The Bible is boring and insipid

486 thoughts on “The Bible is boring and insipid”

1. You’re absolutely right about most of this. The Bible is not great literature, not by the standards of the modern age. So much of it is just the folklore of ancient Hebrew tribes – it was relevant to them, it served as a socially cohesive force, but it wasn’t well written even by the standards of early narrative conventions. You can compare the Hebrew myths to Amerindian or Graeco-Roman myths, and the Hebrew myths are invariably the least interesting or imaginative.

   Part of the reason for this is that the Bible is a total hodgepodge. At least short story compilations have one thing in common: they are all short stories. The Bible is a bunch of edited histories, genealogies, religious laws, theology, etc.; all written by different authors with different sensibilities, agendas, beliefs, and levels of skill; with the sharp differences eroded by the effects of time, retelling, revisions, copying errors, and loose translations (the KJV, although the most visible version of the Bible, is one of the worst examples of bad translation as I understand it).

   That said, if I had to pick out parts of the Bible that are worth reading, I’d go with Ecclesiastes, almost exclusively, but Job has some worth as well. Much of the Bible is just poor, pointlessly barbaric, wrong, confused, or contradictory. Not that I’ve read it recently…

   Ecclesiastes is almost comparable to the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto of Ovid in the depth of its sorrow and its value as a lament. It’s a decent exposition in a line of thought that runs through human history, embodied in works like “Hamlet,” “Notes from Underground,” the poetry of John Donne, and the writings of the existentialists. From what I can tell, it doesn’t actually fit in with the rest of the Hewbrew books, and some people think it owes a debt to Stoicism and Epicureanism (though dating is disputed), much as the Gospel of Thomas is seen as possibly owing a debt to Indian philosophy.

   Job is historically well-regarded because it is actually narrative, and, if you ignore what it implies for theology (i.e. God is a dick), it’s a decent allegory about a man who tries to hold on to his ideals and his virtues in the face of overwhelming opposition.

   Also, for my part, I was never a fan of Proverbs, and the Psalms are grossly overrated (I like a grand total of about three of them). Both are essentially the barest, most unornamented didactic “poetry” advocating self-abasement and fanaticism.

   1. I think the part about God being a dick is the selling point of Job. Job is kind of an anti-theodicy book. Job’s friends spout all the normal nonsense about why there is suffering in the world, insisting that God is Good and so, if Job is suffering, Job must be Bad. Job, the book, pulls back the curtain and makes it clear that all the suffering is for…. a dare. A simple dare, nothing more. Job isn’t bad at all. He’s the best even. But God lets him be tortured nonetheless. Job, the man, is inspiring, because even faced with a wicked and powerful God he doesn’t shy away from calling God wicked. The best part of the book is that, in the end, God admits that, yeah, Job told the truth about God. Ha. Jokes on everyone. You got me. I am a fiend! God even makes the friends, who spout the normal pious nonsense about God’s goodness go ask Job’s forgiveness for spouting this pious nonsense.

      The book of Job had to be written by an ancient skeptic. It’s a little surprising that it made it into the Bible.

      1. Yeah, Job actually ridicules the common religious question: “What did you do to deserve it?”

      2. “The book of Job had to be written by an ancient skeptic.”

         I’ve often wondered the same thing.

         Job asks for an explanation of God’s justice, and instead receives a demonstration of God’s power. As if the two were the same thing.

         The moral if the book is that might makes right, God is a jackass and you need to just sit there and take it because you’re a powerless, worthless nothing.

         Unfortunately, the apologetic “explanations” that have soft-pedaled what Job “means” is the equivalent of smearing Vaseline on the lens of the projector at a movie theater. It hides the reality of the story.

         Reading Job for yourself, and then reading what believers say about it, is a demonstration of an incredible intellectual disconnect. God CAN’T be a fascistic jerk, so we’ll pretend it doesn’t mean that.

         1. That’s an excellent description of how people alter the message to make it fit expectations. We can see the revisions piling up in the New Testament, as people added what they expected to see. Of course God would tell women to shut up! Of course a proper messiah would be a superhuman deity! Of course he would have the omnipotent power to destroy everybody I hate!

2. Oh, and I forgot to add that when I asked my mom why we even had a bible in the house, since no one ever even opened it, not once. She replied, “It’s been blessed by a priest”. Which means, I thought at the time, that its sole purpose was to be used against vampires.

3. You’re not the first to try this. Slate published this some time back.

   http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/blogging_the_bible/2006/09/the_complete_blogging_the_bible.single.html

4. In all the time that I have personally discussed the christian faith and the bible with believers I am always stunned by the fact that they do not know the book that they
   esteem as the word of their sky-father. I read the book and became a nonbeliever, yes indeed.

   1. “I am always stunned by the fact that they do not know the book that they esteem as the word of their sky-father.”

      And for me, even more stunning: they don’t seem to care that they don’t know. Are there any other religions where believers actually seem happy to avoid the central texts of their beliefs?

5. Why even torture yourself reading drivel that even the raptured can’t bring themselves to plod through. I’m sure every page is every bit as torturous as it was when I was force fed it as a child. Even then I could not bring myself to read more than a handful of pages. I’m not about to abuse myself in old age by again attempting to read it. I will just have to acknowledge that that my scholarship of the worst Good Book ever written is woefully deficient and I hope to keep it that way.

6. The parts of the Bible I enjoy reading always fall into one of two categories: either moments in which the writer demonstrates some decent poetic skill, like in parts of Song of Solomon, and a few moments in the book of Proverbs, or, the more skillfully structured narrative sections, the stories. I got into the cautionary tale of King Nimrod and his tower of Babel—the age-old story of a monarch’s hubris (in which the moral is Don’t F with Mr. Deity, you lowly humans!). And, the last time I read the story of Samson, I recall thinking it was genuinely kind of moving and sad—not to mention funny: e.g., Samson, on his way someplace, gets jumped by a lion, who is the most unlucky lion ever since he messed with the only human who has God-given super strength. Samson rumbles with the lion, tearing it apart like an animal cracker before casually strolling on his way. Presumably while the theme from Shaft plays in the background.

7. Some things are not meant to be read, e.g., Shakespeare’s plays. One should not read them, one should see them acted out. Waiting for Godot is a horrible slog of a read, but watching it is a transcendental experience. The same is true with The Book. It is a fairy tale that is not read alone, rather is a series of tales meant to be told, to people lost out in the desert, hoping to reach the next oasis without dying.
   And as others probably noted, (I just skimmed so far) it was put together in committee by illiterate pompous fools. Tell me, when’s the last time you read a bill from some legislative body and said, that’s some good writing. Take it from Dr Boli, Easy reading is damn hard writing.

   1. Though in defence of reading Shakespeare’s plays, they do have a coherent plot and the dialogue is good, so in fact reading them is not a painful experience. Which is more than can be said of the Bible.

      1. >>Some things are not meant to be read, e.g., Shakespeare’s plays.

         In the friendliest possible way, I’d have to disagree! The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists had a brilliant ear for English, and I’m always thrilled not only by Shakespeare, but also by Webster and Tourneur (or whoever it was that wrote THE REVENGER’S TRAGEDY). For me, their plays read beautifully.

   2. Reading Shakespeare isn’t too bad, Chaucer is a PITA.

      However, if you read Chaucer out loud it makes a hell of a lot more sense.

8. I am almost sure that someone must have posted this before this website, but several indirect retellings of Biblical episodes can be found in George Bernard Shaw’s short story The Black Girl in Search of God, which chronicles the adventures of an African girl going in search of the Biblical god she has been proselytized about. Interestingly, I remember I read this story on either Wikisource or Project Gutenberg a few years ago, but I can’t find a legal online version of it now.

9. Yeah, it’s mostly not too useful but an overall knowledge of it is important. For those who are interested and can’t be bothered with the tome itself, I’m working on a super-abridged version (from an atheist perspective of course!) and am about 3/4 of the way through the OT:

   http://anadder.com/the-super-abridged-bible-project

10. If, allegedly, God is our father, then isn’t the Book of Revelation a how-to manual for child abuse?

    1. Well, Revelation is sort of different than the story of the prodigal son.

    2. In the Book of Revelation, God the Father is more like the Godfather!

11. Hi there,

    I too have tried to read the bible from cover to cover. Mainly because I was required to study it at school from primary to secondary school.

    Of course they only present the portions that suit the school and not the graphic, violent or contradictory parts.

    I haven’t been as successful as you and have given up a little earlier. I cannot see the poetry, however Genesis is entertaining if only to realise that the commonly known stories we see on tv, in childrens books or taught in schools are heavily edited and sanitised.

