Happy Easter everyone! I had a wonderful Easter Triduum and feel like I've just come back from a great vacation, rested and renewed. In a sense I really have been away from my regular life for some time due to my Lenten practices, which included a major reading project that put all my other reading on hold.
What did I read? The Bible. Yup, the whole thing, all 1,985 pages (plus introductions) in 40 days (plus Sundays). It was the first time I'd read it all and I wish I had done it years ago. I don't know how I ever had the audacity to express any religious opinions without having read the foundational documents of my faith. Not that there were any big surprises, but there was a lot I didn't know.
I read my trusty old New Oxford Annotated NRSV, which will be retired as soon as the third augmented edition comes off the press this spring. I can't imagine reading a Bible without annotations, especially the Hebrew Bible. I didn't read every annotation for lack of time, but whenever something didn't compute (which was often) the annotations were there to catch me and keep me going. The introductions were indispensable for giving the lay of the land without which it would be easy to founder in the vast sea of strange tales (apologies for the mixed metaphors!). I've heard several people say they tried to read the Bible but quit in confusion. I don't blame them. This is definitely not a book to be read without proper support.
I won't attempt to say anything about the text. There is just too much of it and my reading was too superficial. But I would liken the experience of reading the whole Bible to driving across the country, from East to West. At the beginning are the oldest settlements, with tremendous cultural richness. Then there is a looooooong stretch of flat land that, though beautiful at times, can also be extremely tedious. [I nearly cried when I read in the introduction that Chronicles basically reiterated everything in Samuel and Kings.] Then, suddenly, you hit the glorious Rockies, after which it is just a short run downhill to the sea, ending with the psychedelic colours and shapes of a Pacific tide pool.
So what does a person do after completing such a long literary pilgrimage? Read more books, of course! I will now backtrack to the foundations of the foundations, and finally read the Mesopotamian myths, including Gilgamesh. I notice that a few of the other Once Upon A Time Challenge people will be reading Gilgamesh as well, so it will be fun to compare notes.
[A special note for Legolas: By the way, the (Catholic) Bible counts as 73 books. Take that! Mwa ha ha!]
