How to Read the Bible?

The Bible is a very interesting book. I cannot hide my preference for such interesting book. I think that you will benefit a lot from reading it. However, there are some characteristics of the Bible that you should have in mind. The Bible is an ancient book written in ancient hebrew, aramaic and greek (ancient greek dialect). So it has a lot of linguistic expressions that you should be careful of. The expressions represent the cultural and linguistic status quo of the epoch that each bible book was written (by the way Bible means collection of small books). In summary: - Consider the time and cultural context. Specially on handling the linguistic expressions. - Take into account the textual context, take a look into parallel texts (some books of the Bible have parallel stories). - Be open minded and extract good lessons for you from the goods and bad things of the Bible personages.

You can do something like Dr. Donald Knuth that appreciates reading the Bible as he stated in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xArhSdnqTk&t=162s

If you have questions, I can try to help you (although I do not have all the answers, I will be happy to think about and try to find something interesting ). You can write to me by sending an email to marcoscleison.unit ___ gmail . Although I am busy (coding, condign coding, ...) I will be happy to receive your message. Good Luck!

Get a study bible. The Bible itself is a vast work of literature spanning millennia and isn’t meant to be read cover to cover like a novel. It does not contain enough contextualization to guide you. You will require outside context for understanding.

A study bible will help with this. Also, read the Wikipedia page for each book of the Bible before you read that book. It will greatly help your understanding.

I am an atheist but have read the Bible extensively because it’s the foundation of western literature.

I’d start with the why, why do you want to read the Bible. The Bible itself is an incredible piece of literature that spans through millennia and has had drastically changed humans history. The issue with that is that it has been used to justify completely opposite options (i.e. during the civil war both the confederacy and union used the Bible to justify their opinions)

Thus they why would help inform what are you expecting to get out of it. There’s a lot of room for interpretation in it and thus your presuppositions will show up in it, or the presuppositions of whoever is speaking/writing about it. I studies theology/philosophy for about 8 years and the thing about these fields is that at the end of the day it comes down to your choice. There’s of course “evidence” supporting one idea or another but when it comes to the Bible, and your opinion about it, it’s a choice. Hopefully an informed one but still a choice nonetheless.

Understand that was originally written for an ancient culture that is now mostly absent. Also understand that it was written in segments at different historic moments.

The first 5 books of the Old Testament are the epic myths and early Jewish laws of the religion. This was written in ancient Hebrew and the Greeks called it the Pentateuch. Also keep in mind this comes entirely from oral tradition and was written much later after the formation of Hebrew writing.

After that comes the Old Testament books about early Israeli religious history. It was during this time that the early Jewish people conquered the lands of Canaan and took writing from the conquered people. It was also during this time that they were conquered by the Chaldeans (Neo Babylonians) and introduced to Zoroastrianism. The early Jewish faith may have been monotheistic, or moving in that direction, before this, but exposure to an organized monotheistic faith really sealed the deal.

After that are the various books about morality/judgement followed by a lineage of lesser prophets.

The New Testament was largely written in Ancient Greek. The New Testament is the Christian portion following the faith of Jesus Christ. He had 12 apostles that followed him walking around and formulating the early Christian faith. The chief among them would travel to Rome to spread the faith, but the early faith as written comes from the gospel of a few apostles speaking with people and from the travels of Paul.

Paul was a guy that encountered the early faith and wanting nothing to do with it. When Jesus died Paul experienced a spiritual revelation and traveled across Greece telling people about it. More important is that these travels and conversations were written down. Paul’s travels would become the bulk of the New Testament.