The Bible is unreadable

[blazeofglory]

Because I'd had no success reading the full Bible I thought I'd try an abridged version ("Testament" abridged by Philip Law). But I couldn't even get through that! It still had too many old prophets charging round the desert doing despicable, meaningless and unmotivated things.

I was reading the Iliad at the same time, and turning to it for light relief! I finished that and started reading Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, so there was then no hope of continuing the Bible! I ground to a halt somewhere in "David" and just couldn't go on...

The "100 minute Bible" has just been delivered, maybe I can finish that!

Are there any out-takes forn the Bible that are actually readable for someone who expects a reasonable aesthetic experience from their reading? People like Stephen Mitchell have translated parts of the Bible (Job, Gospels...) I've a feeling that might be the way to go, i.e., read the parts that good writers and poets have felt worth translating.... Any recommendations along this line?

Of course I too feel like that.

[ntropyincarnate]

If you want readable it's mostly in the New Testament. Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon are good too. IMHO

Definitely skip at least the first 5 books, and pretty much anything before the prophets. Isaiah has some pretty sweet stuff in it, I know, but the rest of the prophets I'm not as familiar with, so I couldn't say

Skip the first five books??!! That would be the Pentateuch... the Torah... pretty much the core narratives of the Hebrew Bible.

Yes, but they are also as boring as all hell. And so repetitive. I'm just saying, for readability...if you're just reading it for pleasure, the Pentateuch is a killer.

[JBI]

The Bible is essentially a collection of loosely related and unrelated texts that represent the collective "history" of the Hebrew people. One might imagine what a post-Apocalyptic Bible of our culture might be like if it were to constructed of fragments of various lengths of Shakespeare (narrative), Blake and Baudelaire as well as lyrics of a few popular songs (poetry), bits of the Bill or Rights and the legal code of New York State (law), brief comments by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Goethe (proverbs), etc...

The Bible is only a fraction - the Hebrew Canon is much larger in places, and smaller in others (the Apocrypha is a Christian decision). The so called Collective History reading works only when you approach it from that angle - the King James though, if read as a single book, is not taking that angle - one would need to be versed in exterior Jewish scripture, and Rabbinic interpretation to understand a Jewish perspective - something which is very hard to do, given the intense amount of Hebrew and Aramaic scholarship written for thousands of years. The tradition itself isn't very static - the book is constantly changing, and being built upon. Commentary, and the understanding of the text functions more like an oral form of communication than a written one, and so, the interpretation is subject to additional argument centuries in the future - sort of like its own literary tradition.

[stlukesguild]

Yes, but they are also as boring as all hell. And so repetitive. I'm just saying, for readability...if you're just reading it for pleasure, the Pentateuch is a killer.

Obviously it depends upon the reader. "Boring" would seem to be a rather subjective criticism. We've had endless posters declare that everything from Mozart to Shakespeare to Moby Dick is "boring". I personally find the narratives of the creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Exodus from Egypt etc... to be among the most memorable of narratives. Considering their impact upon Western civilization and Western culture (literature, art, music, philosophy) it would seem that I am not alone. I would agree that Exodus in places... and more so Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are perplexing... even frustrating in the interpolation of repetitive historical minutiae, ritual, and Hebrew law and legislative records. There are passages of profundity, but especially in the last 3 books one must dig through a great deal that is unquestionably "mundane" to find it. Genesis especially, and Exodus, however, offer a nearly unrivaled wealth of narratives that combine into a single tale that traverses from the very creation of the universe to the the enslavement of the Hebrew peoples to their eventual triumphal exodus from out of Egypt. This narrative mirrors, in many ways, the later narratives/histories of the later rise of Israel followed by its eventual fall and "Babylonian" captivity. Part of the notion of the Documentary Hypothesis and the effort to discern the various authors of voices within the Pentateuch and the later "historical narratives" (The Saul, David, Solomon tales) is geared toward developing the ability to recognize or even read the great narratives as separate from later interpolations of Hebrew strictures.

[Red-Headed]

The Bible is unreadable

I've decided to wait for the movie...

[mal4mac]

Yes, but they are also as boring as all hell. And so repetitive. I'm just saying, for readability...if you're just reading it for pleasure, the Pentateuch is a killer.

Any why four gospels telling pretty much the same story? I wouldn't even read four versions of Hamlet back to back. "Testament" condenses the four gospels into one, which was a major selling point for me!

[mal4mac]

I personally find the narratives of the creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Exodus from Egypt etc... to be among the most memorable of narratives.

I agree. It's after that point that it became unreadable for me. I managed to slog through Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, Ruth... but in Samuel the wheel's came off! I hit David and Goliath with some relief, but was then hugely disappointed to be dragged through David's later career as a paranoid megalomaniac... Maybe it was disappointment about the "boy gone bad", or maybe the endless lists of obscure destroyed tribes, people and places, but I couldn't go on. I turned to Blood Meridian and 'the Wire' for simpler language and manageable violence...

Maybe I need a good Bible commentary? But it's difficult to find readable ones! They tend to add pedantic scholarship to obscurity. Maybe I just need to skip the Bible and read Shakespeare, Milton, Dante... with good notes explaining the biblical references in full!