    The version I am reading is the Gideon version found in the bedside drawer of any hotel or motel room in this part of the world. Is this the best version to read?

    If so, why do you think that the fundamentalist believers who take Genesis literally, do not build alters and perform sacrifices? The requirement and rules for doing this are very clear.

12. I wonder how many visitors here have actually read the damn thing.

    Yeah, I’ve read the KJV right through a couple of times.

    The KJV has a big advantage over a lot of the modern versions – it has something of an ear for the English language.

    The NIV reads like a damn laundry list, and a 1600 page (or whatever it is) laundry list is agony. The story is every bit as bad, but it’s much more boring and bland.

13. “I know that Richard Dawkins and others tout the Bible’s beautiful poetry, and indeed, there is some, but I wonder how much of that poetry was in the original, and how much was value added by King James’s group of translators.”

    I think that’s a bit unfair to Richart Dawkins. The impression I have from reading his books (and this is an impression from memory, I haven’t gone back to check) is that he regards the Bible as a significant work in English culture, which includes *some* fine pieces of prose. I don’t think he’s ever recommended it as an enjoyable read.

    I’d contrast that with his view (IIRC) of religious music, which does include some very fine and inspiring works.

    I don’t think I’ve misrepresented him here, apologies if I have.

    P.S. I’d say *all* the poetry is down to the translators. Generally, poetry doesn’t translate well.

14. Of biological interest – I just followed Blueollie’s trackback (at the bottom of this page) and he has a fascinating piccy of a handful of tiny toads. About the size of flies.

15. A nit-picking point about your sentence, “Remember that the average life span at the time was certainly less than 40 years.”. While 40 years was the life expectancy then, the life span then was exactly as it is today.

16. (Sorry for my bad english)

    If you want to enjoy the Bible, you have to read that like alien science fiction.

    If you expect love and good things from the bible, it will be boring. If you expect a crazy god with a personality disorder and you want to know the next crazy thing will do (and how the poor humanity will cope with him) it’s a good (not great) book (and the pentateuch the best part).

    Btw to read the gospel and all the new testament (but more important for the gospels) you need to read some Historical introduction or else you will miss the point of the entire NT. I like the Bart Ehrman introduction (link here).

    http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340435355&sr=1-1&keywords=The+New+Testament%3A+A+Historical+Introduction+to+the+Early+Christian+Writings+5+edition

    Without knowing the context, reading the gospel it’s useless and you can’t really understand them (and in fact here in Italy i know 1000 catholics and only 2 of them have read the gospels).

    Read the revelation without a commentary (it’s all figurative) will be pointless.

    I love your posts Jerry!

17. Plz erase my first comment!

    (Sorry for my bad english)

    If you want to enjoy the Bible, you have to read that like alien science fiction.

    If you expect love and good things from the bible, it will be boring. If you expect a crazy god with a personality disorder and you want to know the next crazy thing will do (and how the poor humanity will cope with him) it\’s a good (not great) book (and the pentateuch the best part).

    Btw to read the gospel and all the new testament (but more important for the gospels) you need to read some Historical introduction or else you will miss the point of the entire NT. I like the Bart Ehrman introduction:

    http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340435355&sr=1-1&keywords=The+New+Testament%3A+A+Historical+Introduction+to+the+Early+Christian+Writings+5+edition

    Without knowing the context, reading the gospel it\’s useless and you can\’t really understand them (and in fact here in Italy i know 1000 catholics and only 2 of them have read the gospels).

    Read the revelation without a commentary (it\’s all figurative) will be pointless.

    I love your posts Jerry!

18. Obviously the bible should not be read literally. Like many great civilisations, the story of Christianity is largely built upon fables and myths, each with their own morals, morals true in all major religions. It is in this way that the bible should be read.

    1. Are you suggesting that Jesus was not literally born from a virgin, was not literally the son of God, and was not literally resurrected?

       How do you know which parts are to be taken literally and which not?

       What morals do you derive from the tales of genocide, slavery, homophobia and misogyny in your Holy Book? When did you last stone somebody to death for working in the weekend?

       1. Well, I guess we decide these things the same way we decide when reading any book. It’s the same with our national traditions. We’re always deciding what parts seem good, and which seem stupid and outdated. It’s the same argument we see recorded between ancient Jews in the Bible. Jesus was constantly fighting with traditionalists over what was good and what was stupid in Jewish tradition. And Christians oughta do more of that concerning their own traditions.

          1. But isn’t the whole point that the Bible is not supposed to be just any book? Once you admit that parts of it are stupid and outdated the whole fabric starts to unravel. Why not take a step further and draw the obvious conclusion, that it is indeed like any book, man-made, and that Jesus is a fictional character?

             1. Well, we should talk about the book that way, and we should talk about our “exceptional” national traditions like that too. In both cases we have records of long-running arguments over what is good, beautiful true, etc. The culture wars rage through the pages of the Bible and on to our day, despite all claims of infallibility or divine guidance for one view or the other.

                PS: As many note, the Bible itself doesn’t happen to contain any clear claim of infallibility for itself. That’s in the eyes of it’s beholders. And of course the Bible did not exist as the collection we know at the times it’s various books were written.

             2. You are of course free to cherry pick to your heart’s content, but it seems to me that a True Christian ™ should at least accept the divinity of Jesus. Once you do so you inevitably contaminate the Bible with the supernatural. You cannot then reasonably maintain that, for instance, the story of Jonah in the whale must be a myth due to the fact that people can’t stay alive inside a whale for three days. In a world in which dead preachers escape from their tombs (after three days) everything is possible. It would be unreasonable to be reasonable.

                As you point out, the various books of the Bible were written at different times. But the authors of the Gospels, and Jesus himself if we are to believe them, knew the OT in detail and took it extremely seriously. Much of what Jesus supposedly did was modelled on OT content, and to this day many Christians marvel at the accuracy of the prophecies in the OT as revealed in the Gospels. They see this as proof that the Bible is internally consistent, in spite of its asynchronous origin. A reasonable person might suppose that the Gospel authors were simply making things up to fit the prophesies. But I don’t see on what basis someone can accept the Gospels as true and yet discard much of the OT as stupid and outdated.

             3. Maybe you’re right. Maybe neither Amos, nor Jesus, or me, had any right to “cherry pick” the good from the bad in their traditions. But actually, “cherry picking” is something I do every day, in just about every choice I make. How is it that making your own choices on what to use or discard from the past got such a derogatory name?

                If we start on that slippery slope of judging the traditions we inherit, maybe all hell will break loose. Or maybe as Martin Luther King figured, we could make some progress.

             4. I was not talking about cherry picking good and bad, but about deciding what is to be taken literally. You don’t address that.

             5. Gee … seems obvious to me that we judge the factuality of historic accounts by how well they are corroborated by other evidence, be it from other accounts, other historical evidence, or archaeological finds.

                But the Bible is folklore, which is mainly about telling stories that convey the values of the storytellers. In judging folklore, it’s a matter of whether we like the stories, and whether we approve of the values they convey. We pick the stories and values we like best. Actually we cherry pick them. Fundamentalists do the same, as when they emphasize homophobic traditions but ignore pacifistic or socialistic traditions in the Bible stories.

                The power of folklore does not depend on its factuality — not the folklore of the Buddha, or of King Arthur. I just think we need to judge stories as stories, not as scientific theorums. And we should not buy fundamentalist claims that their favorite stories are SUPPOSED To Be seen as scientific theorums. We can just go ahead and cherry pick them as good or bad stories.

             6. That’s all very well, but as I see it there are two possibilities:

                Either the Bible reports on the wishes and actions of a deity, even if in a distorted fashion, or it does not.

                If the first is true, then you can’t treat the book as pure folklore and you are not free to cherry pick it based on your personal preferences. You would better try your utmost to establish what the deity desires, which is not necessarily that what appeals most to you. It might lead to the conclusion that God is a monster, but so be it.

                If the second is true, then the Bible is indeed pure folklore. In that case there is no reason to bestow it any kind of authority, and in particular, no reason to attach special value to the utterances of a Jesus or a St. Paul (which are by no means uniformly wonderful). The good bits are what any decent person in an enlightened society would endorse, and the bad ones merely reflect the primitive tribal morals of the period. The Bible would be reduced, as I think it should, to a curiosity, a strange, Iron Age, Middle Eastern concoction of texts that has had a tremendous influence on a large part of the civilised world because of the unfortunate misconception that it was the word of a god.

