This is a bit of rambling, stream of consciousness stuff that all seemed to crash together in the last few days.
Pigweed and I have been playing trivia recently, and our team isn’t that bad. Some of the other teams are wicked smart. Except when it comes to the Bible.
“Name the five books attributed to the major prophets in the Protestant Bible” should be an easy one, but … nobody else got it.
It seems that when people know a lot about something, either (1) they assume other people know it too, or (2) they think people are stupid if they don’t also know it. The first is ridiculous, and the second is unfair. There are simply too many things to know about in the world.
Anyway, I had a strong feeling that we should study the Maryland counties before trivia on Monday, and — what do you know — there was a question about Maryland counties.
That sort of thing has happened to me a lot in my life, and it’s not all self-reported. When I played Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager, my friends said I had an uncanny ability to guess what was coming. I know perfectly well that this is all some combination of confirmation bias and/or accidentally picking up clues I wasn’t consciously aware of. But it’s easy to see how somebody with similar experiences could be misled into believing they were very lucky, or had a gift.
With all this in mind, a professional colleague discovered that I’d written some books, and for some odd reason was drawn to Awkward Ollie and the Stolen Banana, which touches on similar themes.
Again, confirmation bias.
We experience so many things in a day, we can’t pay attention to all of them. But one thing draws your attention, for whatever reason, and then your mind is primed to watch for similar occurrences. What a surprise, you see the similar occurrence, and if you’re the superstitious sort, you believe it’s a sign.
I confess I had to Google to get the major prophets right. I wasn’t sure that Daniel was counted among the majors. If I’d had to guess, I’d have guessed right, but I didn’t know that for sure.
I think you would have gotten it, since they said “name the five books.” You know the order they go in, so you start with Isaiah and count four more.
I confess that I misread it the first time. I read it as: Name the five major prophets. And, I was thinking, there are only four. IDK that factoid is stuck in my head, but it is. I couldn’t name them off the top of my head, but could come up with them by starting with Isaiah until I got up to four. But, the question was the books of the major prophets…re-reading the questions, yes, could come up with the 5 books…but I was initially stuck in my misreading as 5 major prophets.
That’s what I meant — since I knew there were five, and I knew Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel, I would have guessed that Daniel was next, because he was a more important figure in himself than any of the ones that are considered “minor”.
I’m embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me before that they were grouped together in the canon order, though.
“Lamentations” is a book of prophecy, the author of which is traditionally regarded as Jeremiah. Whether or not he was really the author might be a matter of dispute, but the book itself is not a prophet.
The question as cited by Mr. Crowhill was:
“Name the five books attributed to the major prophets in the Protestant Bible”
“… I would have guessed that Daniel was next, because he was a more important figure in himself than any of the ones that are considered ‘minor’.” With that quote the discussion shifts to a consideration of who the major or minor prophets are.
I was referring to the people who wrote the books that are counted among those written by the major or minor prophets. Obviously, if someone wrote a book “attributed to a major prophet,” that person would have to qualify as a “major prophet.” Therefore the fact that Daniel would qualify as a major prophet means that the book attributed to him would qualify as a “book attributed to a major prophet.”