Have you read the Bible?

Permabear

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Absolam

I've read a few versions; the 1611 KJV is tough going if you're not a real fan of ancient English Reading it phonetically you can imagine it's all being declaimed by vikings though, which makes it kind of fun.

King Mob

Tried to do this myself when I was younger, but once it gets past the Genesis/Noah stuff, I remember it getting dry and boring as hell for a long while and never made it to Exodus.

endacl

I got lost in the bit with all the begats. Kept losing track and having to go back again.

The chapter on 'begat' needs an executive summary.

Peregrine

Not cover to cover, no, but I read a small piece a night for several years. I've definitely read all of the New Testament and a lot of the Old Testament.

I also did ten years of Sunday School so I got the best bits anyway.

pauldla

Only for loopholes..

Back in my wild youth I read all the NT, and a good whack of the OT, though like endacl I do remember skipping over parts with lots of begatting.

My own experiences with begatting since then have been a lot more fun, incidentally.

Peregrinus

The bible is a chunk of disparate texts written by different people in a variety of different genres over a very long period of time - literally, thousands of years - and only printed and bound between a single set of covers relatively recently.

Unsurprisingly, it includes a bit of everything - poetry, philosophy, proverbs, platitudes, history, fantasy, erotica, song lyrics, polemic, filler, tedium, excitement and stuff that's just hard to categorise. Significant chunks of some books are repeated word-for-word in others.

Reading it from beginning to end is an interesting exercise, but not one that many people embark on. Remember, there's no set order for the books of the bible - different editions present them in a different order - and indeed no universal consensus on which books, exactly, belong in the bible.

So, best to approach it without any preconceptions about the bible as a whole, or about the relationship of various books to one another. Read each book with an open mind, and with the question in your mind "Someone thought this was important to write, and to preserve. Why?" That's often not an easy question to answer, especially if you don't have any background or context for the culture that produced the text, or that came to regard it as scriptural. So the exercise might be more illuminating, or more interesting, if you start by equipping yourself with a bit of backround about the society and culture that produced these texts and the process why which they were produced and, in due course, canonised as scripture.

robindch

Permabear wrote: »

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Not from end to end as a lot of it - the endless Josephiah begats Malemedukha stuff, the book of revelation and a lot more besides - is simply coma-inducing. Good bedtime reading perhaps.

But it's certainly an interesting exercise comparing and contrasting, say, the four gospels and how they paint different pictures of Jesus. BTW, if you've studied Greek philosophy, the sudden, (almost) unexpected shift towards the Platonic style, and occasionally content, of John is especially noticeable. The letters of Paul offer one possible and interesting interpretation of the early days of the religion as well.

Most of all, it's an interesting exercise as one gets to see not only all the bits which they read out in church (heavy on mystery, magic and the religion), but also the more interesting bits which aren't nearly so well known (where you can sense the furniture being moved around to suit the mystery, the magic and the religion).

If you've done Greek or Latin, it's also worth keeping a copy of the Koine and Vulgate editions close by as they're all simple enough that you don't really need an especially high level of either language to make one's way through it at a simple level. And a higher level of either language will illuminate the background to the English, frequently in an unexpected fashion. BTW, I'm sure you're aware that the original Greek is written in quite a low-brow, functional fashion, while the KJV is mightily high-flown indeed and one needs to bear that the KJV's wonderfully sonorous prose is a product of the translators, not the original authors.

Finally, you might enjoy reading any of Bart Ehrman's literary criticisms of the biblical texts - they're easy to follow and make a useful counterpoint to the usual wide-eyed biblical commentary.

Trent Houseboat

No, but I listened to the Thomas and the Bible podcast for a while but it was gruelling. Fair play to him for sticking through it.

The Holy Babble section of the Scathing Atheist was a lot more interesting/concise.

Permabear

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oldrnwisr

Permabear wrote: »

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I have read the bible from cover to cover twice. Since then I've probably read it another three times or so in pieces. There are some things I've learned over this time which maybe you might find useful.

