One of the great things about having a blog is you get a chance to “flush” out your ideas. I don’t much care for writing in long hand, so my written thoughts are mostly expressed here, for all to see. That being the case, the whole idea of “blogging the Bible” seemed like such a good idea when I started several days ago. I mean, what better way to point out the preposterous idea of biblical literalism than to put it out there for all to see.

From the very first second of putting this venture into practice, I ran into mental roadblocks. I couldn’t seem to find a voice with which to express my ideas. Do I attempt to be witty? Scholarly? How do you manage being witty without being arrogant? How do you manage to be scholarly without having any real biblical education to bring to bear?

Then, of course, there’s the completely correct notion (as Eric pointed out) that it’s all been done before; so what’s the point?

I explained why I was doing what I was doing in earlier posts. After a great deal of refection, I still strongly believe that those reasons are valid. However, the whole idea of “blogging the Bible” doesn’t seem to be a “means to the end” anymore. In fact, after re-reading what I wrote, it seems kind of…silly.

So, I don’t think I will continue “blogging the Bible”. At least, not in the way I was doing. I’m still reading the Bible and a couple of ancillary sources as well. Perhaps I’ll sparingly put down my thoughts as I go along. Or maybe not so sparingly, I don’t know. In any case, what I do write won’t be just a reaction to a quick reading of noted passages. I’d like to take some time to investigate further what is going on behind each story.

I remain convinced that literalism is a very dangerous interpretation of scripture. I am also convinced that one of the best ways to make this clear is to read the Bible with a literal interpretation in mind. Like I said in an earlier post, when you run across someone who identifies him/herself as a fundamentalist Christian, it is good to know exactly what that means; especially if said Christian subscribes to the idea of Dominionism.