I've never read the Bible cover-to-cover, and don't know if I can make it through the Old Testament, so I'm reading the New Testament. My perspective is probably pretty different from most people who read this book. As I go, I'll post some comments and observations here, so this "review" will be frequently updated. Unless I chicken out....

8/4/11: Okay, I've finished reading the four Gospels, the accounts of Jesus' life and teachings by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The following is not intended to offend anyone or belittle their beliefs, but here are some things that struck me as I read:

In many ways, Jesus seems to reflect the beliefs and attitudes of his time. He spends a lot of time casting out demons. The demon-possessed people exhibit symptoms that these days would be consistent with mental illness or epilepsy. I suppose that most people at the time attributed these symptoms to demon possession.

And Jesus sometimes seems kind of racist, or at least prejudiced. The most glaring example of this is the story, in Matthew 15 (and repeated in Mark 7) of the Canaanite woman who wanted Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Since she was not of the chosen people, Jesus' response is, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

One of the most bizarre little vignettes is found in Matthew 21 and Mark 11. Jesus, on the road from Bethany, is hungry; he sees a fig tree, but finds it to be devoid of fruit, so he curses it and it dies. Mark even points out that it is not the season for figs. And this is after Jesus has fed two different multitudes with a few loaves and fishes.

I'm surprised that more Christian sects don't engage in foot-washing rituals - the only one I'm aware of is the Primitive Baptist denomination. Jesus' admonition (John 3:14) that his followers should wash each others' feet seems as explicit as many of his other sayings, like the direction to eat his flesh and drink his blood that forms the basis of the rite of communion. But I suppose Christianity has developed in its own way and with its own interpretations of the Bible - I don't see a whole lot of folks selling all of their possessions and giving the money to the poor, even though that admonition by Jesus appears in Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:21 and Luke 18:22.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll stop after one last point. Jesus seemed pretty certain the end of the world would come while many of those he was addressing were still alive. In both Matthew 24:34 and Mark 13:30 he says that "This generation shall not pass away until all these things take place" - that is, the apocalyptic events he had just been describing.

8/8/11: Today I finished the book of Acts, so I'm slightly over halfway through with the New Testament. It had been years since I had read any of Acts, the account of the later works of the Apostles, so I was surprised by a couple of things. First of all, if any readers are nostalgic for the vengeful God of the Old Testament, he's back! Although, I must admit, the death count is pretty low - three dead and one blinded. Ananias and Sapphira sell some property and only give part of the money to the Apostles, claiming that's all of it. Pfft - they're dead; God kills 'em. Herod is killed by God for not giving Him glory in a speech, as far as I can follow the story. And God blinds Elymas the magician.

Also interesting are the descriptions of the lifestyles of the early Christians: they "had all things in common..., selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need." (Acts 2: 44-45) "No one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common." (Acts 4:32) This struck me as pretty interesting when I look at current American religion and politics, and how they're tied together.

8/16/11: I have finished the Epistles, the letters (many by Paul) to early churches and Christians, and I've got to say that I'm glad to be through. It was a somewhat tough slog; I thought that if I read one more admonition for slaves to submit themselves to their masters, I was going to scream.

Which brings me to a point I hinted at before: these writings reflect their time. Slavery is accepted as a matter of course, as is the second-class status of women. And homosexuality is an abomination. Yes, homosexuality is condemned, but so is divorce, as well as jewelry and short hair for women.

There is much arcane discussion about the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in the Epistles, and much emphasis on faith. I won't editorialize on the latter, except to say that it seems obvious to me why all religions place so much emphasis on faith.

One theological point which surprised me (and might well give some believers the heebie-jeebies) is found in Romans 9. The passage beginning around verse 14 describes how God shows mercy on some and not others. "So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, 'Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?' But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?" (Romans 9:18-20). Well, then....

Another interesting (to me, anyway) theological issue is that of the divine origin of the Bible. I was taught as a child that the Bible was written with the direct inspiration of God. As I got older, this seemed less likely to me, due to the circular nature of the reasoning involved: we believe that it's inspired because it says it is. Well, much to my surprise, I'm not sure that the New Testament actually claims any divine inspiration. The closest I could find to such a claim is II Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness...." But think about it: what scripture was Paul talking about? The Old Testament? What he was writing just then? The parts of the New Testament that were written by that point? The writings that we now describe as The New Testament weren't codified as "official" until the fourth century, and we don't know exactly when many of them were written. A little research reveals that many Bible scholars think that it is obvious that Paul was referring to the Old Testament, although others hedge their bets, and others ignore the difficulties of the question altogether. In any case, I found this very interesting, although it probably won't make any difference in what most people believe about the origins of the Bible.

