those wacky Bible books

[darkoshi]

ladysisyphus wrote a post with tips on how to read the bible.

It mentions that if you decide to tackle it from the beginning to the end, that you're not likely to make it through the end of Exodus. That reminded me of when I started reading the Old Testament back in 2000, and made me wonder how far I got. Based on my notes, I made it through Samuel2.

To keep myself motivated, I took notes on items that seemed interesting, strange, funny or repulsive to me. I don't believe I ever posted these notes before. So they are below, for anyone who might be interested.

By the way, I am agnostic. Not at all Christian. I don't even consider myself spiritual - I believe in the possibility of there being a spiritual side to the world, but I've felt very little of it so far.

Also, I'm vegan (and a feminist) and think it's not very nice to treat animals (or women for that matter) badly. So that is why a lot of my comments focus on those aspects.

I know that there's a lot more to the Bible than the parts I read, and that there are many versions of it, and tons of ways to interpret it, and tons of history behind it so that you can't just take it at its literal word.

Yet the same could be said for a lot of things. The parts of the Bible which I read don't at all describe a religion of love and kindness, so I do wonder sometimes why people who describe their Christian religion as such cling to this book as the undeniably TRUE and incontrovertible "Word of God". I know that having a big long confusing and hard to read ancient text lends an air of mystery to things, and it gives something for religious scholars to study and lend their own interpretations to. But to me, it's all rather meh. I've long since lost my fascination with ancient history and writings.

If you are Christian and/or hold the Bible in high esteem, please don't reply to the items mentioned in the notes, in an attempt to better explain them to me. I'm not likely to respond to any such comments. Even if you can manage to do so in a way that makes me go "Ahhh, that makes better sense", it'll still be rather "meh" to me. I'm not interested in making sense of it. Even if the whole of the Bible could be meaningfully explained to represent love and kindness, it's not going to make me start believing in a god.

My original purpose in reading it was only to have an idea of what it says, to use against other people who like to quote it. Now I don't think it is worth arguing with people who like to quote it. I simply "meh", roll my eyes, and ignore them.

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This first part of my notes has some thoughts from before I started reading the Bible.

Genesis through Joshua (New American Standard Bible)

Some more random thoughts of mine.

Judges through 2Samuel

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Useful websites:
BibleGateway
(lets you search and compare verses from many different versions of the Bible)

BibleHub
(even shows multiple versions of the same verse on a single page)

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Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

I tried that and got through Deuteronomy before I stopped. But I didn't stop for a lack of interest but a lack of time. I found it fascinating. If you go to my page and click on the tag for "the adventures of holly bibble" it links to all my entries.

I used the ESV and the KJV since they are both word for word translations, and I used Strong's Concordance with the KJV on biblestudytools.com because of the awesome search tools.

Did you know there's no word for wife in the OT? When you read "so and so took a wife", in the old Hebrew it says "so and so took a woman". Or that "marriage" only appears once, and then only as the "conjugal duty" - and in the context of a man taking a second woman?

I finally finished the whole thing by going the Audible route. When I heard something especially interesting I'd run to biblestudytools.com to look it up and see what they were really saying.

[darkoshi]

You seem to have been struck by many of the same things I was, for the parts I read.

The version which I read was one I found available in free digital download form. I put it on a Palm PDA and read it that way at work, during lunch-time.

There was another version I must have come across, for which I had a note that it sounded like it was written for kindergartners.