For those who still are interested in the Bible stories

I would also recommend Jordan Peterson’s Biblical lecture series. It really helped me see the value it psychological significance in all the OT stories. The lectures are extremely helpful regardless of your faith status.

Glad you took the time to check it out!

Not at all a trading down. The Messiah is not missing from the stories (unless there is a perpetual need for a 3rd party reader/interpreter to superimpose the Messiah into them.)

For example, the story of Joseph's reunion with his family is the #1 template for any Christian's imagination of how the Final Courtroom Verdict Day presided over by Jesus could go: character roles reversed from a former time re: who has the upper hand and who is vulnerable, early one-way recognition, confusion, misdirection, faked crimes/traps/arrests/ultimatums/threats, fear of condemnation and death, tests to force the brave advocates and cowardly buck-passers to reveal their full character, then a Big Reveal, two-way Recognition, and a Big Relief and Reunion. Everyone who engages with the Joseph story, whether serious Jewish rabbis or playful rock-musical Dreamcoat producers, enriches and informs that vision.

There is a agricultural imagery reminder in Romans 11 for grafted wild olive branches to honor the cultivated parts of the olive tree, knowing that pruning and grafting is not a one and done procedure of status, but a process that toggles and adapts to needs and circumstances over time. We are just the branches, not the root, in the faith tradition of these stories.

My hope in Jesus, the Messiah who has been revealed to many peoples so far, is strengthened by being willing to learn and see these stories through the perspective of the people who have received specific roles and promises through these stories, and have been longing for and recognizing (or not recognizing) the Messiah for many generations longer than my people.

If Paul can get on board with an idea that his people were temporarily set out of the MVP insiders loop while the tent of belonging gets expanded, and that they will be back in their special places before this story is fully over, who are we to say otherwise?

Oh boy, you see genocide somewhere in all that?  Tell me more about what you are hearing or have heard that makes you connect any of that to the chilling phrase "final solution"

I long for the exact opposite of genocide or cultural erasure when I describe my imagination for a possible happy future as a motivation to keep breathing and hoping.

Ahh. Yes, I do believe in universal resurrection, and universal recognition of Messiah, but in a way that doesn't require universal conformity to one kind of cultural expression of that recognition (ie Western Christendom supremacy). . .

I am with you on my impatience with any other visions which include perpetual torture or punishment . . it is absolutely dehumanizing and demoralizing in every way to look forward to the suffering or pain or annihilation of sentient beings.

I do hope for full exposure and bite-the-dust events to happen to those who have played villainous parts in any human's story, but in the semantics of "reorient someone to reality and their proximity to and kinship with the soil." Those outcomes may seem at first glance, from a powerful pedestal height, as a punishment, but to be able to realize their human identity and star-dust-ness again would be a restoration and healing experience.

Thanks for reminding me of this post, Whisper.

  I just listened to a few episodes from this publisher's podcast over Thanksgiving weekend.  It is  called Into The Verse.  There was one episode on Lot and Laughter  that was so interesting.   Im always searching for more people in real (non-digitally mediated)  life who share the Aleph Beta leaders' excitement about interesting and messy patterns and details in those family stories passed down for so many generations, via  Jewish Torah study and Christian Bible study, about Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Lot, Moab's mom, Ben-Ammi's mom, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Esau, Leah, Bilhah, Rachel Judah Reuben Joseph  Benjamin.  

It always always always strikes me how much Tamar's actions regarding her father-in-law's treatment of her is a turning point of the whole of history.   Judah was the lead villain in the family shunning plot against Joseph, dad's first favorite kid, from the family.   But he became lead hero in putting his own life and freedom on the line to protect the safety and return of Benjamin, dad's second favorite kid.  What changed him between handling the slave sale of his brother Genesis 37 and his willingness to be made a slave instead of his brother in the final verses of Genesis 44?


Genesis 38.   

People should never have to go through what Tamar endured from Judah and her other in-laws.  But if they do because of awful leaders and enablers in their families, there is access to relief and breakthrough when they choose to break some household and community rules to get the truth out and take decisive actions in their own lives and futures like Tamar did.  Her actions didn't just help herself, her actions were a loving and brave attempt at Breaking-out (Perez) from the awful cycle of mistreatment and abuse in Judah's whole family system.  Her actions helped Judah pull himself together to becoming a more responsible person, father, grandfather, brother and allround human.  He took a new path and became a person who would move Joseph into tearful relief and willingness to reunite himself with a family that took shunning to the highest extreme.  

In our church, our pastor's current Advent series is focussing on the genealogy, the generational link of fathers, mothers, babies, as listed in Matthew 1.   So many scandalous details have been retained in these stories of how different babies in that genealogy came to exist.  All part of preparing to celebrate the Christian feast of Jesus's birthday celebration.

Tamar and Judah's twin children and the story of how they were conceived--an unpleasant and scandalous event which Tamar exposed for the whole community to know--that story is part of the human contribution to bringing the human person Jesus to eventually exist in the world. Jesus, God With Us,  has all the same kinds of awful stories in his family history as have been hinted at or exposed in our community. Just like the ones our families are terrified to talk about, confront, grieve, and be healed from. Genesis is full of the same kinds of family stories.   It's a relief that a soap-opera style range of stories about Jesus's own ancestors are still accessible to us today b/c of people close to the situation who were passing along the information to their friends and to the next generation, even the reputation-sullying information. The process of telling the truth about our family messiness is what keeps people humble and reforming, not obsessing about abstract principles like how "the only truth that is important to talk about with our families is how humility = Truth and Truth  =  the T in Tulip. " 

Being humble is telling it like it is, esp. when valuable and precious people's lives and wellbeing are at stake, and humility is grasping on to hope that rescue might come when we truly ask for help and own up to full admission of the mess that we are neckdeep in.