Anyone read "Asimov's Guide to the Bible"? Does that give good advice on skipping?

[Morden]

I have read the Bible and have it here alongside me, and I strongly endorse all the good things that have been said above about reading the Bible, and especially the KJV. I'd like to add just one practical note.

One really ought to read the whole thing once. Just slog through it!
At least that way you will know what is in it, before throwing stones.

And, who knows, you might come to appreciate it in some sense. But you don't have to. After you read it, that is up to you.

[NickAdams]

The Bible is unreadable

I've decided to wait for the movie...

Start with Life of Brian.

[Three Sparrows]

Wow...slogging through the Bible? I'm speechless. The only thing I don't find very interesting in the Bible is the long lists of names. It's a History too, so if you like reading history, you should like this. But then, since your only reading it "just 'cause," you might not be struck with it the way a Christian or a wannabe Christian would. Maybe you should wait a bit before trying again, meanwhile trying to be more open-minded towards religion. The right state of mind might help you to get through it better.

[Morden]

I didn't mind the lists of names.
I read through them just to see what names were like, and also on the chance that there might be some structure or relatedness to them rather than just the randomness of names. And I only had to do them once, no matter how much I look at and reread other parts of the Bible, so no big loss.

Not every thing in life comes with jelly and sugar on top.

[Virgil]

Personally I would beg to differ with the assertions as the the "unreadability" of the Bible. I would personally place it along side of Shakespeare, Dante, and a few other absolute essential texts... speaking purely in aesthetic terms. If you are reading the Bible in English I would insist that there is only one translation of the entire text worthy of consideration and that is the King James Version.

I used to say that myself StLukes, but I've changed my opinion. I've been in the process of reading different books of the Bible both in the King James Version and a modern translation (I'm using the Roman Catholic translation New American Bible, NAB) and while the King James sounds poetic in places it it is very awkward and archaic and tedious in others. Sure for the occaisional passage the king James soars, but as a whole I don't find it worth it. I have come to definitely prefer the modern translation, at least the NAB version.

Here are a couple of web sites on what to look for in a translation:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Bibl...ions_Guide.asp

[Red-Headed]

Start with Life of Brian.

Yeah, but that's New Testament. I should really start at the beginning! Maybe somewhere around the Ten Commandments!

[stlukesguild]

Personally, I don't find the King James Version to be any more archaic than Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, Donne, Herrick, or even Milton. In other words... it certainly is written in a form of English that is outdated... but in no way inferior. If anything, it actually has the advantage of a far greater sense of poetry. It must also be credited, along-side of Shakespeare, of actually being the virtual foundation of "modern English". Milton, Christopher Smart, Thomas Traherne, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and endless writers are deeply in debt to the language and the flow and the cadence of the Bible as imagined in the KJV.

I can't speak specifically to the Roman Catholic New American Bible translation, but I will say that most contemporary translations I have read have been perhaps easier to understand in terms of "meaning" but frequently lose any sense of the poetry and are reduced to a middling pedestrian quality. As many scholars have pointed out, many of the modern translations are actually less accurate than the KJV in that they downplay the poetry, the metaphor, the intentional use of repetition and the often kill the intent with their attempt at naturalism and colloquialism.

I would certainly not limit my experience to the KJV, but look into a number of quality translations of various sections or books of the Bible in order to gain an alternative view. I believe multiple translations are a must when dealing with such an iconic work, and I have employed such with Homer, Virgil, and Dante and others as well. Again, I would especially recommend Robert Alter's translations of The Five Books of Moses, The David Story, and the Psalms. I'd also recommend A Poet's Book of Psalms edited by Lawrence Wieder in which the author selects what he considers to be the finest English translation of each of the Psalms (as poetry) by poets including Robert Burns, John Milton, Phillip Sidney, John Davies, Thomas Wyatt, Christopher Smart, Thomas Campion, Mary Sidney Herbert, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc... and one might wish to make a further exploration of the translation of Psalms by Sidney, his sister, Christopher Smart, and others. I'd also recommend Stephen Mitchell's Job and Chana and Ariel Bloch's Song of Songs. Another recommendation would be that of Richard Lattimore's translations of the Gospels and other New Testament books from the Greek.

As an interesting aside it might be noted that poetic translations of the Psalms were almost immediately begun following the completion of the KJV as it was recognized that there was a real shortcoming there. The KJV or the Psalms are quite beautiful... but with a few key exceptions (the most obvious being the beloved 23rd Psalm) they read as English prose... lovely prose... but prose none-the-less. various poets immediately took up the challenge of translating these Hebrew poems into English verse.

[Red-Headed]

Personally, I don't find the King James Version to be any more archaic than Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, Donne, Herrick, or even Milton.

The KJV often employs out-dated (even for the Jacobeans) nominative pronouns like 'thou' & other archaic forms originally to give it some gravitas for its intended audience. These were not in general use in southern English. Some, like 'thee' (accusative) still exist as the familial in parts of the North. The dative 'Yeow' is still used in parts of the Midlands (Black Country) but now only as a familial.