             7. “The good bits are what any decent person in an enlightened society would endorse, and the bad ones merely reflect the primitive tribal morals of the period.”

                Okay, that’s how we try to judge all other books in the world, be it Ann Coulter, Karl Marx, or the Bhagavad Gita. Why not use our heads in judging what’s good or bad in the biblical tradition as well? Reportedly, Amos, Jesus, and Abraham Lincoln did so, and I figure it’s all part of an ongoing debate in an evolving civilization.

                I don’t really make a big distinction between divine and human things, or divine and sacred books. To me, there’s something fairly sacred in ordinary human life, and thinking critically about our stories and histories seems more spiritual to me than blindly believing whatever I’m told. Besides, I’m more interested in debating the meaning of a story than in trying to determine how factual it may be. Stories or legends are often way more influential in our culture than historical factuality, and proving that Robin Hood or Buddha did not exist as such would likely have no effect their popularity.

                Please advise me if you feel this fails to answer your question.

             8. Either the Bible reports on the wishes and actions of a deity, even if in a distorted fashion, or it does not.

                There’s only one question relevant to the discussion.

                Has Jesus read the Bible?

                Not, note, “Did Jesus read the Bible during his ministry,” because it wasn’t for centuries later that it finally got canonized and what-not.

                No, what I mean is, has the Jesus who is this very moment sitting at the right hand of the Father and whose job it is to judge the living and the dead — has that Jesus read the Bible?

                If so, and he’s even a piss-poor judge of human character, then he knows that people are going to take it literally. He hasn’t done anything to change it or to tell people to not take it literally, so either he’s happy for people to take it literally or he’s the most useless and / or impotent god ever worshipped.

                And if Jesus hasn’t read the Bible…well, what the fuck?

                Cheers,

                b&

             9. While I appreciate your attempts to explain your position, I’m afraid that I don’t have much sympathy for it. To me it makes a big difference if a story is presented as factual or not. As an experiment, try reading the Gospel of Mark twice. The first time under the assumption that you are given a reliable eye witness account of the rise and fall of the Son of God. The second time under the assumption that it was made up from whole cloth as a specimen of religious propaganda. It makes a huge difference, in my opinion.

                Let me give one example. Jesus says: ‘Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.’ This would be an abject thing to say unless spoken by someone who really is the son of God.

                If the gospel is not factual it is simply an attempt at deceit, portraying a fictional character who is the mouthpiece of unknown people with a hidden agenda. It is not at all the same story.

             10. Since I read all histories or stories with an assumption that it’s partly true and partly fiction, and that there’s always some kind of spin going on, I just don’t bother with that distinction. When I read those Bible stories, I see people arguing and disagreeing. It’s a matter of my opinion which arguments have more validity. It’s basically the same as watching debates in our culture wars today, and deciding who I agree with.

                 The fact that people don’t agree in the Bible is basically the best thing about it. I think a report of conflicting views has more integrity than a one-sided report, though the writer always slants things. In our own society, we take debate as a basically good thing, rather than as proving that our whole culture is garbage. I don’t agree with the fundies that the Bible is SUPPOSED to speak with one voice, mainly because it doesn’t.

             11. This was in reply to Brian Griffith, not to Ben Goren (whom I agree with).

             12. ‘Since I read all histories or stories with an assumption that it’s partly true and partly fiction, and that there’s always some kind of spin going on, I just don’t bother with that distinction.’

                 Yeah, but Jesus either is or isn’t a divine being. He can’t be only partly the son of God. He couldn’t have only partly risen from the dead. There’s little room for fence sitting here.

             13. Everybody’s life is pretty sacred, so where’s this big fence you can’t sit on? Jesus is reported calling God “our father,” so maybe he thought everybody’s life was sacred, and everybody came from the same source. Sounds reasonable to me. This dividing sacred from non-sacred people seems artificial to me. I mean, if I happen to regard Gandhi has a holy man, it doesn’t mean I have to choose between thinking he’s an omnipotent superhuman perfect and infallible deity, or else he’s “not holy.” Maybe he’s both holy and human at the same time.

             14. Yeah, but Jesus either is or isn’t a divine being. He can’t be only partly the son of God. He couldn’t have only partly risen from the dead.

                 What if he was only mostly dead?

             15. What if he wasn’t dead at all – or just the figment of someone’s imagination?

             16. ‘Maybe he’s both holy and human at the same time.’

                 I’ve no idea what you mean with ‘holy’. Is it some kind of supernatural attribute or what?

             17. “Holiness” usually means having qualities others admire so much that they are seen as saint-like. It’s a human quality, usually attributed to either the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King Jr. Of course some people think it’s a substance from another planet, possessed only by non-human beings, but that would be some sort of pseudo-Neo-Platonic dualistic garbage.

             18. So, Brian Griffith, what is a saint like?

             19. They’re people who seem to possess the qualities you admire the most, to such a degree that you think they’re the most inspiring people you ever heard of. Like, I got to see Nelson Mandela soon after his big victory over Apartheid, and it was up there for me.

             20. I prefer to think of those kinds as “very admirable people”. It avoids all of the religious baggage that travels along in the word “saint”.

             21. Next time I hear somebody say something like “the woman’s a saint,” I’ll correct them.

             22. @Brian Griffith,

                 But if ‘holiness’ is a human quality you shouldn’t have written ‘Maybe he’s both holy and human at the same time,’ because there you make it seem as if it is not a human quality. I don’t like the word for its religious connotation and agree with gbjames above.

             23. I was referring to the way some people assume that the categories of “divine (or holy)” and “human” are different and mutually exclusive, so that Jesus would have to be either divine or human, but could not be both. For example, the ancient bishops spent most of the Nicean Council arguing over what SUBSTANCE Jesus was made of.

                 So I know it’s enormously controversial to say this, but I think it’s quite possible that Jesus was a holy guy, and he was also a human being (!)

             24. Even the most admirable and inspiring people who ever lived were ultimately nothing more than a bag of genes expressed in a certain environment. I don’t see what the attribute of ‘holiness’ adds to our understanding. It only serves to obfuscate and to promote myth-making.

             25. Brian Griffith said: “So I know it’s enormously controversial to say this, but I think it’s quite possible that Jesus was a holy guy, and he was also a human being (!)”

                 It isn’t controversial so much as it is either dumb or disingenuous. Dumb if you mean nothing but “admirable”. Disingenuous if you mean “connected with the deity” (or any such common meaning of the word) because they you are just making a traditional Xtian assertion and pretending it isn’t.

                 So, which is it?

             26. I’m talking about how it became so intolerable to Christian orthodoxy to regard Jesus as a human being, when that would be the most natural assumption in the world.

          2. Don’t the stories say that Amos, Isaiah, Jesus, and others took that step? They are portrayed denouncing numerous “sacred” traditions of kingship, ritual purity, sacrifices for sin, priestly power, or merciless death penalties, which are defended in other parts of the Bible. These accounts seem to record rather vociferous arguments over which parts of received religious tradition were good, stupid, or morally repulsive, eh?

             1. And yet I seem to remember that Jesus and Paul took scripture (the OT) pretty seriously. I doubt that they would have argued that it was just man-made stuff. They did argue about theology, trying to answer the question ‘What does God really want?’. As a result they may have convinced themselves that eating shellfish is okay, and that perhaps God did not mean it when he demanded that people who work on the sabbath should be stoned to death with stones.

                Besides, Amos, Isaiah, Jesus and Paul had a special line to God, so they were in a position to declare policy changes decided at board room level. Ordinary Christians are in no such position, I guess.

             2. According to the story, Jesus thought it was stupid to kill people for doing necessary work on the Sabbath, though the death penalty was written in the scriptures. He’s also recorded criticizing the scriptural requirements for animal sacrifices by quoting Hosea: “I require mercy, not sacrifice.” Then they quote him asking people “Why can’t you decide for yourselves what is right?”

                Later of course, leading churchmen insisted that such a capacity to think critically was meant for Jesus alone, and the real message was that other people should just obey whatever a superior told them.

       2. Haha, getting fired up. I like it 😀

          You clearly miss the point that the Bible is a historical account with fables interwoven: kind of like your mum tucking in at night (fact) and telling you the story of Jack and the Beanstalk (fiction).

          Also, we learn from our mistakes. Many of man’s mistakes have been documented. This does not mean, just because they are on paper, that we must treat them as *cough* gospel.

          1. You clearly miss the point that the Bible is a historical account with fables interwoven

             History? In the Bible?

             You have got to be joking.