Firstly, the KJV. I've read the KJV for two reasons, a) because there was an old copy at home when I was growing up and b) because there exists the KJV Only Movement which claims that the KJV is superior to all other translations. In the real world, however, the KJV is little practical value. As Absolam pointed out, the language of the KJV can be tough going. Also, the KJV was translated without the benefit of modern discoveries like Codex Sinaiticus. As a result it contains mistakes (like the translation of pascha as Easter in Acts 12:4) or fabricated additions like 1 John 5:7-8. As a learning tool it's pretty useless.

Secondly, while a horizontal reading (i.e. cover to cover) of the bible is useful and something which many Christians never bother to engage in, if you really want to understand the cultural context and development of the bible (particularly the NT) then you need to read it vertically (i.e. side-by-side). A vertical reading of the synoptics, for example, shows how the three gospels are copies of each other with each author introducing their own elements, mistakes, corrections and biases. A vertical reading is useful if you end up (like I do) engaging in debates/arguments with Christian apologists and fundies.

Thirdly, while it's nice to have a physical copy of the bible (or any book) to hand, there are a number of online resources which can be really helpful:

• Bible Gateway (easy to navigate and has a huge selection of translations)
• Bible Hub (24 English translations, Greek & Hebrew, Interlinear display & bible commentaries)
• Blue Letter Bible (more resources than Bible Hub but takes a bit of getting used to)
• Early Christian Writings (useful resource for providing background of NT books e.g. authorship, academic links etc.)
• Early Jewish Writings (as above but for OT books and NT era Jewish writers like Josephus)

These resources can help you to understand the real story behind certain Christian beliefs like the virgin birth prophecy, the two deaths of Judas and other oddities in the NT.



Finally, while Bart Ehrman is certainly the most prominent and prolific NT scholar out there, if you're going to tackle the entire bible there are a number of other bible academics whose work can offer valuable insights. In particular, the ones I've found useful include Elaine Pagels, J.D. Crossan, Denis R MacDonald, Burton Mack, Raymond Brown, Paul Maier, Richard Carrier and John Shelby Spong. However, scholarly works are usually good for dissections of particular topics like Elaine Pagel's excellent book "The Origin of Satan". For a broader view, I'd recommend sticking to the bible.


Oh, and one last thing. Wikipedia, for all it's faults, is a great resource. The actual text of the article mightn't be the best read ever but it does manage to condense a lot of links to primary sources into a small space.

Bristolscale7

I love the Old Testament. Simpler times.

robindch

Bristolscale7 wrote: »

I love the Old Testament.

The Song of Songs and all that tittle-tattle about snogging and wine, or Ezekiel's rambling on about donkeys and horses?

Some of it is almost as red as the palest of pale shadows of Old Omar whose work, as reflected by Fitzgerald, really is a much, much better text, not to mention much shorter and probably less responsible for war, death, anger and other problems.

Omar Khayyam wrote:

The moving finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Omar Khayyam wrote:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.

Bristolscale7

robindch wrote: »

The Song of Songs and all that tittle-tattle about snogging and wine, or Ezekiel's rambling on about donkeys and horses?

Some of it is almost as red as the palest of pale shadows of Old Omar whose work, as reflected by Fitzgerald, really is a much, much better text, not to mention much shorter and probably less responsible for war, death, anger and other problems.

Yeah, I love that stuff. It's like a cross between pornhub and a Quentin Tarantino knock-off wrapped in a package of Kurtzian moral clarity.

kylith

I've read lumps of it in my youth; very fond of the book of Ruth, but that's more about loyalty than religion imo.

Still read more of it than most Christians, I'll bet.

Hotblack Desiato

http://www.thebricktestament.com/home.html

Fourier

Permabear wrote: »

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Yes, finished my second reading recently. I would note a few things about the Tanakh/Old Testament.

