The Bible

Oh no. The Bible is far more opaque, and the dull spots far duller, than anything Tolkien wrote. Even The Silmarillion isn’t so much.

On the plus side, it has an awesome ending.

It’s the Wish spell. It ages you a year, but I’m pretty sure the wizard in question is a Lich.

So someone passed this link around on Facebook a few weeks ago, and I thought sure, this sounds ridiculous, why not give it a shot?

I did not read the entire Bible in seven days. But I did manage it in eleven. Quick, ask me anything, while I still remember—whoops, there it goes. Just forgot half the Pentateuch.

This guy’s estimates are much faster than I could read, but it was still a fascinating experiment. Even apart from any value you would or wouldn’t find in the Bible itself, it was interesting to see just how long I could read in a stretch, how much time I could carve out of my daily schedule, etc. It also confirmed that of all the normal activities I do, reading is the first to fall apart if I don’t have enough sleep. A lot of sleep. What felt like a good night’s sleep would still have me nodding off mid-Psalm just a half hour into reading the next afternoon.

Anyway, like I said, this was kind of a ridiculous challenge, but I’m glad I stuck it out.

Fascinating. I would never, ever do that, heh. I did try once when I was like 13 or something. I think I made it about ten pages into Genesis.

Glean any insights while you were immersing yourself?

Genesis is rough.

Way easier than Deuteronomy.

Nothing theologically profound, but a better understanding of the flow of the history, especially in the Old Testament. It’s still a little confusing since several books repeat things, but it helped.

When I was growing up, in a moderately strict evangelical household, reading through the Bible was a regular occurrence. I think I did read-through-in-a-year at least 4 times, though I never got anywhere near 11 days, let alone 7. It’s been many years since I read more than a chapter or two on a regular basis, but it’s all still floating around in my subconscious, and some parts are still pretty clear in my memory.

It still amazes me when a Bible reference comes up in conversation, or in a movie or whatever, and someone else doesn’t get it. I know that not everyone cares about it from a religious standpoint, but even if you look at it just as a literary work, there are few (if any) books that are more important as a basis for understanding whole swaths of history and culture.

Heh, repetition is one of the bywords of the Bible, for sure. Different people with different points of view describing the same events, or repetition for the sake of making a point (as in Torah a lot).

I definitely notice that my students in general have no knowledge of any scripture, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu for that matter. It simply isn’t part of their learning.

Does the bible still hold relevance in this post-truth world?

Dunno. It’s never had much relevance for me other than as a historical text and vehicle for some fairly solid if general ethical advice. I’d certainly rather have people ignore it than slavishly try to follow it.

Sure.

As an atheist, I struggled with how many Bible stories I wanted to subject my kids to. On one hand I didn’t want to run the risk of pushing them towards religion, but on the other hand the shared Christian mythology is an important part of communicating with other Americans. I was especially worried when my eldest (then 12) confessed she didn’t have a good grasp on what Easter was all about - Jesus got killed by some guys, and then something happened with a rabbit?

Turns out the was no need to worry. Most American kids seem to be in the same boat: they may get Adam & Eve, Noah’s Ark, and the Christmas story a few years earlier than my daughters did, but they generally don’t know the Passover story, David & Goliath, or what Sodom & Gomorrah were all about. And none of my kids’ peers have the foggiest idea who King David was, who Ezekiel was, or what the ‘Road to Damascus’ means. So if my kids have a better grasp on Shakespeare and Greek mythology than Christian lore, I doubt it’ll hurt them much; as a society, we don’t seem to be pushing those stories as hard as we used to.

As a kid, my moderate-but-devout Catholic parents read a chapter of the Bible to us each night after dinner (skipping the “begats”), and as a teen and young adult I read through the entire King James a couple times… which was probably what pushed me over the edge from “doubter” to atheist.

Your story makes me recall one of my girlfriend’s. She was raised a weird sort of atheist (mom doesn’t believe in god, but thinks their whole family line is cursed by Satan??) with no real knowledge of the Bible.

Anyway, in third grade, her class was tasked with creating Christmas cards depicting biblical stories (because rural Tennessee, y’all), and she wound up making one about the three white men visiting Jesus, much to everyone’s shock/amusement…

I do appreciate the new Pope, who has basically been subtweeting Trump for the last few months.

The phenominon should be called pope-splaining?

Keep going cool pope.

Thank you for sharing. Man, Catholics have a cool Pope! Unlike the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Patiarchate of Alexandria. That Pope isn’t nearly as cool.

I suspect that for non-religious people, the Jesuits would present a very appealing angle on Catholicism and Christianity as a whole.

The Jesuits have always seemed, to me at least, to exemplify the best parts of Christianity.

I attended the Loyola School on Park Avenue for 10th grade. The Jesuits there were pretty badass: clever, funny, erudite. Father Curry, who taught world history, was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.

Incidentally, I watched this series of Yale lectures about the Old Testament and found it pretty fascinating:

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145

Personally, I prefer the Dominican order, but I am biased.

I went to a Dominican College. Edgewood
Which is basically, “Knowledge brings us closer to God” and “Women can go to college too” I got to take a few awesome classes there with some very smart and fun Dominican Sister professors. The religion and Science Fiction lit class I took was awesome.

But yeah, the Jesuits are 'aight too. And pretty much Catholicism in general, as far as someone who is science minded goes.