             There’s fuck-all history in the Bible. A James Michner novel has far more history than anything you’ll read in the Bible.

             b&

             1. And the history in a Michener novel is more likely than not closer to the truth than the Holy Babble stories.

          2. I would rather call the Bible a bunch of fables posing as a historical account.

19. Strange but true. I have also started to read the Bible again. I got it free on Kindle. I felt it would help me improve my atheist presentation and it has. I am not sure if I have the strength and discipline to attack the project from ‘page 1’ so I started with the gospels. Deep in my heart I know I will have to do the whole thing. It is a hard read for an absolute disbeliever but I’ll try harder.

20. Yes I once read the Bible cover to cover and here’s my book report: http://home.comcast.net/~grossdan/bible.htm

21. The Bible is a terrible book. As literature it is abysmal and as morality it is even worse. When I pointed this out in a comment on one of your earlier posts, I was called a Philistine for my troubles, which struck me as deeply ironic. And that observation brings me to the claim that you have to know it in order to properly understand English literature because the defender of the Bible, who so accused me, clearly did not get the significance of calling someone who dissented from the Bible a Philistine.

    The Bible is so bad, there could only be one justification for it, viz, that it is true; and it is blatantly false.

    1. I just noticed this self-serving fairy tale. The truth is somewhat diffrent. Dawkins was quoted:

       “Ecclesiastes, in the 1611 translation, is one of the glories of English literature (I’m told it’s pretty good in the original Hebrew, too). The whole King James Bible is littered with literary allusions, almost as many as Shakespeare… phrases which any cultivated English speaker will instantly recognise… A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian.”

       You replied:

       “As for the Bible’s literary merits – it does not have any… And even the books that are supposedly literary, such as Ecclesiastes, are only so if you… focus only on the odd phrase or too. The Bible was written by a bunch of ignoramuses and it shows: it drips off every page: they knew nothing of the nature of world and even less about morality. It is a dreadful book. As for Shakespeare – his works are seriously over-rated…”

       I replied quite deliberately with one of those “instantly recognisable” allusions: “You are a Philistine.” [Equivalent to Dawkins’s “verging on the barbarian.”] This is NOT A CHARGE OF DISSENTING FROM THE BIBLE; it is an assessment of your literary/cultural level. You didn’t recognise it, proving both my point and Dawkins’s, and repeatedly hinted that the Philistines disappeared as a result of Hebrew genocide – absolutely wrong again. And now you have the gall to suggest that the lack of understanding was on my part?

22. It was hilarious to read of how embarassing it is to be seen reading the King James Bible on an airplane. Many years ago, when my daughter was about six, she came home from school one day around Christmas and told me she would like to hear the story of the birth of Jesus. That was a tall order for me, of course, because we had no Bible of any kind in the house. My friend Margie suggested I borrow one from the library, which I did. That night, when I brought it home, my wife Beth said, “What if the neighbors see you carrying that thing?” She was dead serious, worried that I was going to embarass the family by being seen with it. I still laugh when I think about it. [My daughter listened intently to the story, said “that sounds interesting,” and never expressed any interest in religion again.

23. In Genesis, after the flood, Noah comes out of the ark with his three sons – Shem, Ham and Japheth. Noah gets drunk and falls asleep in his tent with everything hanging out, if you know what I mean. Ham comes in and sees Noah like this, so Shem and Japeth come backwards into the tent so they can cover Noah without having to see him naked. Once Noah wakes up he is so angry that Ham has seen him naked, that he says that Ham’s descendants will be the servants of Shem and Japheth’s descendants.

    The sense of morality here is obviously faulty, and it also looks like an attempt to justify some kind of class system. More powerful people would have said that inequality was justified because the ancestors of the less powerful people had committed a sin (like Ham).

    1. Worse, isn’t it invoked as a “justification” of race-based slavery – aren’t the sons of Ham described as being black?

       1. They don’t appear to be described as black in GEN 9:18-27, perhaps somewhere else?

24. The above is at Genesis 9:18-27, by the way.

25. Thank you for posting this, I’ve tried several times to read the bible and simply couldn’t finish it for all these reasons. I too feel like I should read it, but I just can’t…it’s just that bad.

26. God needs an editor.

    1. I just read an al-Jazeera article that says that God is alive and well in South Korea – well, old has Hell, as you would expect God to be, but alive and well nonetheless.
       http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2012/06/2012619102756772170.html

       1. Yeah, maybe the whole world is alive and old. But that would be superstition, right?

27. I’m afraid I haven’t the time to read all the comments. However, I have read through the Bible several times — at least twice as an adolescent. Each time I was put off, especially by the first books of the Bible. God, in those books, seems like an unpredictable, almost impersonal force, that might cause death and destruction at any time. I recall the story of David bring the Ark of the Covenant up from Hebron (?) to Jerusalem. It must have been very heavy, and when one of the men reached out his hand to steady the thing touched it, he was struck dead on the spot. Or the time when Moses is ill, and God sets out to kill him. His wife circucises him, throws the foreskin towards the impending doom — it’s all very sketchy — and saves his life. Then there is the case of David and Bathsheba, the taking of another man’s wife, and making sure that her husband Uriah gets killed in Battle, so that he could keep her, and the prophet Nathan (?)tells the story of the rich man who coveted his neighbour’s favourite lamb, and has the man killed. David reacts with rage at this injustice, and Nathan tells David that he is the man. But David suffers by losing the first child born to Bathsheba and himself. (Bathesheba gets pregnant while her husband is away, and try as he might David cannot convince Uriah to have sex with his wife, since he was on campaign, and it was forbidden, so he has to dispense with Uriah another way.) God is simply an unpredictable, impersonal force, which might “break out” at any point.

    As for the style, I cannot say, since my Hebrew is only very rudimentary — indeed, almost all forgotten now, what small bits I learned, but I am told that the Psalms, the Song of Songs, Job, Ruth, and some others have exalted poetic language. I do not think this is to be found, except sporadically — for example, the first chapter of Genesis — in the Torah.

    However, I think it is the very unpredictability of God, and the mystery about what is and is not licit, that leads to the kind of unreflective obedience that the text demands. Recall that many parts of the Bible are in tension (even contradiction) with other parts, and yet all is ascribed authority. Thus Exodus speaks of the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children to the fourth and fifth generation (? — this is all from memory, I’m afraid) of those who disobey God’s commandments, and yet Ezekiel and Jeremiah say that only the guilty will be punished. And then, of course, Job is “punished” for no reason, thus making God’s purposes that much more unclear.

    It is, however, the threat that underlies the text, and the warnings of those who interpret it, that carries the greatest weight — not just the beauty of sublimity of the writing (which is often not beautiful at all). I grew up at a time and place when the “sin against the Holy Spirit” was taken very seriously, indeed, drilled into us, so that our lives were, in a sense, a terror, since no one knew what this sin was, so it was impossible to know whether we had committed it or not. It was a powerful incentive to a kind of paranoid belief, and underlined, not only the mystery of God, but the unpredictability and uncertainty of being able to know God’s will — a state of mind which, rather than lead to disbelief, tended to make belief more fervent yet at the same time hopeless.

    1. I add here that I got the story about Moses wrong. The more correct version — I haven’t checked, but it seems more correct to me — can be read in gluonspring’s comment above: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-bible-is-boring-and-insipid/#comment-231170

    2. +1

       Oh, boy, I recall the sin against the Holy Spirit (and mention it in a reply before reading this). That terrified me. What was it? Had I already committed it? What other surprise sins might I find out about if I read the Bible more?

       The people who believed in predestination lived in an even more horrid world. For them, whether they were going to Heaven or Hell was decided before they were born, and there was nothing they could do to change that. The predestined would live lives pleasing to God, of course, but this was pre-ordained for them. The obvious logical response to such a belief would be to run out and try to commit some outrageous sin. If you simply can’t do it, you must be one of the elect, if you can, well, now you know, you were never going to make it into Heaven anyway. But no one does that because they are terrified to find out, to merely learn, whether they are going to Heaven or Hell. And so they go to church and try to toe the line hoping against hope that they really are one of the elect. It can be a really sad way to live.

28. I should add one other point. It is often said — by Dawkins, for one — that the KJV is a masterpiece of English literature, and should be read for that reason alone. This is often, as Hector Avalos points out, one of the stratagems of the biblical scholars, whose position becomes more tenuous every day, as people drop out of belief, or think of biblical scholarship as a form of unfaithfulness. However, a literary critic (whose name escapes me at the moment) once said that the KJV stands as a filter in the development of the English language, since so many words, as well as complexity of style and structure, that had currency before the publication of the KJV (or “Authorised Version”) were simply lost to the English language, which was impoverished when the English Bible came to be the central literary achievement the style and vocabulary of which became the measure of standard English.

