Have you read the Bible?

IMHO, King James Version is good for the New Testament, perhaps Psalms and the poetic books, and maybe for the occasional beautiful rendering of a section. Otherwise, I do not think you should read a KJV bible from front to back (Genesis to Revelation) because most OT books are just too clunky and repetitive for the KJV's already old-school rendering. The formatting of newer translations, along with their more easily decipherable language, makes a lot of the early pain from the Moses books up to Kings more bearable.

In a word:
On a line by line basis, the KJV is probably best. But unless you want to spend 2 years reading the whole Bible due to reading only a couple lines per day, you might want something that is smoother to read large chunks of.

I'm a fan of the NRSV, personally. I'd recommend BibleGateway to compare translations.

i've read a decent amount

book of John and book of Genesis are my favorites

1 & 2 Kings are still probably one of the greatest tragedies ever to be put to text

My favorite books are Genesis, Judges, Samuel, Kings, fuck it I'm going to say Chronicles too, Jonah, Daniel, Maccabees, If I could only pick one gospel it would be Matthew, Acts, and Revelation.

>reading numbers
>Moses talks God out of killing people multiple times
I thought he was omnipotent, what's up with this?

Do you mean omniscient?

Yes, why does he need Moses to explain why killing everyone would make him look bad?

Let's back up a minute. Why would Moses asking God not to kill somebody contradict his omniscience?

Jewish god is different than real god.

God wanted to kill all the Jews and then
>Moses: But then all the Egyptians would think you're dumb for leading everyone out to the desert just to kill them
so he doesn't.

Is there any reason God couldn't foretell what Moses was going to say and act accordingly? In other words, in order to make a point, God acted a certain way knowing that Moses was going to pray to him.

The bible is not for brainlets. Try again later.

Probably 40 times with childrens bibles, once KJV, once with a catholic study bible, and on demand with a Oxford NRSV.

Favorite parts:

As a child: Mark's crucifixion, exodus, kings, and judges

As an adult: Mark, James, Acts, Ecclesiastes, Job

Its pretty clear God was nudging the Israelites, especially Moses along.

I think Exodus is a pretty clear argument against God knowing the future, but instead acting to guide us towards his preferred outcome.

Why couldn't God both know the future and guide us?

I think he knows the universal future, he created physics, laws of nature, genetics, the human form, the human brain, etc.

But within the context of human action, our free will, to the extent our biological natures allow us, requires God to establish moral law, reward, and punishment, ie his response to the apple, his punishments of the israelites for their constant fuckups, and his revelations to Jesus as to proper human action.

I started it on Sunday, I read Genesis.

Can I skip all of the family explanations or what? Every time there's an exposition on a family, over 95% of the names are of people who basically don't appear in that story again. And the ones who do are usually followed with a refresher to remind you
>Joseph, who Is the son of Jacob, etc...

>Can I skip all of the family explanations
yes

Yes you can. You can parse some interesting things with a careful reading of them but for a first time reader don't bother. All you really need to know about them is that in Genesis a genealogy implies a passage of time within the narrative.

almost finished the whole thing, currently reading through Corinthians.

I read the KJV 1611 edition with Apocrypha. instead of favourite parts, let's post our top 3 favourite books, for me it:
1. Ecclesiastes
2. Job
3. Genesis

other honorable mentions: Jonah, Judith, Esther, Samuel 2, John.

I read The Catholic Youth Bible that I got for graduating middle school years ago, it had The New Revised Standard Edition text + prayer guides and historical notes. Pretty good read.
Top 3 Books
>Genesis
>Leviticus (I find law interesting)
>Proverbs

That's a very archaic story from a time when God probably didn't have the concept of omniscience applied to him. God changes his mind multiple times in the Old Testament.

elberfelder

Absolutely, they're not necessary to understand the story on a first-time reading.

Also, you can skip the huge tabernacle description in Exodus, just google reconstructions of the tabernacle to see
what it was meant to look like. Also Leviticus is very tedious. It's mostly rituals for Israelite priests, very important in Israelite culture, but a chore to read. Look up a summary of it instead and come back to it later.

