Run-Thru Notes Index

Intro Note:

When I left Theology our Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) Professor suggested we work out some sort of systematic process of exploring Scripture that worked for us, and would extend throughout our ministry. After a couple of attempts to develop a system, I settled on taking a one-volume commentary on the Scripture (my choice varied over time), my Bible (in my case the Revised Standard Version) and a notebook. Any references to the textual meaning or context I entered directly into my Bible. In my notebook I jotted down whatever struck me at the time which addressed the relevance of the Scripture to life today, with an eye particularly for assistance in helping me to "apply Christianity" to today's life and times.

I would work with a Book, then when done, would leave the process for a while to think about it all. I found I needed to do some living between bursts of Scriptural exploration. Some books went relatively quickly, and others, like Proverbs took me pretty well six years of almost continual work. Proverbs was like eating a plate of matrimonial cake...it gave one as sugar headache it was so rich...and I had to go very slowly to savour each precious insight.

The notes below are unedited, and reflect my level of maturation, context, work situation, and life experience at the time. The process started in 1970 (on an earlier system) and on this system in 1971, and lasted until 2003.

[Note: I find as I am posting these notes that I have changed over the 32 years of their creation, so that later comments I will add, but put them in square brackets and label them "Note". Notes made earlier in the process obviously are coloured by the input of the later study, quite apart from the changes in me over the time.]

[Note re: gender: I also find the use of male gender for generic "people" annoying now, as the shift in usage in society to more specific articulation of gender meaning took place over this 30 plus year period. I have decided to go back and change the most flagrant of these items, when the more general term is intended. However, like the shift from imperial system to metric system and the words of the national anthem, which took place during the same period, there is a powerful imprinting that takes place in human beings in their early years which is hard to change, especially in emotional/spiritual matters. I was raised in what would now be called a liberated home, where brothers and sisters husband and wife all had equal stature in the home, equal opportunity, and equal call on the family's resources. For me, the linguistic shift in society did not require so much a shift in reality as a shift in the expression of reality, so it has been for me just a nuisance... mainly because there have been no satisfactory replacement terms in English as yet, though I am sure they will emerge at some point.

Though some will find the male gender for God annoying as well, I will not be changing that as it reflects my own personal (male) perspective on life, not God's gender. Some feminist writers do the reverse, some alternate in a variety of ways

In both cases, I am trusting that people are mature enough to do their own translating into their own linguistic preference.]

Hebrew Bible / "Old Testament"

or written account of God's revelation to the Hebrew-Jewish people over about 2000 years, as to their understanding of what God had in mind as to how folks could do life on planet earth along the lines he had in mind when he invented the place. They also have a written copy of remnants of their oral tradition which evolved alongside the written tradition, but it was not the subject of my reading here, nor was the "extra-biblical canon" of literature which did not get included in this particular collection.

(The following are jottings of my personal responses to a close reading of this literature, from the perspective of a person living in my Creenglish "Echoland" Culture, as I lived and matured throughout my adult years. My interest was in any possible relevance of the Jewish revelation, or it's stripped down version, to my life in a culture other than that of the European cultural stream. At the time of making these notes, I was still unaware of my actually not being from the European cultural stream but rather from an amalgam of the "dominant-English-Canadian" cultural stream and the Cree one from northern Manitoba, Canada...both of which influenced me in my formative years as a "Third Culture Kid").

"New Testament"

or "appendix" as Charley used to call it ...grin ...literature concerning Jesus and his training of 12 "apostles" to go over the Jewish cultural wall with a stripped down version of "Judaism-lite for export purpose"...as "salt, light and leaven for other people's cultures" ...like my Creenglish culture here in Echoland...and an account of early work by those twelve men and some of their collogues, primarily in the Greco-Roman-European Cultural stream.

(The following are jottings of my personal responses to a close reading of this literature, from the perspective of a person living in my Creenglish "Echoland" Culture, as I lived and matured throughout my adult years. My interest was in any possible relevance of the Jewish revelation, or it's stripped down version, to my life in a culture other than that of the European cultural stream. At the time of making these notes, I was still unaware of my actually not being from the European cultural stream but rather from an amalgam of the dominant- English-Canadian cultural stream and the Cree one from northern Manitoba, Canada...both of which influenced me in my formative years as a "Third Culture Kid")

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