    1. Eric,

       Thanks for your comments. I probably was too hard on the literary contributions of the Bible since I haven’t yet finished it and am also largely ignorant of its effect on subsequent language and literature. I have read some lovely things in The Book of Common Prayer.

       1. An, the BCP. One of the glories of the BCP are the collects, which often exemplify the English language at its best: sound, complexity of structure, spareness and suppleness of expression. Cranmer (who is the likely author of the collects) was a genius of the English language. But to get a sense of what is lost, read some of the sermons by John Donne or Lancelot Andrewes, for example. It is hard to believe that people actually listened and understood text that, for sheer intricacy and complexity of thought, are difficult to take in, even when read closely.

    2. Eric,
       Is it not the case that whenever a ‘crucial’ (pun intended) text or corpus becomes canonical, it stifles large portions of concurrent oral traditions? Add to that the multiplier effect of printing and the brainwashing effect of the pulpit.

       In France for example, as an effect of cultural centralisation and regimentation, it feels like the rich and vibrant language of Rabelais’ time was gelded and expurgated during the Grand Siècle. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the lexical impoverishment was considerable. And that’s ignoring the linguicide of Occitan, let alone non-Romance regional languages. No matter how linguistic standardisation is motivated, we pay a high price for it.

    3. “A literary critic (whose name escapes me at the moment) once said that the KJV stands as a filter in the development of the English language….”

       Mr MacDonald, if you can recall the name of that critic, please post it here. I’d love to read what he has to say.

29. One other point — sorry to put them up separately! — to make: If the Bible is boring and insipid, the Qu’ran is, by contrast, even more so. I’m told that the language itself is enough to make men weep, but the plain meaning of the Qu’ran is stultifying.

    1. Yes, I have read the whole Quran–an experience I wouldn’t care to repeat–and was horrified at this “holy book.” It’s scary and horrible.

       1. And imagine what it does to the millions of kids, who, starting at a very young age, spell it out, memorize it, are told this is the absolute truth, and often don`t learn anything else. By age 12 they are not only completely brainwashed, but their brains are completely rewired beyond repair. Dito for the children of Bible thumpers, perhaps to a lesser degree. But it explains their strange behavior as adults.

    2. It is perhaps worth adding that one book, Ecclesiastes, is certainly by an atheist, notwithstanding a few pious interjections, and another, Esther, does not mention god at all.

       1. Okay. If I’m ever forced to read the Bible (say I’m stuck somewhere with no other reading matter**) I’ve got my reading list. Ecclesiastes and Job.

          (**I once had to sit in my broken-down car for three hours waiting for the tow truck, with only the Motorsport Regulations for company. Translated (badly) from the French. Bits of it were remarkably like the Bible e.g. the construction regulations. But without the bloodthirsty bits. The overall effect was probably similar – after three hours, I was sick of anything to do with motorsport 🙂

30. >spoiler: Jesus dies

    …or does he?

31. I want to share one recent review that appeared (on Barnes & Noble) about my book “Correcting Jesus”:

    “I used to enjoy reading books about Zombie Jesus. I feel bad that Zombie Jesus is not real. This book has many facts about Jesus and, does a good job of explaining why he was not a Zombie.”

32. “If you regard the Bible as a book of fiction, one to be treasured for its beauty, you’d put it down before you ever got through Genesis.”

    This is exactly how Christianity was spread, in fact. The Apostles traveled the Near East and the Mediterranean asking people to “Read this, from page one”. Nothing to do with historical events or the person of Jesus Christ.

    1. That’s a most fascinating claim.

       Got any actual evidence to back it up?

       Oh — and do please be sure that said evidence is of sufficient quality to overcome the huge mountains of evidence that Paul knew nothing of the Gospels and that the Bible itself wasn’t canonized until Nicaea — and that, prior to said canonization, the heresies and apocrypha were at least as prevalent as today’s orthodoxies, if not more so.

       Indeed, the standard apologetic line, as recently espoused by Bart Ehrman in his latest book, is that the story of Jesus was an entirely oral tradition, originating in Aramaic, and not set down in ink until after a subsequent oral tradition had been established in Greek. It’s pretty much the least-miserable way to explain away all the laughably ludicrous problems of the Gospels, if one is to assume that they were even vaguely intended originally as historical documents rather than garden-variety religious fiction (of noteworthily bad quality).

       Cheers,

       b&

33. My absolute FAVORITE Bible passage:

    “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

    One: because it reads like cheesy pornography…
    Two: because it is the END of he goddamn thing, and…
    Three: it’s a great line to circle and annotate in hotel rooms across the country. (I always circle “Surely I come quickly” and scribble in: “no I don’t… and stop calling me Shirley.”

34. Kudos to you for wading through… and coincidentally, I’m doing at he same is summer except I’m reading the New American edition. Not as far in as you–just beginning Exodus–but similar observations. I’ve especially enjoyed the incestuous, out-of-wedlock relations. Funny that I don’t see protesters at rallies holding up signs about those passages from the Bible.

35. Interesting since I too have been reading the bible for the first time. I tried a bit of it when I was about 11 or 12 and found it “boring and insipid”. Now I have vowed to get through the whole thing just so I can say I did. What torture! I’m up to the Psalms, but it is a slow slog. I have it on my Kindle to avoid having to haul the thing around in bulk form. Get ready Jerry, if you are only up to Numbers, you have the tedious tripe of Judges and Kings to get through in which an endless succession of rulers alternate between obeying and not obeying the “lord”. Apparently they never could remember what happened to the ones who didn’t follow the rules and so it goes back and forth to no point. Poetry? I don’t think so. Just iron age crap in which the god is identical to some tribal tyrant whose power is based entirely on fear. Currently up to psalm 105 and the endless repitition of how great he is and fear is the reason why. You have my sympathies. Can I have yours?

36. Hello Jerry,

    Have you ever checked out Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God”?

37. You are going to read the whole thing? You gotta be “shittim” me. At least ten cubits.

38. Back when I was a Christian, I read the Bible through a couple of times (A One Year Bible helps. One section a day from Old & New Testaments and on from psalms).

    As I was reading through it, I found comfort and marveled at the lovely words and tales of miracles. I also ignored the hateful and violent parts, well maybe not ignored, more like I just didn’t give them much thought.

    Looking back on this experience I realize that the reason I overlooked the violence and immorality is that it didn’t fit with my Christian world view of a God of love and mercy. It wasn’t a conscience thing, those evil parts just didn’t register.

39. I was recently in a hotel in Ireland (so they obviously had a bible in the bedside cupboard) and decided to have a fairly random flick, see what I’d find.

    Now, I live in the UK and there’s this whole kerfuffle going on about gay marriage, with most against claiming that marriage ‘always has been and always will be’ between one man and one woman. I also read that that is definitely not what the OT says. So I thought, let’s check for myself.

    So the first bit I found, don’t recall where, was the bit Jerry describes about what to do with what bit of an ox, which goes on for what looked like a whole page or more.

    Then I bumped into a passage (IRC somewhere in Deuteronomy) that first described what to do if you capture a slave girl that you fancy: something like, change her clothes, let her grieve for a bit (because you’ve killed all her family) and then have sex with her, which makes her your wife. Charming.
    And just below that a passage that started like “suppose you have two wives, one loved and one unloved, and you have a child with both.” One man, one woman? My holy arse.

    And I literally found that shite within a few seconds, not after hours of searching.

    I agree with what has been said, that if anything should make one lose their belief, it is READING the freggin’ thing.

40. well,maybe you should read the books of
    archaeologists and historian
    Israel Finkelstein and
    Neil Silberman

    there are so many wrongnesses in the bible I can t even begin to enumerate them

    just one example
    the described Exodus out of Egypt
    never happened

    instead Egypt conquered Israel/Palastine in 640-630 before the Common Era
    to secure its borders while the ending Assyrian Empire retreated from there

    the bible editors projecting Iron Age fightings into an Late Bronze Age time
    and creating the unifying foundation myth of “Israel” and the chosen ones

    The Bible Unearthed:
    Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel
    and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
    by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein
    (May 28, 2002)

    David and Solomon:
    In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings
    and the Roots of the Western Tradition
    by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman
    (Apr 3, 2007)

    Archaeology and the History of Early Israel
    (Archaeology and Biblical Studies)
    by Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar and Brian B. Schmidt
    (Oct 24, 2007)

41. Have read, in entirety. Several times. Last few times, I had mercy on myself and skipped the endless verses of begats and curtain-making. (Btw, does anyone else think it’s hilarious that God is supposedly against homosexuality and is such a FABULOUS interior decorator?)