The fastest growing christian country has an avg IQ of 80 so i disagree

You don't need to read the bible in order to be a Christian, let alone understand it.

Ok so what does the circumcision of a 100 year old man represent? And how is christianity not an offshoot of judiasm?

I haven't read it, but most of the stories were taught in kindergarten.

It's a mark of the covenant. It's no different than a monk who shaves his head. It's something they did to set themselves apart from the pagans. I don't know what it means to be an offshoot of Judaism but nobody is denying that Christianity is not rooted in Judaism.

You don't need to be a christian in order to appreciate the Bible, in the same way that you don't need to believe in Zeus in order to appreciate the Iliad or literature based on ancient greek myths.

Obviously, but why the penis? And why cut off a part of it? What did G-d mean by choosing this specifically?

Circumcision was usually reserved for the priesthood of ANE kingdoms as a physical mark of their special status. At some point the Israelites expanded this to their whole male population to show that they were all the chosen people of their god, and were set apart from the other nations.

Think of it as a sacrifice. The more something means to you the more valuable it is as a sacrifice, and what could be more valuable to a man than his penis? I think there can be multiple purposes that God might ask the ancient Israelite for circumcision. A practical benefit is that it might serve as a reminder of who you are as God's chosen, so you might not be tempted by pagan idolatry-- in that it separates the Jews who sacrifice a part of themselves from their pagan neighbors who were sacrificing other people. Above all it's a reminder of the covenant promises.

If I had I pick one favorite part, the Books of Samuel. They're an excellent literary novel on their own and just a great story.

all the sex scenes, pretty unnecessary, but I guess even monks need entertainment.

I agree, it's a great heroic story.

Yes, I'm a Catholic, I tend to read it quite a bit.

Favourite part is probably the Epistle to Titus.

"more easily decipherable language"

mfw kjv is 6th grade English.

Secondly, KJV is the ONLY bible God preserved.

Tried.

It's boring as heck

>pagan neighbors who were sacrificing other people
>this is what christian actually believe

Sigh

This is what virtually every historian believes.

>posts picture of jewish god
blasphemy!

Only christcucks are dumb enough to believe pagans randomly sacrificed people, they "sacrificed" criminals and degenerates which is good

the romans and greeks knew that the mediterranean nations sacrificed children en masse

I really enjoy Joseph's story. He's so full of himself that you can't really blame his brothers for getting rid of him, but he goes through so much shit that it's actually nice to see him come out on top in the end. There's also prophetic dreams, which are fun. His story's also important for setting up Exodus, as it establishes why his family's in Egypt and why the Egyptians were done with them and enslaved them.

When Jesus is about to face his last moments on earth, he is about to be crucified

He is sad and in pain, because he knows how gigantic the suffering waiting for him is, and when he is praying he is saying something in long with those lines

''Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done”

This is fucking insane, he knows he is going to suffer but still he doesn't want to escape he wants the will of God to prevail because he knows hes right no matter what

The ''Non timebo mala'' is also always in my mind, gotta sleep now

No, they didn't.

Same, it's a really awesome fall and rise story.

I love the irony that his brothers are the ones who get him to Egypt which eventually fulfills the prophecy they were angry about in the first place.

>The son's will is different to the father's

Christ has two wills, yes? There was a council on this.

Read it while I was in a psychiatric hospital.

Not because I was inherently religious or interested in becoming religious, you must understand. The "library" was just ridiculously small and I ran out of stuff to read.

Absolutely hated whatever book it was where it repeated the exact specifications of the ark of the covenant over and over. It was quite near the beginning, and after that the rest was fine, but fuck that part of the bible in particular.

I started reading the bible and eventually started to skim these parts. It's extremely boring.

I read it the first time, got bored part-way through the tent description, why did it have to describe the tent too anyway, somehow muddled through, and then got to the second complete description of the entire process and just about threw the thing across the room, at which point I began skim reading sections that looked repetitious.

That's Exodus. It's probably the worst part of the whole Bible, even the other boring parts like ritual laws and name lists have some religious significance, but the tabernacle stuff is absolutely pointless. All you need to know is that there's a box with the tablets of the law in it, and that there's an enclosure with a tent, altar and candlestick. For some reason that takes 11 chapters to describe.

