Practicing Midrash: Reading the Bible's Arguments as an Invitation to Conversation

Have you ever been puzzled by contradictions in the Bible? Or wondered why there are four Gospels, three sets of Ten Commandments, or two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis?

Beginning with the first pages of Genesis, the Bible tells most of its stories through multiple versions, which contain both similarities and disagreements. The inherent arguments in Scripture did not seem to bother the Jewish faith. A practice called midrash developed in Judaism sometime before the days of Je...