Tolle, Lege discussion
The Tanakh
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Help structuring an ongoing Scripture read?
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You touch on both a difficult and valuable subject. Left to our own devices, I have no doubt that this could get out of hand quickly. Therefore I suggest that we have a moderator for each book and he or she is in charge of, say, ten questions per chapter. When the moderator cuts off discussion for a question, we move on. This allows for fair discussion without creating hate and discontent. We should be aware that people have (almost in most cases) come to blows over various interpretations of single words or phrases. It is important that we keep in mind that an interpretation is only an opinion, regardless of how learned one may be. A moderator must maintain control without being officious, in my opinion. Otherwise we get one person monopolizing the conversation, making it a monologue rather than a discussion.
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I'm not sure if I like the idea of specific questions, but maybe, especially if they're related to whatever the group read at the time is.
I was thinking maybe of each book with its own thread, and the threads take turns being "current." It's possible to order threads within a topic, so they could be rotated in this manner. That would focus conversation on one book, while allowing people to dip into other threads as desired.
Always assuming we get more people!
You are correct in suggesting that being right is often a terminal illness. I also agree with you that various threads might be done at the same time.As to the questions, I was thinking that these would be rotated so that each person might have a chance at being a moderator of a book, chapter or section. There is perhaps no better way to learn a subject, as someone said long ago, than to prepare to teach it.
Mod
Surely we can all four chat about Genesis while we decide what to read!
It is generally accepted that the Hebrew Elohim is plural and thus would indicate more than one. To fundamentalists who believe in such things as the Nicene Creed, it is significant because this word indicates the Father, Son and Holy Spirit from the beginning. This also seems to be in accordance with how John Milton interpreted the words in Paradise Lost. Finally each of the MANY names for God indicate a different particular aspect of His greatness, something perhaps difficult for modern mankind to acknowledge with the awe each title originally intended.
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I don't want to leave Muslims out, and I'd also like to read the Quran myself, but unless there's a sudden influx of members (again, only me right now!) that includes someone who knows more about the Quran than I do (I know close to nothing) I couldn't possibly feel right opening such a discussion.
At any rate, I'd very much like to have an ongoing read of the Tanakh. I don't want a "Bible Study" style focussed on looking for spiritual food that assumes we all approach the text in the same way- I'd much rather have enthusiastic arguments about what the text meant to the author versus what it means to us now, especially with discussion of how other authors (possibly the authors we are reading at the time) have used it.
The question is how to set this up? I'm not a member of any group with a structured continuous read like that, at least not one without a set end date.