I was raised in a Catholic household. There was nothing extreme about it. Both my parents had been to parochial schools. It seemed as if they had had enough of the church by the time they were grown and had a family to care for. By sending us to church, they were doing what they knew to do.

There was a time when supermarkets offered "an item a week" promotions. Sometimes it was flatware, sometimes it was teacups and dinnerware. I distinctly remember the store offering the Bible in weekly sections. Though it was not an especially religious family environment, my parents bought this Bible in sections. There must have been another Bible around the house, but this Bible would be huge - at least 12 inches by 9 inches and at least six or seven inches deep.

I was ten or eleven years old at the time and, when this huge Bible was completed, I made the declaration that I would read the whole thing, cover to cover. I started at the beginning and read through Genesis. I did the math and figured that people lived to be 700, 800, or even over a thousand years old. Until God said, according to this Bible, that people could live only one-hundred twenty years. Sensible, I thought. But making the lives shorter meant more begets, and when the begetting seemed to go on to naming all the generations that ever lived, the ten year old that I was then stopped reading.

I came back to it. Somehow, just a couple of years later, I was the top student in the religious studies class (called catechism in the Catholic Church). And again, at 20, I was touched by the Bible. This time it was with the New Testament, and kept what I read in the back of my mind like a thread back to something I knew about myself, but did not discuss it with anyone.

I wrote about some of these early experiences in the post about My Jesus Year. In that article, I mentioned once asking someone about the Jewish holiday of Passover and was told, "You're a Jew, you should know this. Jesus was a Jew."

It turns out there are parallels in Moses' story told in Exodus, the second book in the Old Testament (which I would have read if Genesis had not become so dull with all that begetting). Of course, it was a Passover meal that was The Last Supper in the New Testament. And The Last Supper is the time that marks the beginning of Easter, or Holy Week, in the New Testament. I find that it would be instructive to include Exodus on the website. So, over the next few days, I will post the entire 40 chapters of Exodus. I will try to add a short summary at the beginning of each chapter, but I may have to return at a later time to do that. I will follow up with a discussion in the podcast.