who has read the bible?

See the You Need an Editor thread.

I read all of the Good News Bible's New Testament over a year. It's great crack.

I read the New Testament in the RSV version. I didn't start skipping till the last book, "Revelation", which is the unlikeliest final chapter to a humanitarian novel that I've ever read.

The thing with the bible is, once you've seen the films, you can't help but see Moses as Charlton Heston.

One of those rare cases where the films are better than the book.

I had a go at this a couple of years ago. I tried to read the Bible (OT and NT) from start to finish.
I read the King James Version, which is the best if you like your religion old-school. I got as far as the book of Nehemiah.
The strange thing about reading it is how many of the stories you know about (Cain & Abel, Noah's Ark, etc) are dealt with in a couple of lines, while page after page is about stuff like the exact dimensions and furnishings of the Ark of the Covenant.
Genesis and the first part of Exodus are a decent read, but the rest of Exodus, Deuteronomy , Leviticus and Numbers are next to unreadable.
It picks up a bit again after that, lots of battles. A good companion book would be Martin Gilbert's 'Letters to Auntie Fori' which presents the history of the Jews in letters. Otherwise the history and characters get too confusing. Despite what MikeyG said, I'd recommend having a go at it.

The translation you read all depends on what you want out of it, really. Are you looking for just the story in plain English or are you looking for a fairly literal translation that captures, as best it can, the language of the original? How much of the poetry do want to come through?

The King James Version is by far the most poetic, particularly in the OT. The New American Standard is a fairly literal translation but with more up-to-date English than the KJV. If you don't care about literality as much, then the New International Version may work for you. The translation is done through "dynamic equivalent" so you basically get a "Or Words to that Effect" take on it. The Message and Living Bible are both complete paraphrases, with the former coming off in certain sections (primarily in the NT) sounding like Baz Luhrman's "Sunscreen."

More than you wanted to know?

--SJ Lefty

there's like a zillion different translations/versions. some are even written in poetic form as an attempt to preserve and/or reconstruct the poetry som people say is inherent in the text. Like SJ said, it totally depends what you want to get out of it.

if you want some really radical interpretations, try going to church or synagogue ;)

I love the fact that THE VICAR was one of the first to respond to this.

I have read the Bible in excess of five times back in the days when I thought I might like to go to Heaven. Even though I consider a lot of stuff from those days to be a Complete and Utter Waste of Time, I am glad that I have such a good grounding in the Bible. I can recognise the allusions of others (very handy when reading books from by-gone ages), include Biblical allusions in my writing and speech (increases my perceived erudition at least ten-fold), draw interesting parallels to current events (which horseman is Dubya?), and run circles around most religious proselytisers.

Of course, to complement the Biblical knowledge, you have to gain a solid grounding in Greek, Norse, Chinese, and Indian mythologies. I'm only half-way to brilliance, but I'm getting there.

when i was in spain (for nine months) i bought a new shiny copy of the biblia de jerusalen with the intent to both improve my spanish and learn something about christianity. i'm currently at genesis 12 and it's keeping some dried flowers flattened. nice idea, though.

There is no single translation of the Bible that'll give you a good grounding in it as a literary work. The KJV has the prettiest style, but it's mostly a ripoff of William Tyndale's earlier, earthier, and probably better (if incomplete) version, which is still available.

For Genesis and I-II Samuel, PLEASE get Robert Alter's translations (available from Norton as "Genesis" and "The David Story" and published in the '90s). His translation is great, attending to the literary qualities, repititions of imagery and word clusters, in a way that the Bible's more pious translators were too busy looking for doctrine to even notice. His notes are wonderful too.

For Job, read Stephen Mitchell's version, and skip the introduction.

For Song of Songs, read Ariel and Chana Block's version.

For other books, I usually check the Anchor Bible volume out of the library.

Finally, Reynolds Price has a translation of two Gospels plus an attempt at his own--called, appropriately, Three Gospels. (He also has an anthology of translated snippets from the Bible entitled A Palpable God.) I wouldn't recommend Willis Barnstone's hyped "New Covenant," a translation of the NT--I don't know how good a job someone can do of translating something they loathe. (If you're in the market for non-canonical and Gnostic books, though, Barnstone's The Other Bible is really useful.)

It's funny--unlike most of the contributors to this thread, probably, I actually read the Bible for reasons of personal faith commitment as well as historical background or whatever. (Let the impugnations of my intelligence and character begin.) And I find that I gain the most insight from it when I read translation and commentary that comes from a literary, rather than (or in addition to) a theological perspective, since the theologians usually have a system derived from some texts which they want to impose on ALL the texts, and thus they lose the ambiguity that makes the whole thing believable and interesting to me. (Though good theologians, like Karl Barth or Ellul or Stanley Hauerwas, realize this.) It's amazing how much the translation of a single word can change the meaning of several books (given how related these texts are)--for example, my pastor recently remarked that the Greek verb used to describe Judas's "handing over" of Christ to the Romans is used again by Paul to describe Jesus's "handing himself over" to mortality, and in several other rather pregnant places. Once you know that, the whole New Testament is subtly altered (in a way that makes Judas less simply a villain). And primarily churchy translations (NIV, or even the NRSV etc.) always miss things like that. Theology is best in the service of narrative--not the other way around.

Just my $0.02.

I dug it. That part about Beren and Lúthien was very sentimental...

Just read mel gibson's screenplay if you're feeling too protestant lately.

>>> Q. who has read the bible?

Mel Gibson, apparently. Or hasn't, according to some people.

I've read the Bible,the Old Testament is fascinating if you read it as literature, the New Testament is sort of preachy (haha). My favorite books in the Bible : Genesis (all the mysteries of the world are explained in seed form in this book, according to some), Exodus, I and II Kings (those damned Isrealites never learn), Judges, Esther, Proverbs, Psalms, and Song of Solomon, something dramatic and heart wrenching about those Prophets, especially Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah (my favorite Prophet).

No revised standard versions, new translations, etc. Stick with King James.