Author's Note: All previous volumes of this series are here. The first 56 volumes are compiled into the book  "Bible Study For Those Who Don't Read The Bible."  "Part Two," featuring volumes 57-113, was published in December 2022.

Thanks for joining us today. If you are Jewish and plan on attending temple this week for a Yom Kippur service, I hope you will read and then pray about what I have written below.

I am always amazed when I ask my fellow Jews about the Yom Kippur scapegoat, and they have no idea what I am talking about. Most recently, it was my own temple-going sister.

For those who don’t know much about Judaism — the religion into which Jesus was born and actively practiced —Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Known as the “Day of Atonement,” it begins this year at sundown on Wednesday, October 1. 

Besides its timeliness, I write about Yom Kippur because last week’s Vol. 286, featured the headline, “How Common Phrases Rooted in the Bible Can Encourage Bible Reading.” One of the phrases was “scapegoat,” among the most well-known biblical sayings not usually associated with the Bible. The complete story is found in Leviticus 16, when God spoke to Moses about how the Israelites must annually atone for their sins. Moses’s brother Aaron, the chief priest, was to perform the following ritual exactly as God commanded:

“Then he shall come out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it. He shall take some of the bull’s blood and some of the goat’s blood and put it on all the horns of the altar. He shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven........

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