    There are good bits, but they are few and far between. I am a fan of some of the Proverbs, and much of the Song of Solomon.

    Like most people who have read the entire Bible, not a fan of “God” as revealed in said book. He’s a raging, narcissistic a-hole. Even Jesus, in many parts, doesn’t come off real great. Like the section where he’s hungry, the fig tree isn’t bearing (out of season) and he smites the tree because he’s hangry.

42. When we point out all the contradictions in the Bible, this shows not only that the ancient Jews were human (!) but it also shows they were arguing and disagreeing. And this is a sign of mental activity. In books like Amos, Hosea, or Matthew, the disagreements get absolutely vociferous. Jesus is described constantly fighting with priests over scriptural rules he opposes. Here are some of the Bible passages he’s recorded contradicting, much to the alarm of those “zealous for the Lord”:

    When a high priest’s daughter profanes herself by becoming a prostitute, she profanes her father. She shall be burned to death. (Leviticus 21:9)

    Yes, rest on the Sabbath, for it is holy. Anyone who does not obey this command must die; anyone who does any work on that day shall be killed. (Exodus 31:14–15)

    If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both adulterer and adulteress shall be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)

    A man takes a wife and possesses her. [If] She fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, and he writes her a bill of divorcement, and sends her away from his home …” (Deuteronomy 24:1)

    On that day at the public reading from the book of Moses, it was found to be laid down that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of the Lord … When the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all who were of mixed blood.” (Nehemiah 13:1–3)

    God will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. (Joshua 24:19)

    Anyway, the various people in the Bible didn’t agree any more than the American people have all agreed. If somebody says that everyone in the book spoke with one voice, it seems to me they didn’t read it.

43. “The early part of the Bible is unbearably tedious. Besides the long lists of genealogies, heads of clans, and so forth, there are excruciatingly painful descriptions of how God wants the ark of the tabernacle to be built. Stuff like this, for example (from Exodus 26)”

    I find interesting to compare the SIX chapters dedicated, by God, to telling how to make proper sacrifice to Him (Exodus 25-30) with the TWO chapters dedicated, by God, to the Creation of the (whole) Universe (Genesis 1-2). It gives a cue to what is truly important to (that version of) God: Himself, like an immature megalomaniac.

    And it is something to ask creationists: why God did not tell us exactly how He created the (whole) Universe if He wanted us to know?

    Desnes Diev

    1. My friend Margie is a “born again Christian.” When I worked in the same office with her I tried to dodge the whole religion thing because I wanted to just do my job and not get distracted with a bunch of metaphysical crap. But one day she forced the issue: I told her that I didn’t think God was cost-effective, because He allegedly created a universe so vast no one knows for sure how many planets and stars there are, and all because he wanted to toy with humans, who Christians think are what the whole thing is about. This really upset Margie, although I’m not sure why.

44. Modern Biblical scholars have established that the Bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God, and it was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications, and non sequiturs.

    Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, ISBN 978-1-846-14093-8, p. 11

    /@

45. so you don’t believe in God, huh? then how do you account for all the flying monkeys? oh wait, thats just me tripping on acid.

46. Numbers is a bit tedious but the early part of Genesis is some of the greatest poetic writing in history. But of course for Christians the Old Testament has to be read in the light of Christ.

    BTW I hope I’m doing you an injustice in suggesting that you are blocking my comments (which has now found it’s way to other bits of the blogosphere, see eg http://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/coyne-bans-another/. We shall see.

47. In a nutshell then:

    The bible is a massive pile of crap.

    And that is that.

48. The Bible can be boring if your not in tune to find the meaning. God has chosen the simple things to confound the wise. You are reading about Gods governmental rule. The (Torah)5 Books of Moses. God only knows the heart of man! Without faith in God you cannot understand Gods purpose, you are spiritually discerned. Blinded by Satan and cannot see beyond the tragedy. Repent and believe or close the book. You will not ever understand what your reading in the natural! You must be born again and see with spiritual eyes! The symbols used in the bible mean something. Every action, every kind of animal, every kind of plant and so on. The new testament is the example of the former.

    1. You know, Jims Blog,… that’s just stupid.

49. You know, Jims Blog,… that’s just stupid, too.

    1. ? Something happened to the post that this was a response to. Ceiling Cat?

       1. For the record, it was:

          Jims BlogYou will never understand without salvation first, repent and believe. You need spiritual eyes to see with. You are reading about Gods governmental rule. God can only see the heart of man. The symbols of every animal, every plant and everything in bible has a singular meaning. The New Testament brings to life and reflects on the Old or former things. Either ask Jesus to come into your life and repent or close the book. This is a faith believing book. God has chosen the simple things of the world to confound the wise.

          /@

          1. God chose a way to reveal His word to Israel and all nations. Through visions and dreams the word of God came to Israel. Through prophets the word of God warned nations. If you notice about the Old Testament, The Age of men declined but the sins of men increased and the listening of the Lords voice faded away. Over 25 men of Israel wrote the words of God. All saying the same but using different phrases of language to catch the listeners ear. Men of different centuries compiled for Gods use. David in the 23rd Psalms said, “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want.” No man comes to the Lord easily. Yet David had a heart for the things of God. He sought God in all his won battles and waited upon the Lord for a answer. He prayed morning, noon and night for Gods guidance.

             One thing to remember all the Arab nations claim Abraham as father of all nations. Abraham is claimed by the Arabs brother Israel. If you notice geographically the center of where the Bible starts at the 4 rivers. You can see how people moved away further and further from that center. Is there a wonder that God has moved further away?

             1. No. No wonder at all. 😉

                /@

             2. Okay, Jim, before you’re allowed to comment here further, you must give all of us the evidence that has convinced you that God exists, and that it is the Christian/Jewish god rather than some other god. This is policy that applies to all believers who spout their stuff on this site.

                Evidence, please? How do you know that Islam is wrong?

             3. Islam, Israel and Christians believe in same God that spoke to Abraham. The only difference is Israel and Islam do not believe Jesus was the Son of God. Islam believes Jesus to be a prophet and is recorded in Koran. Both groups seek the Messiah to this day. Jesus came in peace as the lamb of God. Israel and Islam look for a Lord king that will destroy their enemies. It is by clear faith in Jesus and God no other evidence is needed. Only a adulterous generation seeks for a sign and no sign shall be given. Your evidence is in your heart repent and change it.

             4. How exactly does this lead inexorably to rewarding parasitical priests? If Jerry is up to Numbers 31 yet he should calculate how much, in modern terms, Eleazar made from that genocidal slaughter. It’s always been about greed. Look at the TV evangelists, or Catholic Cardinals, or any who are high up in their religions. It’s always “Give praise to God. Give money to me”.

             5. Faith schmaith. As Hitch said, what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

             6. “Faith” then.

                Okaaaay.

             7. You do realize that what you wrote reads like a book review for a really bad fantasy epic, and that you’re utterly batshit insane for thinking any of it has even the slightest bearing on reality, right?

                b&

50. Once again, the Shy God theory: Don’t look for a sign, ’cause there won’t be one – just believe. This is the same God who had some guy meet him on a hill to dictate commandments, and later left gold plates with writing that was not in English for some guy to trip over. No wonder Christianity has required wars, torture, and lies to perpetuate it’s cruel self. Repent? From what?

51. After reading Genesis 1 in its original Hebrew (with the aid of a dictionary) I’m convinced that the reason the early Bible is so boring and insipid is because translators are doing it wrong. They’re translating it as The Infallible-And-Must-Be-True Word Of God™ where every single word must be perfect and translated in a precise meaning and order of the original text — while choosing that “meaning” based on what’s more compatible with the Universe as they know it. If a passage describes the world in an unbelievably implausible way (such as the sky being made of blue water resting on a clear solid sheet), the words chosen for it are so vague and insipid that its precise meaning becomes impossible to divine. That’s not intentionally dishonest; its translators simply know that since it must be right it can’t possibly mean what it literally says. Add to that the fact that words that rhyme in Hebrew simply don’t rhyme in English and Hebrew poetic structures don’t make sophisticated-enough English to appease the stuffy old men doing the translation, and he end result is a text that’s tedious and incredibly difficult to understand.

