Sdited version - not sure how that first one went through; not like I hit sumit
Found it boring as all hell in all those years of Catholic schooling/participation. But hey! if you’re at a Motel-Six and forgot your current reading material and really, really don’t want any porn charges on your room bill…then knock yourself out.
Ten minutes of the stuff, roughly equals three Tylenol PMs.
Sweet dreams.
Fuck! “edited” even.
Another atheist chiming in to say “read it”. How can one criticize anything without reading it, was my logic.
I’m all for cultural literacy, but it is REALLY BORING. I’d say read something like “Don’t Know Much About the Bible”. It goes into a lot of detail on who wrote it, which books were accepted and which rejected, etc. There must be a “greatest hits” version with Adam and Eve, Noah, Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, Abraham, etc.
When I was reading the Bible in high school (as an atheist, of my own volition), I noticed something of interest in the begats. I noticed that the chain formed by the begats showed that most of the OT figures came from the same bloodline. Adam, Abraham, Noah, etc were great* grandparents/children of each other.
Also, they sometimes give out random tidbits about unimportant bloodline members. It’s how I know that Nimrod was a mighty hunter.
Hard to tell just what you’d get out of it. Obviously, some people get different things out of it than others. It very much is a collection of different things. As stated, some of it is as exciting as a telephone directory. In a foreign language, nearly. Other parts are interesting enough, some, well, even inspirational.
I’d suggest trying to keep some feel for what the history of it must have been, trying to understand just what the people who wrote it were trying to say, and why.
As with Shakespeare, one problem with the Bible is that the well-known parts have become cliches. “Yay, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil…” Try to read it as though you’ve never heard those words before, and try to feel the new-found courage of the person who first wrote those words.
“In the end, three things abide: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.”
Sure, it’s a cliche now. But it’s a pretty profound cliche.
For me reading the Bible was interesting because I also used Asimov’s Guide to the Bible. I recommend it.
You reminded me of this short version:
***Word, light, man, woman, begat, begat, begat, flood, 10 rules, big wall, trumpet, more rules, rainbow robe, shepherd, star, carpenter, do unto others, fish in a basket, gone-but not for long, convert, convert, convert, 4 horsemen…
I forgot! For a “greatest hits” version, check the fun worth reading and seeing (but sometimes NSFW*) Brick Testament, The Bible with Legos:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/
*I Wonder if like Cecil B. DeMille you can get away with it by saying to your boss that it is OK to show it on the screen because **it is ** the Bible. 
I don’t know either that you should be reading the Bible for moral or practical advice, but one can certainly read a book for purely literary reasons. The Iliad is probably worth reading too, but I hope no one would go out and model their life on it. On a less exalted level, I enjoyed the hell out of Pulp Fiction, but I certainly wouldn’t try to live my life according to its moral precepts.
And there are some pretty badass stories in the Bible. Take Judges 3:12-30:
I definitely think Ehud should be played by Samuel L. Jackson.
This Bible is very useful for the casual reader. It’s the King James version with all the genealogies and arcane Jewish law edited out, and all the chapter and verse headings removed. It’s no more difficult or boring than to read than the Illiad, say, and gives you a good overall idea of what the Bible’s about.
Classical scholar and translator Richmond Lattimore’s version of the New Testament is also very good.
The Bible is an anthology, a collection of a whole bunch of different writings of different genres. If you sit down and try to read it cover to cover, you’re likely to be bored to death before you get through Leviticus (the third book).
The OP’s question should really be answered on a book-by-book basis. If I had time, I could go through and draw up a list of the “must read” parts of the Bible: it would include some of the Old Testament stories, and least a bit of poetry and “wisdom literature,” one or two gospels, and a sampling of Paul’s letters.
I’m a big Asimov fan, and I’ve read his Guide to the Bible, but I found it…inadequate. After you’ve read a full commentary on any of the books of the Bible, where the dissect every portion of every line, you realize how incredibly sparse Asimov’s work is. How did he decide what to comment on, asnd whaty to leave out? Some books of the Bible get only one or two notes! I get the impression of him floundering around, only hitting what he thought particularly interesting or important.
A Bible commentary helps, but I suspect you’ve got to be of a certain mindset to go through line by line like that and derive pleasure from it. I’ve worked my way through several books of the Bible, but it’s not for everyone.
I have several parts of the Bible on audio – the entire New Testament, as well as Genesis and Exodus. It’s definitely easier to be read to that to struggle through.
A not quite so short, but still reduced, version comes from the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Quite a hoot.
Chronicles and Kings are pretty boring - though the parts where the rules beloved of God die young and pointlessly while the ones who God hated lived to ripe old ages were fun. Genesis, though, moves right along. I’d suspect that the summaries leave out the naughty bits and the embarrassing parts.
Nah, I read it and still don’t understand how you believe that guff. I didn’t understand it even when I believed in God, though, being Jewish.
I’m afraid that I agree that this was far from his best work. He was also very reticent about challenging even the most blatant of absurdities. I wasn’t expecting a Skeptics Annotated Bible, but a bit more reality would have helped. I got the sense that he was very worried that it wouldn’t sell if people realized he was an atheist, and he held back. I also agree that his research seemed very superficial, though.
Knowing the Bible is useful when debating creationists. For instance, nothing is quite as pleasurable as when someone claims that dinos and man co-existed because of the “behemoth” passage in Job and the “tail swings like a cedar” bit. What’s funny about that? It’s that if you read the passage in context… er… its pretty plain that “tail” is being used as a euphamism and that what we’re actually talking about is a big eyeful of hippo dick. So much for that theory!
You may not understand why we believe, but you’ll have a pretty good grasp of what we believe.
Parts of the Bible are dead-boring, it’s true. But parts of it are magesterial and beautiful, like Shakespeare. (Especially the King James version.) And, as noted above, there are some great stories in the Bible: Daniel in the Lion’s Den; Jonah and the Whale; Jesus walking on water. Parts are romantic (Song of Solomon) and parts are scary as hell (Revelations):
I mean, jeez – That’s a horror movie, right there. (It’s Rev. 6:1-8, BTW.) But as literature, you can also see the use of repetition and strong imagery indicative of epic poetry.
I think the Bible is an amazing book on several levels, and well worth reading.
. And parts have the strong imagery and use of repetition found in epic poetry:
[quote]
I won’t let my children read it until they are older, just like I wouldn’t let them watch a movie or play a video game that glamorizes rape.
But maybe that’s just me.
I’d have to re-read his introduction, but I think it was a matter of Asimov sticking with what he felt qualified to explain (i.e. the historical context, not the theology).