Reading: Annamarie Benedikt, Die Kinderbibel, stories of Tower of Babel and the prophet Elija. Listening: Die Bibel, 0-41:00 (Genesis 1-9).
We've done a good bit of reading and listening in the real bible before, but usually only individual stories that we prepare for ahead of time by reading simpler and linguistically more modern versions in children's bibles. Now J is ready for the real thing, so we're going to start at the beginning and listen through.
As we were listening to the creation story this morning, I told J that today is Sunday and that many people don't work on Sunday because those who first invented the week decided to make Sunday a day of rest, like the seventh day in the Bible. To which J responded: "Yeah, but that's kind of dumb, because why is there any traffic at all on the street?" This led to some interesting discussion about how a lot of people who think of themselves as Christians don't follow the bible as strictly as they used to in history; or can't afford to not work on Sunday (like maybe the employees of the donut shop we were on our way to); or come from a different culture and/or belong to another religion where Sunday doesn't have this meaning. "Like the [ancient] Greek religion!", J chimed in. I agreed, but told him that that is an ancient religion that most people don't believe and live by anymore.
We also listened to the story of Cain and Abel for the first time, really. Up till now, J has wanted to skip it. In our discussion, I pointed out that the real bible doesn't say why exactly God is pleased with Abel's offering and not with Cain's, that this is one of the places where we have to try to come up with an explanation ourselves, but we can never really be sure. Was it something about Cain, or was God himself maybe playing favorites?
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