Bible

I was reading the Bible the other day, and I was thinking about how the Bible can get so familiar that you glaze over it. And there are some really cool stories in 1 & 2 Kings that I know I've read, because I've read the whole Bible, but I have absolutely no recollection of. But the problem is when you start in Genesis, it takes a long time to get to those passages!

So I got to thinking about some different ways to organize the Bible, like different types of study Bibles that would bring new life to some of the things we're so used to glazing over.

One Bible I'd love to see is one that's organized by person. You've got some of the same kings talked about in the Kings & Chronicles, and it would be interesting to see them next to each other. So you'd have a chapter on Saul, a chapter on David, a chapter on Hezekiah, etc. Anyone who has more than a verse about them. There'd be some repeats, some of the David passages would also be in Saul...so that would have to be worked out...but I love the idea of seeing the Bible as a collection of real people rather than just distant stories. I'd love to really immerse myself in the people and get to know them.

The other idea is to just fill the Bible with contextual facts. Not just your typical footnotes or stuff, but historical contexts, scientific facts, stuff like that...for basically every passage. So like, scientific stuff about the flood like I wrote about last night. Or one time in college, Rob Bell shared these really neat contextual details about some of the things Jesus said. He said that when Jesus talked about counting the cost, the examples he used were actual things the king had just done...and he was kind of being snarky. That was really interesting, and that's not the kind of thing you read in normal Bible footnotes or commentaries. I'd love to see those kinds of interesting details all throughout the Bible.

What do you think would bring the Bible to new life for you? What would captivate you?