Tackling the Tanach

Religion and our sacred texts have gotten publicly corrupted.  Not that they weren't before, with no shortage of passages to justify, even mandate, African slavery recited by a who's who of white supremacists, not modified all that much to our present day.  There are real Biblical Scholars and an abundance of people, usually with some clergy ordination, who present themselves with the illusion of familiarity with our sacred texts.  I see this primarily with Old Testament, as it is far longer and more diverse in thought than the New Testament, which I read for the first time last summer.  It also presents with Koran, whose length and complexity is about the same as Torah.  There are some texts among the Eastern religions, and no doubt selected passages are applied to a mixture of public benefit and public detriment, though more regional than global.

Last year I decided I had to read this for myself, with the advantage of big head start.  Between synagogue and college, I had read pretty much all of Torah and Megillot at one time or another, as these are read publicly in their entirety.  I have followed in English translation most of these, though not in sequence.  With a Soncino Five Megillot I was able to do all five with commentary this year.  The other Ketuvim I had read as individual books, but proceeded on to Psalms and Proverbs in sequence, though without commentary.  Chronicles remains on the to do list.  The Prophets are in progress now.  Our Haftarot come as excerpts, not as literature.  The Twelve are individually short, read one at a time.  Then the three Major Prophets starting at the beginning of each and reading about four chapters a day through the end of each.  That leaves me with the historical passages, which I am reading now, to be ended later with Chronicles which are really part of historical text cut and pasted someplace else. The sections of Chronicles that I've read can be rather cumbersome

Having recently paced myself through Joshua, Judges, and both Samuels, it's doable.  There is geographical detail that means little to me, a plethora of minor characters whose names disappear quickly.  And I have no teacher to guide me.  No doubt there are serious scholars of the Tanach that know where the towns are, the significance of migrations, genealogy that gets both fulfilled and disrupted, but for me I appreciate more the gist, or a little more detail than gist.  There are conquests that include genocides.  The capricious and occasionally duplicitous decisions of our religious icons become historical detail that our rabbis never quite discuss in public as they transmit lessons they do not want their flock to register as OK things to do, though not doubt commentators rationalize them in various forms.  In many parts of these texts loyalty to HaShem brings rewards even though as a reader I would look askance at what the person in the text really did.  Not a whole lot different than our world now where repugnant conduct becomes acceptable if authorized by the dominant person who rewards loyalty above all else.  Maybe the Tanach in its own way really is timeless, though the sensibilities it tries to impart are a long way from timeless.