The best translation of the Old Testament is The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition from Oxford Press. Even Genesis is horrendously translated in several other versions. This is the one that keeps the original Hebrew meaning clearest. Translations like the KJV tend to "flatten" the authors into sounding similar, e.g. one wouldn't guess that Esther is a novella rather than intended as pious literature.

Secondly I would read a bit around the text, especially the almost universally accepted JDEP documentary hypothesis. People argue over minor differences, but the main idea, that the Tanakh (Old Testament) has three sources:

A source based on oral material (possibly a combination of a southern and northern oral tradition)
A legal source, written around the time of the Babylonian invasion by Jeremiah, his scribe or the priestly group of which he was a member.
A priestly source, written roughly a century before the invasion by the main Aaronid priests of Jerusalem.

is not really disputed.

The best book for the context of the bible is definitely:
Introduction to the Bible by Christine Hayes, Yale Press.

I think with these two sources one will learn many surprising things, such as the Tanakh has no real concept of an afterlife and Yahweh did not create the world ex nihilo. Rather he created a habitable "bubble" within the pre-existing infinite primordial ocean known as Tehom (cognate with the Babylonian Tiamat, the water dragon).

Keep us updated with Genesis.

robindch

Fourier wrote: »

I think with these two sources one will learn many surprising things, such as the Tanakh has no real concept of an afterlife [...]

The afterlife was one of the ideas which christianity acquired from contemporary Greek thought and made it its own. The idea is as absent in the OT as it is present in the NT.

Another thing which is the OT and the NT treat differently is their target market - the OT concentrating on various jewish tribes as manifesting "god's chosen people". Whereas, the NT and especially Paul and later, treat their target market as the entire human race.

The NT also introduces the concept that it's the highest duty of each believer to propagate the message.

With these three ideas - the belief in an afterlife, the possibility that every human could live forever, and the solemn duty to proselytize (adding horizontal propagation by speech to the usual vertical propagation by parent/child or conqueror/conquered) the christian religion became a memetic powerhouse and was able to outbreed its religious competitors.

smacl

Never read it, can't say that it held much interest. Nearest was probably reading the new Larousse encyclopedia of mythology from cover to cover when I was quite young which I enjoyed but was more than enough mythology to keep me going for some years. For me personally, I doubt the effort of reading the Christian bible would be any fun or provide much value.

Bristolscale7

smacl wrote: »

Never read it, can't say that it held much interest. Nearest was probably reading the new Larousse encyclopedia of mythology from cover to cover when I was quite young which I enjoyed but was more than enough mythology to keep me going for some years. For me personally, I doubt the effort of reading the Christian bible would be any fun or provide much value.

Perhaps you might be interested in a different book...

Zen65

I've read most of it, though not sequentially and not always cover-to-cover. It's interesting to see how much of it never gets printed in the Sunday masses, whether that's a more recent post-second-vatican decision or not I do not know. So much of the old testament is clearly just hate in print that it astounds me that people view the old testament God as being loving, when he clearly isn't. Old testament God is the Donald Trump of gods, vain and prickly.

Fourier

Just as an example, here is an accurate translation of the start of Genesis, note in particular the first line and the "wind from God" rather than the "spirit of God".

When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day. God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Peregrinus

robindch wrote: »

The afterlife was one of the ideas which christianity acquired from contemporary Greek thought and made it its own. The idea is as absent in the OT as it is present in the NT.

Another thing which is the OT and the NT treat differently is their target market - the OT concentrating on various jewish tribes as manifesting "god's chosen people". Whereas, the NT and especially Paul and later, treat their target market as the entire human race.

The NT also introduces the concept that it's the highest duty of each believer to propagate the message.

With these three ideas - the belief in an afterlife, the possibility that every human could live forever, and the solemn duty to proselytize (adding horizontal propagation by speech to the usual vertical propagation by parent/child or conqueror/conquered) the christian religion became a memetic powerhouse and was able to outbreed its religious competitors.

