Has anyone read the bible

[AreaCode707]

You have to view it as a set of books on different topics by different authors, with a common theme. Some books are interesting, others aren't. Esther has a neat story, complete with kings, beautiful women, political maneuvering, and giant gallows. Job and Song of Songs have beautiful poetry. The gospels have some kind of matrix-like themes that are fun to speculate about. Some books, like Leviticus, are like reading the tax code - long boring lists of laws. Much of Paul's writing is a cross between a personal letter and a philosophy book. Revelations is like reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, really cool but totally WTF.

Reading it cover to cover will give you one perspective, but you really can, if reading it as literature, take the pieces separately.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: CKent
I'd like to sometime, but I think the wording would get to me... "thee", "thy" and every verb ending in "eth" would drive me bonkers within 100 pages. There a cliff's version out there? 😕

The "Revised Standard Version" or "New International Version" both have updated language with a decently close interpretation to the original text.

"The Message" version is a copy in today's language that isn't quite as dogmatic about sticking to the original text. It's probably the most accessible version if you're just trying to read as literature.

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: HotChic

Originally posted by: CKent
I'd like to sometime, but I think the wording would get to me... "thee", "thy" and every verb ending in "eth" would drive me bonkers within 100 pages. There a cliff's version out there? 😕

The "Revised Standard Version" or "New International Version" both have updated language with a decently close interpretation to the original text.

"The Message" version is a copy in today's language that isn't quite as dogmatic about sticking to the original text. It's probably the most accessible version if you're just trying to read as literature.

I agree that New American Standard or The Message would be the best for reading for literature purposes.

Originally posted by: brandonb
I've read the first 1/4 of the Bible... I believe I'm in Judges or Ruth or something.

The book is 6000 years old. It's not exactly high quality, or very interesting at all. Is it worth reading? Maybe just for context of the times, and history, and may if you have nothing better to do. Since the writing is so old style, things are just breezed over, and not indepth at all. In one page, the topic or the person in context does 6 different things... It's not like reading a typical fiction book. It's style is like this:

"Joebob went to fight the Babblenites, once reaching the city of Babbleton realized it was too strong, and their army lost 200 good men. Joebob waited until nightfall and sent a small company to the other side of the town to distract the defenders. Once the defenders went out, Joebob took the rest of the army in the town and slaughtered all the men, and took the woman as slaves. The town was set on fire. The gold was not to be taken as God said take nothing of value with them. Joebob then went back to his tribe and drank and slaughtered three lambs in honor of God's blessing."

If you consider that interesting or worth reading, then maybe you will be ok reading the bible, but its written pretty much exactly like that and I consider it very "dry"...

--- My review of what I read so far...

Genesis was decent as a book, nothing fantastic mind you. It was fairly interesting if you skip certain sections of it (jimbo began hooligan, hooligan begat rumplestiltskin, etc for a page or two)...

Exodus was ok less interesting than Genesis, the 2nd half is about laws and is really boring. But its ok if you just read the first half.

Leviticus is just a repeat of the laws in Exodus. ZzzzZzzz....

Numbers is just about the first priests or whatever, and laws... ZzzzZzzzZzzz...

Deuteronomy is just about laws and how the first people followed them (or didn't) ... ZzzzZzzzZzzzz...

Joshua is about them retaking over the lands in Israel... Starts to pick up again here.... My example above is pretty much what Joshua is repeated 20 times...

Judges more war, and the people of Israel start to ignore God and do their own thing once again... (I'm not done with this book yet)

----

In other words, its probably not worth reading. Maybe Genessis, first half of Exodus, and skipping over to Joshua... But only if you can handle the style of writing as I described above. I hope it gets better. 🙂

I am a Christian so I can't say I have read for fun but I would agree with brandonb's prespective for the most part. I really enjoyed parts of Genesis and I LOVE Joshua, Judges, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and a few of the other books there (Esther, Ruth, etc). This is the stories about war and kings and stuff which I thought was really cool.

Psalms is great is you like pretty words, but from a non--religious perspective it would most likely be boring. Proverbs is excellent for life lessons and the like.

The Gospels are about the life of Jesus which can be excellent but many of the stories repeat (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). After that there are the letters of Paul and others, also boring for pure entertainment reasons I would think (as a Christian I use them mostly for guidance on life and I don't know if that would really matter if you were to read it in a purely non-religious manner).

As stated above, Revelations is good stuff too.

I have read lots of it but not all, but that's what I think would be the best from an entertainment aspect.

 

[Ameesh]

i only read kings and numbers because they are the most interesting

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Originally posted by: homercles337
Yes. As an undergrad I had Bible as Fiction and a Mythology courses. The mythology course was FAR more interesting.

Have you ever studied Egyptian myth? If you have not, read everything you can find on the subject concentrating on the life of Horus. Then go back and read the new testament. The story of Jesus is pretty much directly ripped off from the myth of Horus. They mixed in a few elements of Perseus from Greek myth too, but it's almost all Horus. The bible couldn't even be bothered to invent a whole new mythology, they stole one. Sadly though, Egyptian myth is pretty boring too, that's why the bible is boring. Read norse myth, now there's a pantheon that knew how to fight and party.

 

[nageov3t]

it's not, like, compelling literature if you know what I mean.

it's the bible... it's not meant to be a gripping page turner that's going to keep you up all night trying to figure out what happens next (spoiler: Jesus dies). which is to say that it's pretty boring. I did read the whole thing through, not for any religious reasons but moreso because I just wondered what the whole thing was about, but I ended up skipping some large swathes of it (like the A begot B who begot C, etc, etc, chapters)