Matthew 4: 1-11

I'm back after a long hiatus due to illness. It wasn't enough for me to catch something--I then took care of my mother, and caught her illness too. But all is well now, so I'm back to posting more regularly.

While I generally think of the New Testament as a vast, boring, contradictory wasteland of nonsense, much of which makes me angry, it turns out that I do like a few New Testament passages. Matthew 4, verses 1-11, is one of those. In this passage, Jesus is tested by Satan in the wilderness. Jesus is "led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil" as the New International Version puts it. He fasts for 40 days and nights, so naturally, he's hungry, but when the devil says, "Hey, Jesus, why don't you use your powers to turn these stones into bread?" he replies "Man does not live by bread alone..." Then the devil says, "Hey, you're Jesus, throw yourself off the temple because God will send his angels to save you." Jesus replies, "Nope. We're not supposed to test God." So then Satan says, "I'll give you all this great earthly splendor stuff if you'll deny God and follow me" and Jesus replies, "Heck no, I'm only going to serve God."

Why do I like this passage? For several reasons. It starts with the 40 days and nights of fasting. That always reminded me of American Indian vision quests, and it also alludes to the 40 days and nights that it rained on Noah, and the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness. I also like that Satan tests him 3 times, which is the same number commonly used for tests in fairy tales. In fact, the fairy tale aspects of these verses might be my favorite part.

I also like the language, from stones being made into bread to "Man shall not live by bread alone."

You can read the entire passage here: New International Version or King James Version.

Matthew 2: 19-23

In Matthew 2:19-23, the family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus is still hiding out in Egypt. But an angel drops by to let Joseph know that it's safe to return to Israel. The family ends up in Galilee, in the town of Nazareth.

The problem with setting yourself the task of re-reading the Bible starting with the New Testament when you don't really *like* the New Testament is that it's difficult to stay motivated. Thus, I haven't really read the Bible in months. But recently, another atheist started re-reading the Bible. He's starting with the Old Testament. He blogged briefly about one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible, the story of the Tower of Babel, saying "Once again we learn that knowledge is frowned upon." Well, that's one of the lessons, I suppose. At any rate, because he's blogging about the Bible, I'm inspired to take up the habit again, power through, and read the New Testament so I can get to the good stuff in the Old Testament.

When we were taught about Jesus ending up in Nazareth in Sunday School, we were specifically told that he moved there to fulfill a prophecy, yet another proof that Jesus is the Messiah. I could never find much meaning in the fact that Jesus fulfilled prophecies made in Isaiah and other Old Testament books perhaps because, unlike the ancient Hebrews, I've never been looking for a Messiah or Savior. Whether he was accepted as the Messiah or rejected (e.g., by the Hebrews who didn't convert), it seemed like ancient history because it is. Matthew wasn't thinking about me when he wrote the verses to prove the prophecy; he was speaking to other scholars of the time. Perhaps that's another reason why the prophecy is irrelevant to me.