have “Shem, Ham and Japheth” (5:32; 6:10; 7:13; 9:18; 10:1; 1 Chronicles 1:4) and “Abram, Nahor and…
Genesis 5 brings us the first of numerous genealogical lists in the Bible and it’s worth taking a few moments to consider it. 5:1-2 The opening, introductory verses contain an expression, with a slight variation in this case, frequently found in Genesis. It is one of the 10 incidences of the “toledoth formula”, from the…
Unlike most people I have come across, I am someone who finds the genealogies of the Bible utterly fascinating. One of my main leisure pursuits, for many years, has been family history research and, building on a great deal of careful work done my mother – all without the aid of a computer, it has…