Just a small quibble: the idea of an afterlife isn't entirely absent from the OP; it does begin to appear in some of the later texts. It's something Judaism was acquiring from its interaction with Greek culture and, in fact, at the time of Christ, there's debate within Judaism about whether there's an afterlife and, if so, what that means or how important that is. Christianity emerges from the strand of Judaism which tends to endorse the idea of an afterlife, but so does Rabbinic Judaism, which is the dominant form today.

So, belief in an afterlife isn't that big a distinction between Christianity and Judaism. The afterlife has a different (and greater) significance in Christianity, but Judaism generally endorses the idea of an afterlife.

AllForIt

Permabear wrote: »

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It's interesting to me that you decided to read the Bible because your partner is reading it.

I am not a militant atheist but I am fascinated by the psychology of religion.

I wonder why you didn't decide to read the Bible by yourself, before you met your partner.

I have always though that the draw to religion is that people around you are subscribing to the same ideals. And that there is some kind of comfort to be had in that. I always wonder if a Catholic lived a Catholic life in isolation, ie there were no Catholics around them at all...would they remain a Catholic to the end...or would it be meaningless if you didn't have a partner or a family or a society that subscribed to it.

If I were ever to read heavy text then I'd opt for Shakespeare which is way beyond my low attention span. At least I'd know who wrote it though.

Peregrinus

AllForIt wrote: »

It's interesting to me that you decided to read the Bible because your partner is reading it.

I am not a militant atheist but I am fascinated by the psychology of religion.

I wonder why you didn't decide to read the Bible by yourself, before you met your partner.

Well, he does say he has already read some of it.

AllForIt wrote: »

I have always though that the draw to religion is that people around you are subscribing to the same ideals. And that there is some kind of comfort to be had in that. I always wonder if a Catholic lived a Catholic life in isolation, ie there were no Catholics around them at all...would they remain a Catholic to the end...or would it be meaningless if you didn't have a partner or a family or a society that subscribed to it.

Religion in general, and Catholicism more than some religions, is a communal venture so, no, even on it's own terms it's not possible to be a Catholic all on your own.

But this communal dimension isn't unique to religion. Secularism, for example, isn't just about what I should do; it's also about what we should do. So a fully-realised secularism has to be expressed collectively as well as individually.

AllForIt wrote: »

If I were ever to read heavy text then I'd opt for Shakespeare which is way beyond my low attention span. At least I'd know who wrote it though.

Two thoughts on that:

1. Others may envy your simple faith!

2. Does it necessarily matter who wrote it? It seems an odd basis for choosing which heavy text you'll read.

One eyed Jack

AllForIt wrote: »

It's interesting to me that you decided to read the Bible because your partner is reading it.

I am not a militant atheist but I am fascinated by the psychology of religion.

I wonder why you didn't decide to read the Bible by yourself, before you met your partner.

I have always though that the draw to religion is that people around you are subscribing to the same ideals. And that there is some kind of comfort to be had in that. I always wonder if a Catholic lived a Catholic life in isolation, ie there were no Catholics around them at all...would they remain a Catholic to the end...or would it be meaningless if you didn't have a partner or a family or a society that subscribed to it.

You may be interested in this article then which poses the question -

ARE WE BORN TO BE RELIGIOUS?

A deep question pervades the debates surrounding religion—whether God exists, sure, but that one is mighty difficult to answer. Instead we can ask a related, more approachable query: Why does God exist for some of us but not for others? Theologians and ministers preach that faith is preeminently a matter of personal choice. Is it, really?

Not everyone is a believer, of course, nor do we all maintain allegiance to a single belief system throughout the course of our life. Almost half of American adults, for example, have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lifetime, and most do so before age 24, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Although religious affiliation may be fluid, once people enter adulthood they tend to stick with one category, retaining either faith in God or the absence thereof.

