After reading from Cosby that the story of the great flood has many parallels, similarities, and legitimately parodies the Epic of Gilgamesh, I became very upset. Throughout this chapter, it seems Cosby has been exposing the book of Genesis as a symbolic, completely non-literal book. Which I guess is not essentially a bad thing, it just goes completely against what has been taught to me the entirety of my upbringing. It was very disappointing for me to hear that the flood narrative was essentially copied and I don’t really know where this leaves me right now with my faith. He continually exposes the Bible’s flaws, which honestly makes it harder for me to believe in the soundness of the book. If our book is supposed to be God’s word, why is it able to be tainted by misinterpretations and falsified stories. On the other hand, I often thought to myself, how can I love a God who committed genocide on his own will. If he made all people, and they became bad, wouldn’t he at least deserve some sort of blame? If the flood story never actually happened and it is only meant to prove some sort of point or articulate something about the character of God, then I guess the idea of God fits more within my innate moral code? I honestly am a little confused right now and would like to hear more perspectives from professor Kjesbo and my classmates on this topic. What is the significance if the flood story is real, and if Genesis is all symbolic, is that a bad thing? If this is the case, how can we teach the church about this, and reform teachings so that the flood is not taught literally?

What I found interesting about the creation stories from other cultures is that this was actually the early forms of science, since science actually stems from religion. Many of these conjectures about how the universe is and how it came to be, were somewhat complex theories for that day and age; albeit theories that could never be proven. Something that I wonder is why the Genesis creation story was so successful as opposed to the Khepera creation story which I’ve never heard about and is frankly ridiculous. After further reading, learning about the cultural significance of the Genesis creation story has helped me realize why it was so revolutionary. In a world slewed with polytheistic creation stories, and those with absurd perverse sexual self-conception stories, the Genesis account certainly puts forth a brave alternative for the time. Furthermore, the depictions of God in the creation stories are in my opinion certainly the best possible kind of God humankind might ask for. The beginning narrative depicts God as a transcendent all-powerful being that creates us and the world, after that it shows he personally made us, walked with us, and interacted with us. This is where the idea of mankind having a relationship with God comes from I believe. Genesis is certainly an interesting book of the Bible with a complicated narrative from various time periods, I would like to learn about how my classmates have looked at the book in the past. The idea of the book of Genesis not being completely literal was one that was challenging to me for a while, but I’m coming more and more to terms with the symbolism in the book.

Prior, to working through and analyzing the literature in the New Testament, I held the belief that the New Testament was simply the latter half of the bible containing the gospel of Jesus Christ within it. I also believed that all the books from the New Testament take place after Jesus.

Currently, after working through the New Testament, understanding more context through our textbook, and performing further analysis of New Testament books on my own, I have obtained a slightly more comprehensive view of the second half of the bible. My perspectives have changed in the fact that I now know that a lot of the New Testament takes place in letter form and was actually written by Paul and others to various churches. I also took note that many of these writers were under some sort of persecution, in prison, or knew of others who were undergoing great persecution. My previous perspectives have not really changed since they were so limited, vague, and ambiguous. All that has happened is that the knowledge I did have increased. To be honest, I thought that my previous knowledge of the New Testament was pretty lackluster. I hope that through this class my understanding will increase even more than it already has. However, I think that I will also have to take part in some independent study of the scripture on my own.  Currently, I still view the New Testament as the second half of the Bible that includes the teachings and Gospel of Jesus Christ, but I do know more about it now. I do not really think that knowing more about it has changed my overall perspective of it.

Jesus’s message to the Church of Thyatira:

Despite the Church of Thyatira’s loving, faithful service, prosperity, and strong faith, they must discontinue the tolerance of a false prophetess within the church metaphorically called Jezebel, and her disciples must repent from their ways or face dire punishment; those who repent and are in line with God’s identity will be given authority over nations.

I’ve always strayed away from Revelation because the book just sounded a little ridiculous to me, and all of the end of the world imagery seemed a little frightening and hard to understand. Now that I can get a more objective view of this book, I’m a little more open to investing my time into understanding the apocalypse narrative in the Bible. First of all, I never thought of ancient writers using apocalypse language and narrative to compel believers to have unwavering faith in times of hardship and oppression. That’s very interesting to me, which leads me to believe that Revelation was a book meant to comfort those in persecution. I also never knew that many of these apocalypses had distinct patterns about them, I don’t really know what to make of them but it’s interesting Cosby pointed this out. Something that was very interesting to me was the fact that Cosby conjectures that many of the apocalypse writers recounted history in the language of prophecy to make it seem like they were accurate, and when they started to move into trying to predict the future, they were often wrong. Another reoccurring theme throughout these narratives is the assertion that God wins. Personally, I like this theme because it certainly does aspire hope and I could see how it could help people have unwavering faith, even if the books do contain some inaccuracies. Cosby’s take on Revelation is certainly a controversial one, but there is merit to his observations and certainly ones to consider when the topic of the apocalypse comes up in conversation.