    Instead when I looked at the original Hebrew I found something that is both poetically beautiful and terribly implausible, far more so than any English translation makes it appear. It uses rhythm and rhyme to great effect while describing the world as if it’s a large snow globe submerged in water.

    When people translate actual ancient poetry like The Iliad, the specific words aren’t what matter and they’re not treated as divine phrases that must be preserved in the exact meaning that the translators decide it must have had. Instead, the best translators of poetry choose to preserve its poetic structure, meter, and rhyme even if it means moving words and phrases around and choosing near-synonyms that rhyme better.

    (Homer’s works are also incomparably better literature, but the different agendas of translation push them even farther away than they already are.)

52. I was raised a Catholic and strongly agree with performer Penn Jillette’s statement that the fastest way to become an atheist is to read the bible from cover to cover. Religious people really should read their holy books (in entirety, not just the bits they’re told to read!) and see what is actually in there, contradictions and all. I remember that as a young teenager, I’d had doubts for ages, and finally went to see my parish priest to ask him questions. The answers were so flimsy and just didn’t stand up. Some things you just can’t reconcile, no matter how much spin you put on it.
    With all the contradictions in the Bible, Christians *have* to pick and choose what to believe from it (well, the priests pick which bits to preach). Ironically, I can clearly remember being at a Mass where the priest angrily ranted about people taking a “grocery shopping” approach to spirituality, picking what they liked from here and there… Deary deary me. Seems he didn’t read his Bible properly and/or forgot that Jesus *really* didn’t like hypocritical preachers.

53. I never could understand why, if Christians believe that all souls are eternal, why it was considered remarkable for Jesus to have an afterlife too.

    I think these spectacular claims that Jesus was a superhuman deity, born of a virgin, rose bodily from the dead, etc., were added on as the legend evolved, in response to popular demand. There’s no virgin birth in Paul or Mark. No appearance of a revived body in the first versions of Mark. The non-Jewish followers added those things later. It’s pretty normal for a hero to acquire myths as the body of folklore grows. And some of these myths change earlier versions of the story almost beyond recognition.

    1. Actually the miracles and the virgin birth and the resurrection and the like are all bog-standard elements of pagan demigod tropes, ancient and universally-recognized even in the first century.

       Also very common then were “mystery cults,” where the inner circle had their special stories that only they were privy to — think $cientology and Xenu, or the Moron wedding ceremony, or even the right way to pronounce the Tetragrammaton. It’s not at all unlikely that early Christianity was exactly that sort of a mystery cult and that Paul knew full well of the Virgin Birth and the rest, but that his audience either wasn’t sufficiently “enlightened” to be told the “truth” or that there was fear that the letters would be intercepted.

       By the time the Gospels were written, Christianity had grown in popularity to the point that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. There’s also reason to suspect that a number of those original inner mysteries have long since been lost to history.

       There’re turns of phrases that point to this that survive in the Gospels even to this day. I’d have to go digging, but Jesus or the narrator or whomever says things like, “and then they were enlightened,” or, “and then Jesus opened their eyes,” or something like that. In other mystery cults, those sorts of things are placeholders for the point in the ceremony that the high priest teaches the secret handshake to the initiates, that sort of thing.

       And I must strive to point out: early Christianity was nothing if not a fractured and divisive group. It could also be that Paul’s faction didn’t have some of those stories but that another faction did.

       Lastly, note that Christianity becomes increasingly more fractured and bizarre the earlier you get, which is what you’d expect if it were a syncretic amalgamation of cults with a similar shared mythic base. If it were based on real events, you’d expect more consistency the more layers you peeled back, not less.

       Cheers,

       b&

       1. That’s probably right. The Egyptians, Greeks, etc. related this Jesus to their own myths and expectations, turning him into one of their own. In Egypt particularly, people commonly thought the purpose of religion was to escape mortality. They didn’t want some reformist rabbi arguing about how to live life well, they wanted a superhuman deity with power to grant them freedom from mortality. And as we know today, in religion the customer is always right.

54. Teach us something we don’t know professor Coyne! I read the entire Bible when I was a teenager and I rapidly became an atheist. In my case the latter followed inevitably from the former.

55. Hi, I found this article at the right time it appears! I decided to read the bible for precisely the same reasons as you. Though what first made me want to, was my ex-JW boyfriend that said I should really read the bible if I have so many questions about it- I realised he as completely right. I could hardly criticise a book I hadn’t read! At least not without being a hypocrite. (I’m currently at Numbers 9:15)

    It’s great to hear that you have the same outcome from reading it as I am, and every boring detail just makes me more determined to get through it so that I can hear the best bits. I almost screamed at the damn thing yesterday when, after reading the same paragraph 12 times over (the offerings made by each tribe leader)I was rewarded with a summary rehashing what I’d just read. My boyfriend is bemused to say the least XD

    As an atheist raised in a secular household, I feel lucky that I’m able to read the Bible with no bias, no hidden agenda and no special influences. Just an objective outlook on an old book. Please write more when you get further, I for one would love to read it!

56. Oh, and next is The Book of Mormon and the Quran. My reading list is full up for now!

    1. Perhaps its because I grew up with the bible but I found the book of mormon to be even harder to get through. In any case make sure to read the separate collection The Pearl of Great Price, its WAY better (and more absurd) than the book of mormon. In it god sits on a planet circling around a star named Kolob sending souls into earthlings, its priceless.

       1. Thank you! I will read that first, it sounds really interesting 😀

       2. Just downloaded it in mp3 format from the LDS website. This sounds like it’s good for a laugh or two 🙂

57. Umm on the curtain of the tabernacle, what happened in the Temple when Jesus died? I have read the whole thing, and I would like to recommend a way to make it more interesting! Read the KJV in Dake – google Dake!

58. Oh good luck – it is terribly tedious. Took everything I had to get through the *begat* section without skipping. Brings to mind the Christian conundrum: “Can God write a book so boring even He can’t finish it?”

59. Here is one way people used the Bible earlier this year in San Francisco:
    http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Final-totals-show-23-arrested-in-Occupy-protest-2673143.php
    “Once they got inside, some of the protesters made it to the roof top and were throwing Bibles at the officers,” SFPD spokesman Manfredi said.

    1. Throwing the book at police officers sounds almost French Revolutionish. The protesters in those days assumed that the Bible opposed liberty, equality, and fraternity.

       1. And they were right! An old African saying is “When the missionaries came we had the land and they had the Bibles; now they have the land and we have the Bibles.” Christianity and their main propaganda piece [the Bible] has always played a regressive role.

          1. That depends on which part you want to emphasise. Most revolutionaries in America had a general idea that liberty, equality, and fraternity were Christian values. Later on, most of them even concluded that the book of Exodus was an anti-slavery story. Of course most North American Christians still maintained the usual hypocrisy, that liberty is godly for me and my own, but the government should place stricter controls on other people.

60. I read the Bible. It took a really long time to get through the whole thing (and I wasn’t even reading from the KJV). The first five books are most definitely slow going, due to the lists and minute details about animals sacrifices. The worst was Leviticus, not just because of the aforementioned characteristics, but also because, in the middle of all this horribleness, there were a couple of lines that said to love your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and that’s just so confusing. It’s like the passage you quoted about God being merciful; it so completely and utterly contradicts the verses around it that it becomes clear that Biblical claims of “justice” are discrimination in (transparent) disguise.

    It does get better in some of the more poetic sections. The Book of Job is my personal favorite section of the Bible. I think it shows a character who, unlike many of the other main character in the Bible (who are prophets, etc.), is in situation similar to the average human being for most of the book (prior to the part when god talks to him) and he’s wondering why it’s happening and wants to confront god about why this is happening.

    Oddly enough, the Gospels (despite apologetic arguments about the New Testament’s superiority to the Old Testament) are also rather frustrating, because it feels like you’re reading different versions of the same story four times in a row. A great deal of the letters in the New Testament sound like what’s referred to as “Christianese”, though the NT is easier to read compared to the OT.

    I’m working on reading the Qur’an currently, though I still want to read some more of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books in the Bible. I’m planning on reading a bunch of other holy texts as well, but it’ll likely take a while.

    All the best! Try to break up the reading with forays into other books that are fun to read.

    1. Thanks Ani,

       That was one of the most factual and fair-minded reviews of the book I’ve seen, and you should post your review on Amazon.

       I think most reviewers, both believers are doubters, are basically blinded by the claim of infallibility. Most of us seem to buy the notion that the book is SUPPOSED to be infallibly accurate and consistent. If we find that different voices in the book do not agree, then we take it that the book has utterly failed to be what it is supposed to be.

