What this is all about and some ground rules

I realized about three months ago that I needed to do a more thorough study of the Bible from beginning to end, and that I wanted to write it all down. Now I'm finally going to get started with it. I will start with the beginning of the Hebrew Bible now - when I'm ready, I'll start the New Testament too, perhaps on a different blog. Here are a few notes so you understand how I'm going about it.

• I will try to blog at least once a day.
• I will take my notes on paper first before writing them up in the blog. This makes a difference for me.
• I pray to God for help in this endeavor before I start each day, and I've found that I feel led to pray again many times while I am reading. I also find that I feel led to start over and read the same section again many times, so it becomes a long session of pray-read-pray-read-read-read-pray-read.....you get the idea.
• That being said, I do not see this as a purely mystical experience - my mind is bringing in all the commentaries, books, and Bible studies I've done on these passages, not to mention my own personal experiences and the opinions of many other people I've dialogued with. This is going to be an attempt to bring together everything I can understand about this scripture with all the tools I've had access to.
• I use the framework of critical realism, for what it's worth.
• I will be using the NRSV translation, because I feel it's the most literally accurate and I like it. I will be reading out of the New Interpreter's Study Bible, so those notes will figure into my thoughts as well, though I will do all the initial praying and reading and note-taking on the text itself before looking to the study Bible notes.
• I cannot read Hebrew or Greek, which is a limitation. I will do my best with the tools available to me. I hope in a few years to start studying both languages, and will eventually redo this project again after that.
• I will not be using the added-on chapters and verses that our bibles have in them except to title the posts. I will determine my own natural breaks when figuring out what to study each day.
• After finishing a series of related stories, I will likely revisit the earlier passages and add to them insights I have gotten from the passages that followed.
• I may make jokes when they come to mind. They may not be funny.
• I will certainly get lots of things wrong. As N.T. Wright says, the problem is that I won't know which ones are wrong! I do this with a healthy degree of humility in my assertions (whether or not you can tell from my semi-positivist writing style).
• I reserve the right to go back to posts and edit them if I come upon new understandings of the text or think of new questions
• Please comment and correct me if you disagree with anything you see or can offer me more insight.

That's all I can think of to say for now. Let's get to the study.