From what I could gather, the book of James seems to be the most applicable book to our lives now that we’ve been assigned to read. The book was written to the 12 tribes of Israel who disbanded from each other, but many of the commandments James have given here seem to be very general ones. For example, the faith without works argument is very simple and laid out here. If you have faith in God, but don’t do anything to show it, then your faith is dead. On the other hand, if you do works of God, you are showing that you have faith by demonstrating it via your actions. Where this becomes tricky, is the actual intent and mindset behind works. One could do many of the behaviors God calls us to do, but if his heart is not into it, then it’s not genuine. This is why the faith without works argument is still heavily debated today is what I think. I would like to discuss this topic more in class and hear the professor’s perspective on it, as I find this debate very interesting. Furthermore, something that resonated with me from the book was from chapter 3 in regard to Two kinds of Wisdom, and not boasting about the future. James says that we cannot know for sure what will happen tomorrow, so boasting about projections is basically stupid. He simply says that we should change our phraseology and mindset to something more like, “If it’s the Lord’s will, then we will prosper this coming quarter”.

First off, In the very beginning of this chapter, I noticed that Paul was writing to the church of  Corinth. Had I not read Cosby’s chapter about Paul’s letters, I would’ve looked past this precursor to the chapter and not thought about it. Consequently, I also would have read everything and tried to have taken it as an abstract theological guideline rather than guidelines set for people in a particular church setting. While reading, I kept in mind that he was writing to a specific group of people for how they should carry themselves and even for how they should identify, which I found intriguing. Another interesting part of this passage is how Paul says God will destroy the wise, for the wisdom of this world, are not always necessarily true. What is true is what corresponds to reality, and that is God’s truth. Many times humans foolishly believe something is true and we later discover we were very unwise to have thought what we thought. For example, many Germans were lead to believe that Jews were lesser beings in the Holocaust because of groupthink, now many of their descendants think that was very unwise. Furthermore, the fact that human wisdom is finite, incomplete, and not always accurate gives me further incentive to never boast, as the passage calls us to do. This is one of the commands that Paul wrote in this letter that had the greatest resonance with me. I personally put a high value on humility as I believe that is what Jesus calls us to have. I aim to seek to be humble in all my actions.

We often take for granted the ease, convenience, and speed at which we can talk to one another. and Something that I found particularly interesting about Paul’s letter writing style was his confrontational nature. In this day and age, I am aware that myself and others are often afraid of direct confrontation as they don’t generally like conflict, even if it would lead to a constructive resolution. However, even this method of confrontation by Paul to me humorously seems like an ancient example of being a keyboard warrior. Like, he won’t say these things to their face but he writes it in letters. However, we know from previous examples that we’ve read that Paul is not afraid of confrontation in general, it’s just a funny comparison. Also, another thing I found challenging was that all of Paul’s letters are too specific people at specific times for specific situations. This does not come as a huge shock to me obviously, but it does make it feel less applicable in general.  However, Cosby gives some tips for analyzing Paul’s letters, that means they can still be applicable if the context is considered. That seems to be the theme of this whole book, if you understand the context of biblical passages more, this helps you gain a more solidified interpretation. What I found interesting is how Paul is quick to get angry with those who disagree, which is probably a rhetorical weakness in his arguments. But, something he does well is that he appeals to what people already know and believe in order to construct arguments about what is presupposed. Paul is an excellent debater which is why it’s a very great thing that we get to study him.

First of all, I think it’s very important to highlight the magnitude and difficulty of Paul’s journey in this chapter. From Thessalonica to Athens is about a 311-mile drive, which is around a 5-hour drive, if you take the major highways. The fact that he made this journey back then is pretty remarkable. Furthermore, what I find immensely inspiring about this passage is Paul’s boldness to go before the Greek court at Areopagus and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. To put what he did into context, he actually did a very revolutionary thing. This very early evangelism certainly paved the way for how us Christians should act and is a good reference for us to look back on. It’s easy to do missionary work now since we live in a society where Christianity is the dominant religion and is very accepted. What Paul did here was so great because he entered a society that already had steadfast and strong religious views and practices, and despite this, he preached the gospel of Jesus Christ anyway. Some scoffed at his preachings, but he did win some converts with his message, especially Dionysius the Areopagite. Dionysius. Dionysius was certainly a man of great influence since he had the position of being a judge at the court. Converting him to Christianity was definitely a big win, and cause for celebration. For today, I believe it’s essential we replicate the same level of confidence for preaching the word of God that Paul had when going into foreign lands. I wonder why they made no mention of Greek mythology in this passage or was that an ideology that came after this time? That’s the only thing I wondered.

This chapter delves into many various interesting theories and facts about Acts, such as the actual author being Luke, and how many Jews at the time of the first century did not know the Hebrew language. In fact, many of them spoke Greek, which was the main language of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, I really appreciate learning about how through the story of Acts we can see how it became more and more socially acceptable for Gentiles to become Christian, but not without opposition. The stories of Saul turning to Paul, and Peter seeing visions of God who made animals clean, is rather inspiring. This reassures my belief that all kinds of people can enter the kingdom of God. Something that stuck out to me the most was that it took over 20 years for the leaders of the church to accept the idea that Gentiles could be acceptable in the church without becoming proselyte Jews. I find it rather intriguing how Jews finally accepted them after very heated debates, even though they seemed steadfast in their ideas that to see the Lord’s favor one MUST follow all the commands of Moses. Personally, I believe that the book of Acts has significant relevance for us today as it outlines how Gentiles became accepted in the church, and how Christianity evolved after the death of Jesus Christ. Lastly, I think I would like to discuss more in class about how Paul is represented in Acts vs. how he represents himself and his own beliefs in his letters in the New Testament. I’m curious as to which pieces of scripture contains misrepresentations of his character, since they contrast in some ways, according to Cosby.