For the most part, people are either religious or atheists because they were raised that way. Parents, classmates and other trusted figures impress their views on children and introduce them to a set of rituals and practices. Later in life those influences hold less power. Several forces can diminish a person’s religiosity—frequently cited reasons include the absence of social pressures to be religious or a desire to distance oneself from one’s family. Personal crises can also spur a change, prompting some people to convert and others to abandon religion.

Recent research suggests, however, that this is not the whole story. By studying the correlations among thousands of individuals’ religious beliefs and measures of their thoughts and behaviors, scientists have discovered that certain personality types are predisposed to land on different spots of the religiosity spectrum.

Genetic factors account for more than half of the variability among people on the core dimensions of their character, which implies that a person’s feelings regarding religion also contain a genetic component. By analyzing twins, some of whom share the same DNA, psychologists have begun to collect evidence for the genetic roots of religiosity. These studies are starting to explain what makes some of us believers, whereas others end up rejecting supernatural notions...

AllForIt wrote: »

If I were ever to read heavy text then I'd opt for Shakespeare which is way beyond my low attention span. At least I'd know who wrote it though.

And there has been some interesting discussion questioning whether Shakespeare himself actually is responsible for all his own works too -

Shakespeare authorship question


EDIT: Peregrinus was in there before me.

Zubeneschamali

Read it through once in my teens. Lots of funny stuff in there.

koumi

I'm going through it as we speak, I'm doing less reading though and more listening. I tried with KJV many moons ago, I managed most of the new testament and probably genesis and left it at that. I downloaded the ESV a couple of months back with the intention of giving it a go again but my knowledge of history just isn't keen enough to to do by myself and was delighted when I discovered someone to guide me through. Since then it's been like a version of Game of Thrones set in the middle east and I'm just enjoying it much much more. I'm not entirely sure why I'm reading it, it's not even a faith based thing more like a needing some large untangled mystery that's been bugging me for years to be resolved. (and I can happily say that it is) Enjoy op

(just to add, I do it all online and just stick the headphones in at night so it's entirely something I'm doing by myself)

nozzferrahhtoo

One eyed Jack wrote: »

You may be interested in this article then which poses the question -

ARE WE BORN TO BE RELIGIOUS?

For me it is like looking at the fact that most of us catch the common cold at some point in our life and therefore asking the question "Are we born to catch the common cold".

In other words I suspect it is just the wrong question to ask.

Rather with the common cold the right question is "What things are we evolved to do that other genetics have evolved to exploit for their own survival and perpetuation?"

And in the light of that question we can better understand the workings of bacterial and viral infections and how they inter-operate with us.

I think with the memetic infection of religion the approach should be similar. It is not that we are born to be religious so much as we have evolved to do many other things which religions themselves have evolved to exploit for it's own survival and reproduction.

And similar to biological infections, some people are simply immune from birth, while others are not immune but simply avoid infection.

And similar to biological infections there are inoculations possible to reduce, sometimes even eliminate, the possibility of infection. Inoculations that are often sadly missing from the early education curriculum in our schools and we would do well to implement better.

And I think a better reading of the Bible in schools would actually be one such move, and in fact Atheist Ireland also run a read the Bible campaign. And I know myself that the majority of people I have seen lose religion and faith in anything approaching "real time" have done so because they sat down and read the Bible. Most of them had, until that point, not even SEEN a bible and in fact thought they knew the whole thing (and that it was quite small) because they heard the same cherry picked passages from it over and over in churches and schools all their life.

smacl

Bristolscale7 wrote: »

Perhaps you might be interested in a different book...

My copy of the Necronomicon looks more like this. An old favourite as it happens. The Bible? Meh

Fourier

AllForIt wrote: »

If I were ever to read heavy text then I'd opt for Shakespeare which is way beyond my low attention span. At least I'd know who wrote it though.

To be fair, for a lot of the bible it is known who wrote it or the narrow social circle which would have produced it, there are several different authors for different components of course. The least known is the material sourced from oral tradition in Exodus and Genesis, although even there we know it was most likely gathered into a written document in Judah following the Assyrian destruction of Israel.