One last little amusing point, which reminds us that these were letters. In II Timothy 4:13, Paul writes, "When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas...." If this book was divinely inspired, it contains the ageless wisdom of "Dude! Bring my coat that I forgot!"

On to Revelation....

8/17/11: Today I read the book of Revelation, and thus finished the New Testament. About Revelation... well.... Makes me wish I had tried acid when I was younger. Or maybe not.

After all these years of living in the Bible Belt, I'm glad that I finally read the New Testament all the way through. One of my conclusions is that most folks who claim to live by this book are incredibly selective about which parts they pay attention to. And that my hat's off to anyone who also reads the entire Old Testament - I doubt I'll join that group.

1/9/12: I can't believe it. After declaring that I wasn't going to read the Old Testament, I'm doing it. I'm going to break it up into sections and take my time. So far I'm halfway through Genesis, and the weirdness hit me right away. I knew that the first chapter of Genesis contained the story of creation, but I had forgotten (or never knew) that the second chapter also had a creation story - one that doesn't match the story in chapter one. Check it out.

And since God is so quick to smite evildoers in Genesis, why didn't he give Lot a smackdown for offering up his virgin daughters to the hordes of Sodomites who wanted to rape the angels who were staying with him? Luckily for the Lot sisters, the comically evil mob wasn't interested in girls. This must be one of the weirdest stories in the Bible - we'll see what else we find.

1/13/12: Okay, I've finished Genesis and Exodus. I can't imagine anyone reading Genesis for any kind of inspiration or uplift. I mean, the story of Joseph in Egypt is pretty good, but most of the rest of the book is just horrifying. There's lots of killing, by God and man, and many of the "heroes," like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, seem prone to lying and deceit. I was kind of disgusted when Abraham tried to protect himself by saying that his wife was his sister. But as it turns out, he wasn't lying, since she was both his wife and his half sister. Don't remember that from Sunday school....

Speaking of Sunday school, even back then it bothered me that "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" every time he was about to relent and release the Israelites. That didn't seem quite fair; it did give God the opportunity for more killing, though - the firstborn of every Egyptian household this time around.

After the escape from Egypt, Exodus is mostly devoted to God's laws, as given to Moses. These can be divided into the brutal, the tedious, and the baffling. The all-powerful creator of the universe seems awfully concerned about what his priests should wear; the entire 28th chapter is devoted to this subject.

I'm reminded again and again that reading the entire Bible is a very different experience from just reading parts. Back in my childhood Sunday school days, I learned that the people got restless while Moses was receiving the laws on Mount Sinai, that they built a golden calf to worship, and that Moses was angry on his return and broke the stone tablets containing the commandments. I wasn't taught that another part of Moses' response was to gather a bunch of guys from the tribe of Levi, go through the camp and kill three thousand of his own people. I guess he was angry.

1/16/12: Leviticus: More of God's rules, as delivered to Moses. These read as if they were formulated by a group of people in an early stage of civilization rather than by an all-wise being. Huh... imagine that. Along the way God kills the priests Nadab and Abihu for messing up a sacrifice, as far as I can understand the story, and commands the people to stone to death a dude who was blasphemous. Leviticus' divine death count of three is the lowest yet in the Old Testament.

1/21/12: Numbers: More rules, some of which seem to be repeated from earlier books, interspersed with copious amounts of bloodshed. God leads the Israelites to victory over enemies, but also kills thousand and thousands of His Chosen People for various infractions best summed up as "human nature." And what's with God and Balaam? Balak sends for Balaam to curse the Israelites, but God tells Balaam not to go, so he doesn't. Then God tells Balaam to "go with them; but only do what I tell you." So Balaam goes, "but God's anger was kindled because he went," and God almost kills him. But then he tells him again to go, but only say what God tells him. Balaam must have been a nervous wreck. His attempts to please God don't pay off, though - he's killed by the Israelites when they defeat the Midianites (with God's help, of course).

1/26/12: Deuteronomy: Moses addresses the people and recaps the story so far, with much emphasis on how God will defeat the enemies who happen to be living in the Promised Land. (Spoiler alert - he does, and how!) Then more laws, with repeated admonitions that anyone who worships another god should be killed. Most of Chapter 28 is devoted to the curses God will lay on the Israelites if they turn away from him, and they're so over the top that they're pretty funny; this chapter reads like a Monty Python skit.

