Start with Daniel, kewl stories, prophecy and there is some short books in the Apocrypha of the KJV, Brentons and others that are a real kewl read to go along with it.
Start with Daniel, kewl stories, prophecy and there is some short books in the Apocrypha of the KJV, Brentons and others that are a real kewl read to go along with it.
Thanks Shoutgrace, will do... (Have to go out and buy one firstOriginally Posted by ShoutGrace
I think it will be a great addition to your life.If read and contemplated at all (even from a skeptical point of view), I think think the Bible contributes greatly to a liberal education generally, and an understanding of the world at large.
I have a couple dozen Bibles, and these translations seem to always be hanging around:
ESV
KJV
NLT
NAB
NASB
RSV
HCSB
NKJV
Let me know if you ever want help picking a translation.)
I read a lot, but every time I start to read the Bible, I stop. All those begats are too much of a pain however much you read! Try reading Dickens or Tolstoy, they should get you reading. Then try Shakespeare.
Woohoo Shakespeare!!
I suppose there are a few different types of bibles.
The one I got for school made it all sound light and fluffy, and a lot shorter than it could be.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?Eliot
I agree, and vote for the Gospel of John. Job, Ecclesiates, the Psalms, and all the rest are great, but as a Christian I look to the New Testament for inspiration, and the Gospel of John affects me the most. I think that his portrayal of he Life of Christ is the most compelling.
Add me to those that think the Gospel of John is the most compelling. But let's put in a good word for Luke for this time of year.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
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My favourite Evangelist. Or maybe I shouldn't pick favourites. There is more, I think, to say about women and children. I like.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?Eliot
Most people think the translators have played it straight with them, to bad they have not.
Simple and easy to spot, where your bible says "end of the world" the real text says end of the age, that is no little difference. Where your bible says "eternal punishment" the real text says age of correction or you can even go age of punishment...
The entire OT has been switched from the original text, sounds preposterous doesn't it?
Odd how theologians denigrate the Septuagint and called it inferior when all the time knowing full well it is the Bible of the Apostles and Christ Himself.
I think that most educated readers who approach the Bible as a work of literature (whether they believe it to be something more or not) realize that translation always entails a certain degree of loss... especially when dealing with a work that is thousands of years old and has no single undisputed "original" text. You speak of the "original" text? What is the original text. With the exception of the fragments discovered recently (ie. the "Dead Sea Scrolls") there is no extant Hebrew Bible in existence which can be dated to anything earlier than the 9th or 10 century AD. The Septuagint may indeed be the closest we get as it provided a Greek translation for the Greek-speaking Jewish communities... and "Old Testament" portions of the Septuagint may date from the 3rd c. BC.
The Masoretic Text is the oldest known Hebrew version of the Hebrew Bible dating to the Rabbinical council dating around 100 AD in which the Septuagint was set aside and the "official" Hebrew text was established... almost certainly through a great deal of translation back into Hebrew from the Greek of the Setuagint and other sources. The Masoretic Text had the advantage over most of the Christian translations of maintaining a strict consistency over the centuries.
And then there is the "Vulgate"... or skipping over the tainted translations in Old Latin... there is Jerome's Bible which employed sources that may predate... or have greater claim to being the "original" text than does the Septuagint. Jerome documents having employed originally a range of Greek translations. Later he speaks of employing a manuscript known as the Hexapla which was prepared by the Greek theologian, Origen (c. 185-254). This was a six-columned text including the "original" Hebrew, the same Hebrew transliterated into the Greek alphabet, and four different Greek translations. This book, unfortunately, is lost to us. Still... considering Jerome's scrupulous editorial nature it is quite likely that the Hebrew texts he employed were quite sound.
It would seem that all three of these elder translations may lay similar claim to the title of the "original text"... at least prior to the discovery of the "dead Sea Scrolls". The Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The texts include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 BCE. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and are most commonly identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic Text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.
The Authorized King James Version of the Bible was translated employing a variety of sources. The Old Testament was largely translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text, while the Apocrypha were translated from the Greek Septuagint, except for 2 Esdras, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate. At the same time, instructions were given to avoid the Puritan or Protestant elements... retaining terms such as "the church" rather than the Protestant "congregation". The text of the Bishops' Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators. The translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the Tyndale Bible (from which such a large portion of the KJV comes that some have credited him along with Shakespeare as the inventors of the Modern English language), the Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner's Bible and the New Testament of the Douai-Rheims Bible.
Personally, of any complete Bible translation in English. I prefer the King James Version. There may be more recent translations that lay greater claim to literal clarity... but I don't see literal clarity as a key element of the Bible. It is quite often a poetic text laden with symbols and metaphors. There may be more recent translations that draw more clearly upon a single "original text"... yet the question still remains as to which "original text" is the most valid. And certainly there are translations of individual books that I find are of equal or greater merit to the same within the KJV. I quite admire Chana and Ariel Bloch's translations of the Song of Songs, Stephen Mitchell's thought-provoking translation of Job, Robert Alter's Five Books of Moses and Book of Psalms (to say nothing of the endless magnificent translations of various Psalms by British poets ranging from Milton to Sidney to Smart to Coleridge.)
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
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Aha. Yer... Now that's what I meant... I think.
I'd get one of those ultra-short childrens editions if you only want something brief to start off with.
Then maybe I'd move onto some other religions, I'm interested in all of that stuff.
As long as you take it all with a grain of salt, probably that is where I think Revelations can be a bit interesting.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?Eliot
Well maybe you should start with some of the smaller readings first. Keeping you "captivated" seems to be a little bit of an issue.
I would have to agree on John. It show Jesus as He really is - true God and true man. Can't beat it. Next I'd pick Psalms.
What Book to Start with in Bible Reading
The book of St John is the best to start with. It starts off telling you exactly who Jesus Is. He's the divine Logos. Unfortunanetly most English translations of the Bible says "Word." From there we go to John the Baptist. The best thing to do is to find an Orthodox Church. Most places have at least one. Find an English speaking Church. I respect all belief systems But it's impossible for one church to sprinkle, another pour. Some have infant Baptism while another adult. Everyone can't be right. Go to www.ancientfaithradio.com I grew up in the Baptist Church and the Church of Christ. I studied and prayed until I couldn't stand it any longer. Then I decided to go back to the beginning, the very beginning. A Church that never made any changes in faith or morals.
I'm partial to the book of Genesis myself. I like creation stories, though, so I suppose it is a bit fitting that this is the one I favor.
Not that I know anything, but having read the Bible cover to cover over half-a-dozen times (and studied for 35 years), I would definitely recommend as a beginning place the book of Mark.
Why? Well, it's short and direct.
A scholar I follow has suggested that the four Gospel narratives were written with a view towards the four types of peoples of the day, viz., Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs.
(There is a numerology system in the Scriptures e.g., 3, 4, 7, 12, etc.).
By this understanding, Matthew is directed towards the Jews; Luke towards the Greeks; John towards the Arabs; and Mark towards the Romans.
And since we as Western cultural folk are in the Roman cultural train, Mark would likely make a more direct appeal.
You could easily read it in one sitting in probably not more than an hour.
Caveat: There is one textual problem: the book of Mark ends with Mark 16:8.
So-called Mark 16:9-20 is spurious: most early manuscripts and witnesses do not include those 12 verses.
I'd start with Matthew or Mark , they're both about Jesus' life here on earth , it's easy to understand . you can also read Isaiah to refer to his prophecies that refer to the birth of Jesus.
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