Have you read the good book?

[Angrboda]

In the other thread on reading common atheist literature, someone mentioned that they'd read the bible twice.  I personally haven't read the bible and I was wondering how many others were like me and hadn't read the bible.

So the question is simple.  Have you read the bible?

[The Valkyrie]

First you said "good book" and then you mentioned the bible.

I've read the bible and it's not a good book (contradictory stories, bad editing, etc.).

[c172]

I don't think I've read it in full. I have my late biological father's (NKJV, I think) from his childhood. I keep meaning to, but it gives me a headache after a few pages.

[The Valkyrie]

I don't think I've read it in full. I have my late biological father's (NKJV, I think) from his childhood. I keep meaning to, but it gives me a headache after a few pages.

That's the demons getting nervous...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Several times, but never for fun. I went to Catholic school and reading the Bible was (not surprisingly) a requirement. I even (surprisingly) won an award - a little silver crucifix - for scripture memorization.

Boru

[Minimalist]

I read the Skeptics Annotated Bible - except for the relentless genealogies which I skipped over.  Sick shit.  Takes a real primitive mind to write crap like that and a real dumbass to believe any of it.

[Jesster]

I've read it all on my own time and went through it all again during bible study groups. That's what started all my questions and uncertainties to help may way toward atheism.

[Rev. Rye]

It can be very tough going, reading the whole thing cover to cover, since its form is extremely eclectic, with various books devoted to the iconic stories that everyone raised Christian knows well, poetry, lists of arcane laws that aren't even enlivened by the multi-generational commentary of books like the Talmud, advice that sounds good even if it doesn't always work out in practice, repetitions of the famous stories with some strange discrepancies between various versions, and the sort of lists of political and historical arcana (which may or may not have some basis in fact, often mythologically based) that tends to be relegated to the appendices of most history books (See the Books of Chronicles).

That said, it's quite a bit more cohesive than one would expect an anthology covering writings over centuries (if not over a millennium) would be, but not by that much.

There's a reason not a lot of Christians (even today, with virtually every translation in the most common languages on Bible Gateway) have read the whole thing cover to cover is what I'm saying.

[Chad32]

I don't think I ever read it cover to cover, but I have read it. I went to church, where it was read to me a lot. When you read it like any other book, instead of reading it "in the spirit of the lord", then it's easy to see why so many people don't take it seriously.

[ignoramus]

I was forced to read bits of it as homework for religious instruction class!
now I'm only a bit of an idiot!

That was in the bad old days when Christianity thought it was the only religion worthy of study in Australia.
Fortunately, as it turns out, none of them are.....none passed our secular bullshit detector...