Has anyone actually ever read the Bible from cover to cover?

I can confirm with the Bible you are going to need some references to fully understand it. There are just tons of little things that if you don't really have any context just aren't going to make any sense

>What did the Ethiopian say about Isaiah?

>letting the church dictate what the Bible says

>fucking Catholics

Yea, that Ethiopian should have been like, "Fuck off. I know what this means."

Well thank you for answering in my stead
You don't need literature classes or a phd thesis to understand classics, my point is there is a hard way and there is an easy way. There are people who spent their decades examining those works, from staunch atheists to the most pious christians, use them. They will make your reading much better and I would say much enjoyable

Moreover, recognize the time and culture gap. If you were a rich jew, educated in greco-roman style and lived in 1st century and was well versed in Judaism I would say no you don't need to know much before reading Paul's letters. But the scholarship and commentaries would enlighten a lot of things that Paul assumes his readers would not but would be quite difficult or confusing to modern readers.

and you don't need to be a catholic to read catholic commentary etc, I'm an atheist and my favoirte commentary is the orthodox study bible. I do suggest it actually its quite nice to read the bible alongside the commentaries of the chruchfathes,but this might be too much for beginners.

thomasnelson.com/the-orthodox-study-bible

no, never in the history of mankind

>Ethiopian asks Catholic Church what bible means
>Catholic Church tells him give me money or go to hell

>Ethiopian can't even read the Bible bc Catholic Church only prints it in Latin

Fucking Catholics

No. I've tried several times but i always give up on Numbers. Not that i've only read that. It's just... the prose is so trite.

Sorry, i'm not interested in the bible.

I've been meaning to for years but I just can't muster the will and my backlog is constantly growing. I read the entirety of the New Testament when I was like 10 or 11 because of my First Communion + some Old Testament books that I found interesting. All in all, I must have read like 4/6s of the entire thing but I'm sure most of the real meaningful stuff just flew over my head because I was too young. I remember being angry at Jesus and wanting him to tell him to shut up when he tells that guy to just follow him and not even bother burying his father.

Loads of people but that's a stupid way to read it. I've read almost all of it but I did it by genre, e.g. narrative, law, etc. Also re-reading important books and reading relevant background information. Learning about ancient near eastern cultic practices was incredibly useful for reading Leviticus, for example. Reading it through like a novel means a lot will go over your head.

Made it through to Deuteronomy before I had to take a break to read other books because the amount of (seemingly) irrelevant communal law was really killing me. I've wanted to come back to it, but it's so hard to psyche myself up to power through it. At least Joshua is supposed to be a bit interesting.

>Joshua
Prepare for detailed descriptions of land boundaries and lists of cities.

Unpopular opinion I secretly concur to:
>Old Testament have lots of garbage books, like Numbers.

Wisdom > Old Test > Shit > New Test > Post New Test

Please, go ahead, tell me ANYONE on Veeky Forums disagrees with this

you know ethiopians have their own church and bible?

I've been reading it off and on for two years now. I've read around two thirds of it so far. Also, I know a good amount of what happens in some of the parts I haven't read yet, because of church, school, and my parents.

Apostolic Letters=Wisdom>Torah>Gospels>Prophets>the rest
t.biased Christfriend

How fucking long did that take you? Several books are in excess of 70 chapters.

i read it cover to cover
re-read it in the ways i was told was best
each time going through commentary on every book and most chapters
do it

>re-read it in the ways i was told was best
Post the order. I did a cover-to-cover lsst year for familiarization and I think this year I might do this approach.

What commentaries would you recommend, besides the orthodox one? Maybe something not geared toward Christians. I just want to read the bible and get the references and that kind of stuff.

Nobody has and never will

Not them, but try the Oxford Study Bible.

Do you understand analogy?

I did, it's no big deal.