The Cursed, Cursed Book of Numbers

I am currently bogged down in the Book of Numbers.  My husband's slightly Bible thumping boss(he's a Bible freak, but not one who's over the top), upon learning that I was taking this course, issued a good natured warning about the Book of Numbers.  I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, knowing there would be moments of wading through  doldrums while reading the Bible.  I thought maybe he was referring to another one of those long lists of who begat whom, but with the even more boring task of numbering the masses of Israelites.  Well, I was somewhat correct--there are lists of "begattings" along with a head count, but my husband's boss was actually referring to the pages and pages of redundancy.  Paragraph after paragraph repeating almost the exact same words.  In fact all of the words are identical except for the names and numbers contained therein.  Unfortunately, I have not yet uncovered the "mysterious mental maneuver" that Dr. Sexson urges us to attain.  Surely, this mind trick varies from person to person.  I have tried a few different lenses to avoid auto-pilot reading, all to no avail.  During Genesis I was able to view it as just another creation myth, which made me want to turn the pages and absorb more info to file away for comparison during future readings.  The stories revealing the short-comings of the likes of Abraham and Jacob made me feel better about being human in general.  I always thought that the one thing religious people had over me was the superiority of their scruples, but these stories, which are important, even sacred to many people who keep faith with the three biggest religions, brought the fact that we are all just human, each as imperfect as another, into context for me.  Even God exhibits very human flaws.  He is quick-tempered, and even admittedly jealous.  He regretted drowning the world in the great flood, even though His children had angered Him through their wickedness, and He actually vowed never to do such a thing again.

I was able to use a lens of humor to get through the mind numbing pages of crazily nit-picky laws of Leviticus--case in point, the stoning of murderous oxen in my last blog.  Also, one the most unintentionally hilarious texts I've ever read in my life is located in Leviticus, Chapter 13, verses 40 through 44.  Laws pertaining specifically to bald lepers, need I say more?  But Numbers!  The cursed, cursed Book of Numbers.  This goes beyond boring.  It's not the same as reading receipts.  I actually get the receipt thing because I do pick up pieces of paper and read them, though I always attributed this to just plain nosiness.  Sometimes, when I'm going through my millions of plastic grocery store bags(terrible, I know, but I always forget to throw my reusable shopping bags in the care before I go to the store), I find a receipt still floating around in one.  I always, always fish it out and read the items purchased and look at the date, and try and remember that day.  The strange thing is, I can almost always remember that particular shopping trip.

So I guess the only thing to do is to keep going, and wait patiently for the more juicy parts of the story.  I suppose I could skip ahead to the more exciting parts when my mind is dulled, but I know that I will not return to those sections of text.  This is simply not an option; not only am I taking the endeavor of reading the entire Bible seriously, but my concrete random personality forces me to read texts in chronological order. There exists little to no organization to my life in general, but I must read books from front to back.  Period. 

How's that for redundancy?