I haven't posted for a while because I've been working a lot of extra hours trying to finish a project at work that has already taken too much time. Please don't misunderstand this to mean that I've put my job before my Bible study; I've only put it before this Timeline project! I'm nearly half-way through my annual journey through the Bible (KJV this year). I've put that before this project, too.
So, my "fun new approach" refers to how I'm compiling data for the timeline. I ran a search onBibleGateway.com for every verse with "year" in it, copied the page source and usedLabVIEW (the programming language I use at work) and Regular Expressions to parse the reference and text of the resulting scriptures (there were 759 in the NKJV). I've begun a spreadsheet with two columns containing this data and four more colums that I'll fill in and one that uses a spreadsheet function to calculate the year the event happened. Isn't that fun? It is for me...
Here's an example to explain what I mean:
Genesis 11:24 "Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and begot Terah."
- The Subject of this verse is Terah (forget everything you know about Grammar and let me call Terah the subject)
- The Year Ref is 29
- The Subject Ref is Nahor
- The Year is calculated by adding the Year Ref to the year of the Subject Ref which is, in this case, the year Nahor was born. I previously calculated Nahor's birth to be in 1850AC (After Creation), so Terah was born in 1879AC.
- The last column contains Notes that explain any difficulties I had digesting the verse.
There are a lot of things that won't come out of a study conducted this way, like the calculation of Joseph's birth, but I expect a lot of good to come out of it. I may be wrong.
I'll post something study-related soon, along with an updated timeline. I just needed to post something to get back on track. I'd like to post weekly (but not weakly), so it shouldn't be long.
Love,
Jim
Bonus (joke) - Why didn't I learn to use Regular Expressions when I was young? My mother wouldn't let me play with matches!
(Please write me a note if you understood that. It'll help me know that I'm not alone!)
