Listening: Margot Käßmann, Die Bibel für Kinder, part 2, 40:27-52:30 (end); Karlheinz Koinegg, Moses und die Wüste der Wunder, 51:14-1:28:45.
At this point, we have covered both the main narratives of both the Old (focusing on the Torah) and New Testaments. Next time we'll start picking up some of the later and minor OT stories we have skipped—Joshua, several stories from Judges, Ruth, and stories from the prophets other than Jonah.
After finishing the reading we were looking at the cover of the book and J noticed something interesting:
The little boy with the sling is obviously David, which makes the big soldier-looking guy standing behind him Goliath. J found it funny that Goliath "looks nice and friendly" here, even though in the story they are enemies and David kills him. This bible is definitely what in German would be called verharmlosend, steering clear of anything controversial.
Not so the other stories. The dangers of non-majority belief were a common theme in both the Moses story and the sections from Käsmann today. The Moses story fleshes out the religion of the Egyptians (including a priest who is Moses's teacher while he is growing up in the court of the Pharaoh) and contains numerous episodes where the Egyptians are scandalized by the religious beliefs of the Hebrews. The Käsmann audiobook contains the story of Stephan's martyrdom, which the narrator comments: "It was dangerous to believe in Jesus."
J chimed in here an asked what that meant, leading to a fairly long conversation about how many people who are very religious get very upset when people don't believe the same things they do, and sometimes they treat those people very badly and persecute them (I explained what verfolgen meant, a word used by both audiobooks).
Apropos of which: Now that the Judeo-Christian "foundation" is in place, I'm going to start systematically exploring other religious beliefs and traditions with J. The Ich weiß was audiobook series has what looks like an excellent place to begin:
Also this morning, life met literature in a serendipitous way. On several occasions over the years, I have made explicit references to New Testament stories when giving money to indigent people while J is with me. I don't make such references every time, because I don't want J to get the impression that I give money to the poor simply because the bible tells us to, but rather because it is the right thing to do just because. However, I do it sometimes because I want J to understand that even though I don't "believe" a lot of what's in the bible, nonetheless it—especially the New Testament—has a lot of true and important things to say about how people should live and treat each other.
So this morning we read and heard versions of the story from Acts 3:-10 where Peter and John heal the lame man begging in front of the temple. It happened that there was an indigent man asking for money on the street outside of the doughnut shop where we were. I made J aware of the connection between the bible story and our reality, and then I told him that whereas Peter and John didn't have money to give the man but could heal him instead, we of course can't heal him (nor did he seem ill), but we can give him some money. So we went and got some cash out of an ATM and gave it to him. "Ich mag, dass du das getan hast, Papa!" said J.
Total audio 2015: 9:24
Total video 2015: 9:33
Total video 2015: 9:33
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