       If we applied this standard in judging any other collection of folklore in the world, for example India’s Mahabharata, we would hear the following denunciations:

       “These legends have no basis in historical fact!”
       “We have no independent confirmation that Krishna ever existed!”
       “The miraculous events in these stories are just literary devices!”
       “The image of the world portrayed in these ancient tales is scientifically inaccurate!”
       “The different characters in these stories do not agree with each other!”

       None of these statements would be at all surprising if made about most any collection of folklore in the world — other than the Bible. I think we should simply judge all these collections of ethnic folklore in the same way — as old literature from a specific culture. Then we’d just compare our views on which stories or characters seem comical, or prejudiced, or inspiring — without bothering about any claim that they are supposed to be infallible.

       1. Who gets to define what is “SUPPOSED” to be the proper way to view these books? (And don’t leave the Koran out of the infallibility conversation.)

          If not for the claims of religion, there is no doubt at all that these books would be viewed simply as collections of folklore. Denunciations, such as those you seem to find problematic, only happen because large numbers of people believe that these volumes should form the basis of public policy.

          1. Hi JB,

             Anybody on earth can make a claim about how a book is SUPPOSED to be viewed. I just made a claim like that myself. And when literalists claim that the Bible is supposed to be infallible, we are accepting their definition of it if we make that claim into our basis for judging the book.

             I’d compare the claim of biblical infallibility to a super-patriot’s claim of infallibility for the USA. It’s like insisting that if America is God’s country, then it must be infallible. Everything recorded in American history is true and right. All American leaders have been infallibly right, and they all agreed with each other.

             Surely we can just go ahead and discuss the pros and cons of American history without endlessly debating whether it is or isn’t an infallible country. And the same goes for the ethnic tradition compiled in the Bible.

             1. Well, of course. And that’s the point. Claims about how something is SUPPOSED to be viewed carry little weight.

                There are reasons why atheists emphasize the non-divinity of these books. It is because so many people are trying to run our world based on the belief that The Deity Said So In Our Book.

                You are arguing with the wrong people. You should be off convincing the believers. They are the reason that we can’t all just talk about the funny folk tales. (In fact, on a site like this, most of the comments assume that they are just a lot of folk tales.)

             2. Well if you agree that the book is literature, then what are you complaining about?

                When fundamentalists claim to define the Bible as an infallible endorsement of their prejudices, the main question is whether or not they are completely misrepresenting what’s in the book. The actual book contains countless arguments over what is right, on most every issue be it slavery, women’s rights, economic fairness, priestly power, or whatever. I’m interested in discussions of which arguments people do or don’t agree with. But invalidation contests over whether the whole ethnic tradition is either competely above criticism, or else completely invalid, are boring.

             3. I don’t agree that it’s literature, except in the sense that brochures for house insulation or political pamphlets are ‘literature’.

                If it wasn’t for its religious/historical/sociological implications, nobody** would bother studying it any more than they study War and Peace or back issues of the News of the World. It would just be a very badly-written old book.

                **Approximately, for suitably small values of ‘nobody’.

             4. Well you’re perfectly welcome to not read it. But if people around me are arguing over what the Bible says, I’m rather interested in spotting the bias in people’s claims.

                History has been an ongoing culture war since ancient times, and the arguments in the Bible are not that different from those going on now. I think people can have a more civil discussion of what aspects of their ethnic traditions are helpful or harmful. But it’s just simplistic fanaticism to say we must choose to either obey all traditions blindly, or else blindly throw all tradition in the garbage.

             5. What am I complaining about? I’m complaining that somebody is telling me how I’m SUPPOSED to read the Bible (and presumably the Koran, and The Urantia Book, I suppose.)

                Just because the bible is obviously not the divine work of a deity (although many millions think otherwise) does not mean that the book is fine literature. It is a hodgepodge of oral tradition. It has some value as a curiosity. One might create the same sort of book full of tales from native Amazonian cultures or from oral traditions among any other pre or proto-literate people. Much of the bible is pure dreck. And overall, it is a dreadful source of moral guidance.

                Some people isolate a few snippets and perceive lovely poetry. My own taste runs closer to that of Walt Kelly, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

                Oh roar a roar for Nora,
                Nora Alice in the night.
                For she has seen Aurora Borealis
                Burning bright.

             6. I said that fundamentalists claim we are supposed to see the Bible as an inerrant endorsement of their prejudices. And I think this claim is misleading in two ways. First, their prejudices (commonly racism, nationalism, homophobia, sexism, and general intolerance of other people) are to my mind problems rather than virtues. And second, I don’t accept their claim that the Bible endorses those prejudices. It actually records lots of arguments pro and con about those things, and as usual, the readers choose which arguments they agree with.

                Sorry to oppress you by saying my opinion of these claims.

             7. “But it’s just simplistic fanaticism to say we must choose to either obey all traditions blindly, or else blindly throw all tradition in the garbage.”

                Paleeze. Point to the place where this argument was made. I missed it.

             8. I’m talking about the ever-famous inerrancy vs total invalidation argument that seems to prevail in discussion of the Bible. When people engage in this invalidation contest, they generally ignore the diversity of arguments recorded in the book. They just affirm or deny the concept that the whole body of literature is inerrant.

                We had something similar in China over that last 150 years. Fundamentalist Confucians claimed that their tradition was inerrant. Nay-sayers blamed Confucious as the bulwark of all oppression. Though Confucius spent his career protesting against warlords, both sides accepted the argument that he stood for blind obedience to superiors. The Red Guards proposed just eliminating everything that was old, and making way for the new. Now, people are back to arguing over what Confucius would say about modern problems.

             9. “total invalidation argument”

                I think this argument is made mostly in your own head. I don’t see it manifest on the WEIT site and you didn’t point to examples of it here.

             10. The fundamentalists are claiming the book is inerrant perfection, and you are claiming it’s trash for the garbage can. These are the two sides of the usual invalidation contest.

             11. “you are claiming it’s trash for the garbage can”

                 You keep saying things like this. But you don’t point to any examples of me, or anyone else, actually saying it.

             12. I must have imagined the whole debate over whether the Bible is trash or infallible truth, that is going on here and across North America. And in this debate, it seems to me that the most widely condemned position is to say “Well, it’s partly trash and partly good, and people just have to use their heads to figure out which is which.”

             13. Much as it pains me to quote Ronald Reagan, “Well… there you go again.”

                 Most widely condemned position? Condemned by whom? You keep asserting this and refusing to provide any evidence for it.

             14. You’re right. I have no evidence that defenders of biblical inerrancy and deniers of the Bible’s validity are arguing all around us, or that any such argument has appeared in this discussion thread. And I have no evidence that a middle position on that satisfies neither set of these arguers.

             15. Well, I admit I certainly said it was garbage (or at least, a ‘very badly-written old book’). It’s certainly my belief that, if it wasn’t for its religious significance, very few people would bother reading or quoting or even criticising it. How many people actually read the Iliad these days?

             16. True, and other people’s tastes are often totally baffling to me. But if somebody is moved by something that just bores me, all I can really say is “We certainly have different tastes.”

                 It’s a different thing when people make claims about what a book says. If they claim the Bible supports patriotism, they should account for the passages that treat nationalism as idolatry. If they claim the Bible is inerrant, they should explain which side of each recorded argument they feel is right. The book holds arguments both for and against slavery. To say the whole thing is inerrant is like claiming that Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both infallibly right, because both men appear in the book of God’s country.

             17. “To say the whole thing is inerrant is like claiming that Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both infallibly right, because both men appear in the book of God’s country.”

                 Well, I certainly agree there. The Bible contradicts itself in exactly the way one would expect an anthology of stories from different authors to do. And therefore it cannot, logically, be inerrant.

             18. “To say the whole thing is inerrant is like claiming…”

                 Indeed.

                 Unfortunately, there are a considerable number of people who see it that way. They do this by selectively ignoring bits they don’t like while insisting that this book is the Word of God without which we would not be able to live moral lives.

61. “My own taste runs closer to that of Walt Kelly, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

    Debating the bible is one thing. Are we now going to start a debate over which is the right wrong version of “Deck us all with Boston Charlie?” and whether Nora saw the aurora while freezing on the trolley?

    Alleygaroo!

    1. 😉

    2. Reflecting on the subject, I suddenly realize a whole new dimension to his poem Dixie Is The Land I Love which begins…

       “In the land where none are known to neatly knot the Gnu”

       We Gnus have an anthem!

62. The Jesus & Mo strip for 4 July is out, and it’s on topic for this post.

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