Slate's David Plotz is Blogging the Bible

Posted on May 24, 2006

Slate's David Plotz has started blogging the Bible.

I decided I would, for the first time as an adult, read the Bible. And I would blog about it as I went along. For the millions of Jews and Christians who know the Bible intimately, this may seem obscene: Why should an ignoramus write about the stories and lessons that you know by heart and understand well? I don't intend any kind of insult. My goal is not to find contradictions, mock impossible events, or scoff at hypocrisy. Nor am I quite stupid enough to pretend that Judaism (or Christianity) is just the Bible. Jews are not only the People of the Book but the People of Many Books. There is the rest of the Hebrew Bible�the Prophets and Writings, the vast commentary of the Talmud, the stories of the midrashim, and thousands and thousands of years of other law and story and commentary. This 4,000years' worth of delving and discussion is totally unfamiliar to me�I can't hope to compete with its wisdom.

Plotz said he plans to spend at least a few weeks and possibly months on the project.

I'll spend the next few weeks (or months) finding out. I'll begin with "in the beginning" and see how far I get. My wife, struck by my new biblical obsession, gave me a wonderful Torah translation and commentary for Hannukah, the Etz Hayim, which was prepared by conservative Jewish scholars. I'll read that and dip into the King James and other translations on occasion.

His first entry in the blog can be found here. It looks like it was a pretty good idea. Plotz already has over 100 inbound links for the blogging project including links from Metafilter, Washington Monthly, and Gawker. Gawker came up with funniest headline for the Bible blogging story: "Slate Finds Way To Make Blogging Even More Boring."