Reading the Bible in 2020
I
will admit that when someone tells me that they have read the whole Bible from
front to back, I’m almost always skeptical. It is not that I automatically
doubt every person’s integrity. It is that they almost always have a “tell,”
the signal that gamblers look for when their opponent is bluffing. In this case,
the tell is that they will say that they have read the Bible from front to
back but then make no commentary on the crashingly boring parts, like the Book
of Numbers. That book is almost literally what it is called, a book of Numbers.
It is like reading an actuarial journal. Or even the genealogy in the Book of
Matthew which isn’t nearly as long but still tedious. Or the violence in the
Book of Joshua. Not so boring but startling in its violence that a reader is
likely to note.
Reading the Bible from front to back is challenging not just for its shear length but also because it requires perseverance when you get to the Book of Numbers. There are also places where the narrative doesn’t GRAB the modern reader the way a modern novel does. There are places where the story itself repeats almost identical passages due to the ways that different passages were put together. It’s not always a “story” in the way that you would sit down to write a story with “A” followed by “B” and so forth. Instead, there are places where it is clear that one storyteller has told “A” and “B” and then the story continues in a way that suggests that a different storyteller’s material is being used because, lo and behold, there is “B” again almost word for word from what you just read.
So, how CAN you read the Bible in its entirety? Well, I have a suggestion and it begins with NOT reading it from front to back. Instead, I have created a weekly reading plan that divides the Christian Bible into its six major sections: the Law (also known as the Pentateuch), the Histories, the Prophets, the Wisdom Literature, the Gospels, and the Letters. By reading parts of each of these six categories, you can get through the Book of Numbers, for example, because, instead of reading Numbers from end to end, you will be reading a section of Numbers while also reading a section of 1 Kings from the Histories, Ezekiel from the Prophets, Psalms from the Wisdom Literature, the Gospel of John, and the letter to the Hebrews. So, yes, Numbers will still be boring in sections but you get a break from it.
Having labeled one of the section as “the Histories,” let me add some advice and a caution. Try not to read the Bible as if it were “history” in the modern sense. Instead, I encourage you to read it as poetry and philosophy that describe a realationship to God. If you read it as “history” in the way that we understand that word today, you will immediately run into contradictions. The Pentateuch itself reads like history. But in the first two chapters of Genesis, you will encounter TWO different creation stories. One, that most people are familiar with, describes the creation in six days with the creation of humans at the end. Then, there is a creation story where it is hard to deny that the creation of humans comes before most everything else that it followed in the first one. And, in fact, man and woman are created TOGETHER in the six day version while woman is created AFTER man (and just about everything else) in the second story. So, if you read those stories in the same way you read modern history, you run into an immediate contradiction with THEMSELVES and that’s before you even begin to address their inconsistency with what we know of the history or the Earth.
However, if you read these stories as poetry or philosophy that describe humanity’s relationship to God, then they make sense. It no longer matters that in one story C FOLLOWS B which FOLLOWS A while in another A FOLLOWS C and there is no B. That is not to say that the relationship with God is not different from one story to another but those differences make sense both in the poetic style being used (walking and talking with God versus miraculous visitations) as well as within the way we experience changing relationships.
So, IF you are interested in reading the whole BIBLE this year, feel free to contact me at this blog (or at my email address: UUTodd@gmail.com) and I will send you the reading plan which covers 51 weeks of reading assignments in very manageable chunks that will cover the whole Protestant Christian Bible before the end of 2020. (The Catholic Bible includes seven other books and there are about nine other books that appear in other Christian Bibles. To read the additional books from the Catholic Bible, you could read six of them over the course of the first 40 weeks and then read Ecclesasticus, also known as the Wisdom of Sirach, in the final 10 weeks.)
Reading the Bible from front to back is challenging not just for its shear length but also because it requires perseverance when you get to the Book of Numbers. There are also places where the narrative doesn’t GRAB the modern reader the way a modern novel does. There are places where the story itself repeats almost identical passages due to the ways that different passages were put together. It’s not always a “story” in the way that you would sit down to write a story with “A” followed by “B” and so forth. Instead, there are places where it is clear that one storyteller has told “A” and “B” and then the story continues in a way that suggests that a different storyteller’s material is being used because, lo and behold, there is “B” again almost word for word from what you just read.
So, how CAN you read the Bible in its entirety? Well, I have a suggestion and it begins with NOT reading it from front to back. Instead, I have created a weekly reading plan that divides the Christian Bible into its six major sections: the Law (also known as the Pentateuch), the Histories, the Prophets, the Wisdom Literature, the Gospels, and the Letters. By reading parts of each of these six categories, you can get through the Book of Numbers, for example, because, instead of reading Numbers from end to end, you will be reading a section of Numbers while also reading a section of 1 Kings from the Histories, Ezekiel from the Prophets, Psalms from the Wisdom Literature, the Gospel of John, and the letter to the Hebrews. So, yes, Numbers will still be boring in sections but you get a break from it.
Having labeled one of the section as “the Histories,” let me add some advice and a caution. Try not to read the Bible as if it were “history” in the modern sense. Instead, I encourage you to read it as poetry and philosophy that describe a realationship to God. If you read it as “history” in the way that we understand that word today, you will immediately run into contradictions. The Pentateuch itself reads like history. But in the first two chapters of Genesis, you will encounter TWO different creation stories. One, that most people are familiar with, describes the creation in six days with the creation of humans at the end. Then, there is a creation story where it is hard to deny that the creation of humans comes before most everything else that it followed in the first one. And, in fact, man and woman are created TOGETHER in the six day version while woman is created AFTER man (and just about everything else) in the second story. So, if you read those stories in the same way you read modern history, you run into an immediate contradiction with THEMSELVES and that’s before you even begin to address their inconsistency with what we know of the history or the Earth.
However, if you read these stories as poetry or philosophy that describe humanity’s relationship to God, then they make sense. It no longer matters that in one story C FOLLOWS B which FOLLOWS A while in another A FOLLOWS C and there is no B. That is not to say that the relationship with God is not different from one story to another but those differences make sense both in the poetic style being used (walking and talking with God versus miraculous visitations) as well as within the way we experience changing relationships.
So, IF you are interested in reading the whole BIBLE this year, feel free to contact me at this blog (or at my email address: UUTodd@gmail.com) and I will send you the reading plan which covers 51 weeks of reading assignments in very manageable chunks that will cover the whole Protestant Christian Bible before the end of 2020. (The Catholic Bible includes seven other books and there are about nine other books that appear in other Christian Bibles. To read the additional books from the Catholic Bible, you could read six of them over the course of the first 40 weeks and then read Ecclesasticus, also known as the Wisdom of Sirach, in the final 10 weeks.)
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