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Touring The Bible

The Biblical World: Beautiful. Dangerous. Compelling.

  • Home
  • About
    • About This Site
    • About the Author
    • About Those Lamps
    • About The Ruffly Edges
  • Blogs
    • Christian Living
    • Touring The Bible
  • Resources
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    • Tell Us What’s On Your Mind…
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  • The World of the Bible: Beautiful. Dangerous. Life-Changing.
  • A Land That Transforms Its People
  • Marvelous and Surprising

Taking the Tour

The Bible is big; its world is huge; its people are remarkable. Reading with modern eyes and western values, we miss a lot. Tour this world right now, from wherever you are; your Bible reading will never be the same. Reading...
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Christian Living

Learning all about the Bible and its people is fascinating, but applying it to our lives is what it's really all about. If we lack growth and enthusiasm for God's word, it's like teaching a chef to create beautiful dishes...
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Reading Through the Bible

It's not hard in itself, but we can make things difficult, if we'd like... It's possible to start at Genesis and read straight through to Revelation, and many try: mostly only once. Some insist there's a better way, at least...
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Greetings From the Author

Hi, my name's Wes, and I’ve studied the Bible and its background for over 40 years. I'm an enthusiastic amateur, who hopes you'll become enthusiastic, too. Nothing here will try changing your doctrines, but expect to find a greater love...
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Prepare For Departure

Hi… my name is Wes, and I’ll be your guide as we begin out tour through the Bible. Even if you don’t like to leave the comfort of your home, you can sit back at your computer or your phone, and travel across the world, and across time, as we explore the ancient world of the Bible, together.

Photo of the hills outside of jerusalem
Photo by Benjamin Grull

Welcome to the world of the Bible. It’s a rugged place: all at once, demanding, harsh, and beautiful. We may like to think its people are just like us, only in quaint costumes, but their world is so very different from ours, and it’s shaped them in surprising ways.

Almost all labor is done by humans or animals. A nasty cut could lead to severe infection, or even death. With no painkillers, antibiotics, or anesthetics of any kind, the rich and poor alike experienced pain on a level most of us never imagine. Childbirth was a truly dangerous activity.

Pottery is everywhere. While scarcity is common, the hillsides and riverbanks are packed with wonderfully sticky, pliable clay, which can be formed into all sorts of shapes. When baked in fire, it almost magically transforms into stone. To the people of this land, it’s a gift probably second only to the springs and occasional rivers, vital to life itself.

Metal is much, much scarcer, and most people own little of it, if any. Even their door locks are made of wood, and the hinges are peg-like extensions of the wooden door, pivoting into the stone threshold and lintel of the doorway.

Even wood is expensive, as forests are sparse in this hot, dry land. While fires may be kindled with twigs, a common fuel would be dried, flattened cakes of animal dung, which at least were fairly plentiful. The wood you owned was part of your valuables, including your wooden door, and ceiling rafters.

While we today have the luxury of seeing ourselves as individuals, the people of Bible times were solidly parts of a group: families, clans, tribes, groups, like pharisees. There were some individuals back then, like widows and orphans, but being alone only meant living without a vital support system. It was a situation to be feared.

These just touch on the differences we’ll see as we begin our exploration of the world of the Bible. In time, this tour will grow (both this page, and the blog entries). Please visit again to discover more of this amazing world.

Most recent posts from all of our blogs:

Finding Our Way – Part 1

September 7, 2019
The Book of Ecclesiastes can cause no end of head scratching, with some comments that seem excessively fatalistic and depressing. Does it really mean it when it says everything is meaningless? We've probably found that context is everything when we...
Read more

Puns & Pottery

August 19, 2019
The Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is filled with puns and other wordplay. That's not to say the Bible is a joke book; wordplay usually made a serious point. Back when most communication was verbal rather than written, wordplay...
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Pharisee Phriction

August 14, 2019
The word "Pharisee" has become Christianese jargon for a hypocrite, and that might be a sad thing. While the Gospels have no shortage of examples of hypocrite pharisees, it also gives lots of examples of pharisees who are curious or...
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A Verse to Sink Your Teeth Into

August 12, 2019
When was the last sermon you heard that quoted from the Song of Solomon? Thought so. While it may be a bit difficult to fit into the Standard Sunday Sermon, we here are tough, fearless, and know how to completely...
Read more
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