Brotip: for anyone starting the Bible, this is stuff you can skip on your first read-through:

Genesis 10 and 36
>name lists

Exodus 25-31 and 36-39
>ark and tabernacle autism

Numbers 1-8
>tribe lists

1 Kings 7
>Boring description of the Temple in the vein of the tabernacle descriptions

All of 1 and 2 Chronicles
>starts with boring name lists and the rest is very similar to 1 and 2 Kings. Maybe read the last chapter for a snippet about the Persians.

Nehemiah 12
>Name list

Also, it's not necessary to read every single Psalm. Read a few from each of the 'books' and you'll have a good idea of what they are. The psalm books are:

Book One - Ps 1-41
Book Two - Ps 42-72
Book Three - Ps 73-89
Book Four - Ps 90-106
Book Five - Ps 107-150

Eastern Orthodox also have Psalm 151.

Forgot Genesis 5 for another name list

I get that people would want to skip these parts, but honestly seems a little pleb to me to skip shit. just read it anyways and skip it the second time or something.

its shitty literature.

if seen as a work of fiction, its inconsistent af and written badly.

if seen as a historical record...
...it's ALSO inconsistent af and written badly.

So yeah, i suppose it does take a minimum amount of intelligence to understand it, but only because it's written badly.

What is stil sacrifice.
Pagancuck.

Not a Chistfag, but you know nothing about pagan practices. Read The Golden Bough. High-status sacrifices were considered the best and most powerful, criminals and lowlives the worst.

The beginning of Matthew's Gospel. All that begetting gives me a boner.

Or maybe its because it was written thousand years ago?
I can take a look at some cavemen drawing and understand what they tried to mean, even tho the proportions and anatomy are fucked up

Calling the bible bullshit because "muh inconsistencies" is fucking retarded, you literally can't make a effort to understand a book who survived thousand of years and act so smug about it
Typical brainlet overconfidence in things he has no idea of

Yes. I like the gospel according to John. Ignore the Old Testament; it shouldn’t be part of the Bible, IMO. It should be optional background reading and not part of *the* holy book of Christianity. The New Testament is all you need to become a Christian.

I see you swallowed the Varg pill. He's an apologist. Don't buy into it. They in fact did sacrifice people who were not criminals.

This was meant for

>a book who survived thousand of years
You haven't a clue what the Bible is, or how and when it was compiled.

Trips of Truth, cute Christ-chan have spoken!

>If so, what was your favorite part?
all of historical, so epic.
>So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city
it seems like ancient jews are skyrimean Tongues

Ezra and all of Maccabees

no fruit
evicted from garden
slice your peepees
inundated
made into slaves
don't touch my ride
etc.
then God shows up and calls them devil children

The Books of the Maccabees are very-action writing. I like both.

The Bible isn't a novel, you're not skipping part of the story, you're skipping intricate details that you don't need to know if you're just beginning. They're important, but you won't understand why if you don't even know the overall themes.

And have you read Leviticus all the way through? If so, how much of it did you really take in?

Why don't protestant Bibles get Maccabees?

Because they don't use the same Bible that Jesus used, instead they opt for the canon the Jews adopted in the 3rd century.

>''Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done”
I always loved this line too.

Its the duality of the spirit faggit

The animal in him wants to do what any men do in danger, retreat, protect himself, act thinking with his monkey brain

The man is the spirit, he knows God is right because he simply is and his will should prevail no matter the pain

pidginbible.org/Concindex.html
This is the superior version

God bless you Christ-chan

Pleb detected

but there are more than two books of Maccabees

Yes, as a materialist and student of human history and civilisations I considered it important.

Favourite part was the book of Ecclesiastes, while the rest of the old testament seems like the historical record of a tribal peoples this feels a lot more philosophical, thoughtful, genuinely trying to wrestle with existential concerns, the sort that we still struggle with today, hence its a lot more interesting.

>Da Jesus Book
holy kek

Rec me parts that will make me want to read the bible, that will blow my mind, the saddest ones too, if possible.