People who regularly follow my blog know that I am a mad researcher. I delve into topics hardly anyone else cares about. Once I spent hours on the internet trying to find the worm that I saw dangling at the end of silk string attached to a branch 15 feet above the ground from a tree in my yard.
I like to read about the bible. Actually, I like reading about the bible more than I like reading the bible. I majored in Theology so that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but the books I choose to read are so seldom used that I can get them on Amazon for pennies. Really, I bought a book called Atlas of the Bible for 99 cents. It was postage free so the guy who mailed it to me was actually paying me to take it off his hands. I am guessing he is decluttering his house like I am doing myself right now. Or he lives in a state that doesn’t do recycling but outlaws burning.
The most recent book I purchased (about $3) is a two-inch thick book, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. It contains writings found in a jar that was discovered in a cave near Nag Hammadi (thus the name) in Egypt in the 1945. These are very old, written as early as 100 years after Jesus. Though they are about Jesus, none of them were used in the Bible.
Don’t ask me why I like reading this stuff. It can be a bit grueling. I should really go back to school to let some professor tell me what this is all about. I can tell just how much it is above my head by the number of times I have to use the dictionary per page. This morning, for example, I looked up nine words used in three fairly short paragraphs. Every time I looked up a word, I found that the words used in the definitions were quite easy to understand. So then I asked myself why the authors didn’t use these easy-to-understand words in the first place. I think that maybe scholars like to cluster into these little elite groups that have their own secret language. That way, when they gather together in a bar or a café’ in the towns where they have their little conventions, they can talk about things and no one else in the place will understand them.
Like this stuff is all a big secret. Hmph! Maybe it is.