About This Blog

A number of Christian traditions have a lectionary, a schedule of scripture readings that covers some large chunk of scripture over a period of, say, 3 years.  A lectionary has the advantage of ensuring that key topics are studied by a church community on a regular basis.

Christianity inherited this practice from Judaism.  It is believed that in the time of Jesus in the land of Israel, there was a semiseptennial cycle of readings that covered the whole of the Torah (the five books of Moses) twice in seven years.  Each weekly reading or seder was paired with a psalm and a reading from the prophets. The readings from the prophets reflected a fervent messianic expectation.  It is possible that the ministry of Jesus covered one three-and-a-half year trip through the Torah, half of a semiseptennial cycle.  Rob Wilson gives an introduction to the semiseptennial cycle here.

In my church community at Church of the Messiah (Xenia, Ohio), we have adopted a semiseptennial cycle, matching New Testament readings with 158 seders.  We've gone through the first 3 and a half years and have started the second.  This blog will chronicle our journey.  

(Note from 2023: In our second round through the cycle, we expanded to 162 seders.)