Today's Scripture Reading (April 4, 2022): 1 Samuel 10
Books; I have to admit that I own a lot of them from
various genres and on multiple subjects. One of my younger friends came into my office and
was amazed by the number of books finding their home there. I smiled and told him that I have probably
twice the number of books in my office at home. My friend decided to try
to be smart and scoffed, wondering if I had ever heard of electronic books,
to which I pointed at my Kobo e-reader and told him that I had another five hundred books there.
What might be even more amazing is that I still have
more books that I would love to buy and read, and of course, there are all the library books that I have borrowed
and read over the years. Apparently, I like to read. And don't get me started on the books that I would love to
write. Welcome to my world.
The Apostle John closes his gospel with these words. "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of
them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room
for the books that would be written" (John 21:25). One thing that seems to
confuse some Christians is that there were other books written in the era of
both the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh and the Christian Bible that have been lost or
rejected from the list of biblical texts that we have in the Bible. For the
lost books, we have to trust that God simply saw no reason to protect them. As
far as the rejected books, they are not in the Bible because we believe that
they were written by someone pretending to be a biblical author. One example, with
a positive spin, is the "Acts of Paul and Thecla." The book is a
religious romance and tells the story of the Apostle Paul's influence on a
young woman named Thecla. The book is fiction, written by a young priest who greatly
respected Paul. But because it is fiction, as are many books in what we call
the Christian Apocrypha, it has been left out of the biblical canon. It might
be an interesting read, giving insight into the life of the early church, but
it cannot be part of our Holy Scriptures.
Samuel instructed the people on what they could expect as
people living under the rule of a king. Most likely, he used Deuteronomy
17:14-20 as a base for his instructions. However, there is little doubt that
Samuel mixed in a lot of his personal misgivings concerning a monarchy in
Israel and how it would differ from the age of the Judges. And then, Samuel
wrote down everything that he had told the people in a book. In future times,
when he was no longer with them, they would be able to find everything that he
said in written form.
We have books written by Samuel, including parts of the Book
of Judges, Ruth, and the first twenty-four chapters of the Book of Samuel. But
this book that he wrote on the expectations placed on a king and his people is
counted among the lost, maybe because God felt it was not important enough to
save.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 11
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