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May the blessing of light be on you – His light without and His light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine from you like fire
like a candle set in the window of a house,
welcoming the wanderer from out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool reflecting the Heavenly blue,
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
God’s grass soft as you sleep softly at the end of day;
May the Lord bless you, and fold you with love in His arms.

1. This blog is an attempt to formulate for myself a hermeneutic in which I apply literary techniques to the Bible.
2. The entries will be fragmentary as they might in a notebook that one writes down casual thoughts, preserving them in order to shape them into a more coherent form or a later date.
3. I would appreciate any comments, both positive and negative that will lead me to express ideas more clearly and more accurately.
4. I would appreciate being referred to books and articles in which the writers take a similar or dissimilar view. I have very little ego.
5. If I respond to a correction with that argument is basically to test the soundness of my idea for the challenging idea, or to clarify the new idea. I will readily change my mind and hopefully adopt the idea which is the best.
6. Some of the ideas that follow are intended to define what I am trying to do with what I call a literary hermeneutic
7. I would like to deal with the words as they are written in the Bible.
8. I am trying to strip away many of the ideas about the Bible passage or story that I have accumulated over the years from folks, Sunday school teachers, preachers, and general discussions.
9. I would try to teach the Bible as a unity erasing as best I can the divisions between the books and the Testaments, the question of authorship, and attempting as best I can and illiminate the logical fallacy that I call the appeal to progress which holds that a later opinion is always superior to an earlier opinion.
10. But today we are wiser than those in the centuries before.
11. I believe that the Bible is a unity. Although it has religious implications, interpretation is simpler, if I assume that God wrote the manuscript from the first word in Genesis to the last in Revelation.
12. I will refer to him as the author, mostly to avoid all the baggage that textual criticism brings with it. Indulge me!
13. I will not make any of the passages I read conform to the theological presuppositions which may tend to struggle and twist the simplicity of what is being said.
14. I will try to establish, although I do not know Hebrew and Greek, with the word means that is used in the Scripture.
15. Words can change meanings in a very short period of time and I will try as best I can to find out what the word meant when the author used it.
16. I will operate under the assumption that the book is a unified whole, in the best tradition of any novel or a history book or play.
17. I will also try to establish the events of the narrative or narratives within the time period that they occurred, since this will often explain why and how events occurred the way they did.
18. I may have some preconceptions it will be helpful for me to either admit that initially or have them pointed out to me.
19. Already I will tell you that I believe the Bible is a unified work, that it was written by God through various number of human authors, that even the smallest detail is important and has meaning, that variants in the text are important and not an impediment to understanding our accuracy,
20. The responses I’m looking for our corrections or additional references which would expand and clarify what I am writing.
21. Again, the material in this blog is a first draft, and will appear again and again in a rewritten form.
22. I do not want to have to spend a great deal of time crafting and polishing when I would much prefer to be reading and creating literary interpretations of the Bible.

This blog is an attempt to formulate for myself a hermeneutic in which I apply literary techniques to the Bible. The entries will be fragmentary as they might in a notebook that one writes down casual thoughts, preserving them in order to shape them into a more coherent form or a later date. I would appreciate any comments, both positive and negative that will lead me to express ideas more clearly and more accurately. I would appreciate being referred to books and articles in which the writers take a similar or dissimilar view. I have very little ego. If I respond to a correction with that argument is basically to test the soundness of my idea for the challenging idea, or to clarify the new idea. I will readily change my mind and hopefully adopt the idea which is the best.
Some of the ideas that follow are intended to define what I am trying to do with what I call a literary hermeneutic.
I would like to deal with the words as they are written in the Bible. I am trying to strip away many of the ideas about the Bible passage or story that I have accumulated over the years from folks, Sunday school teachers, preachers, and general discussions.
I would try to teach the Bible as a unity erasing as best I can the divisions between the books and the Testaments, the question of authorship, and attempting as best I can and illiminate the logical fallacy that I call the appeal to progress which holds that a later opinion is always superior to an earlier opinion. But today we are wiser than those in the centuries before.
I believe that the Bible is a unity. Although it has religious implications, interpretation is simpler, if I assume that God wrote the manuscript from the first word in Genesis to the last in Revelation. I will refer to him as the author, mostly to avoid all the baggage that textual criticism brings with it. Indulge me!
I will not make any of the passages I read conform to the theological presuppositions which may tend to struggle and twist the simplicity of what is being said.
I will try to establish, although I do not know Hebrew and Greek, with the word means that is used in the Scripture. Words can change meanings in a very short period of time and I will try as best I can to find out what the word meant when the author used it.
I will operate under the assumption that the book is a unified whole, in the best tradition of any novel or a history book or play.
I will also try to establish the events of the narrative or narratives within the time period that they occurred, since this will often explain why and how events occurred the way they did.
I may have some preconceptions it will be helpful for me to either admit that initially or have them pointed out to me. Already I will tell you that I believe the Bible is a unified work, that it was written by God through various number of human authors, that even the smallest detail is important and has meaning, that variants in the text are important and not an impediment to understanding our accuracy,

The responses I’m looking for our corrections or additional references which would expand and clarify what I am writing.

Again, the material in this blog is a first draft, and will appear again and again in a rewritten form. I do not want to have to spend a great deal of time crafting and polishing when I would much prefer to be reading and creating literary interpretations of the Bible.

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It would seem that the world of physical fitness is much more organized than the world of spiritual fitness.  What I would like to do is to try to come up every day with a way of improving my spiritual life.  As I grow older, I become more and more preoccupied with developing some sort of emotional spiritual way of dealing with the stress that I feel from the world around me.  I am hoping that this blog will discipline me to spend time every day setting and reviewing my goals.

My first goal is to keep a prayer Journal every day.  Initially what I will do is to find a Bible verse that I think is important and build my prayers around.  I will do this online so that I can be a comfortable to anyone who is interested in helping me.