1/27/12: Joshua: God delivers the Promised Land to the Israelites, who kill everyone - men, women and children - who happened to be living there. This was a really unpleasant book to read.

1/29/12: Judges: I thought Joshua was unpleasant, but I didn't know what was in store for me. Judges is largely the history of Israel's wars - not only with its enemies, but among the tribes. When they win, it's because God helped them; when they lose, it's because they angered God. But there really don't seem to be any good guys; read the story of Sampson - I can't find anything admirable at all about him. We're not in Sunday school anymore. And the story of the Levite and his concubine, which takes up the last three chapters, is just repellent. The Levite gives up his mistress to the "worthless" men of Gibeah, who rape her to death. He cuts her body into twelve parts and sends the pieces throughout Israel to expose the wickedness of Gibeah. Believe it or not, it gets stranger and more disgusting from there.

1/30/12: Ruth: A nice little story, if you can get past the implication that a woman's worth is totally tied to her reproductive ability.

2/3/12: 1 & 2 Samuel: More of Israel's wars and civil wars, interspersed with the soap-opera sexual escapades of the kings and their families. Again, this come across like the chronicles of a warlike, primitive people. And God seems as just as violent and arbitrary. I often found myself baffled - for instance, why is God so angry when King David orders a census of his people? I don't know, but he is, and kills 70,000 Israelites. How do you like your census now, David? By the way, the account of King Saul's death in 1 Samuel 31 is totally different from the account in 2 Samuel 1.

2/7/12: 1 & 2 Kings: Something seemed odd to me as I read these books; I realized that God seems like an afterthought, for the most part. It's as if someone wrote a history of the kings of Israel and Judah, then went back and inserted God to explain what happened to the mostly evil kings. The exceptions are the stories of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, who are able to perform overt miracles. Josiah was the last of the "good" kings - he restored the Temple and tore down altars to other gods. In his reforming zeal, he sacrificed all the priests who had worshiped wrongly, and burned their bones on the altars.

2/24/12: 1 & 2 Chronicles: For the most part, a retelling of the stories of the kings from 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings, with genealogies.

3/5/12: Ezra & Nehemiah: Under the leadership of Ezra the priest and Nehemiah the governor, Jewish exiles return from Babylon, and the temple and wall of Jerusalem are rebuilt. Many of the Israelites have married foreign women, though; turns out that the way to correct that sin is to abandon said foreign wife and children.

3/9/12: Esther: Pretty good story - lowly Jewish girl catches the eye of the king, becomes queen, saves her people from destruction.

3/14/12: Job: Am I ever disappointed. For much of its length, Job was the most interesting book of the Bible I have yet read - a compelling debate on the nature of God, man, mortality, and suffering. Then God steps in at the end and tells Job, in essence, "Hey, I'm God - don't question me." (Religion always seems to come down to this when faced with reason.) Then there's a fairy-tale happy ending - Job gets all his riches and livestock back, with a brand-new family to replace the one which was wiped out.

3/31/12: Psalms: It took me a while to get through this, the longest book of the Bible. But it was fascinating. The main theme of these prayers and songs seems to be that God is powerful; he rewards those who love him and follow his rules and punishes those who do not. But there's a lot of ambiguity; the despairing Psalm 88 asks, "O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?" Psalm 74 begins, "O God, why do you cast us off forever?"

The most unattractive aspect of the Psalms is the frequency with which the authors ask God to kill, hurt, or at least embarrass their enemies. Without doing an actual count, I'd say that over half of the Psalms contain at least a few verses which include that request. Psalm 137, which begins with the touching lament, "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept," ends with a blessing on those who dash Babylonian babies against the rock.

4/11/12: Proverbs: The wisdom of Solomon, supposedly. A mixture of good advice, platitudes, and superstition.

4/13/12: Ecclesiastes: I read this book with real pleasure - a reaction I had given up expecting. This philosophical book tells us that life is short, so we should enjoy it; that we should be moderate in all things, including righteousness (Ecclesiastes 7:16); that much of what happens to us is due to time and chance, not God's will (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Ecclesiastes was a pleasant surprise.

4/28/12: Song of Solomon: An odd little love poem. Not sure how it got into two religions' holy scripture.

5/8/12: Isaiah: Isaiah's prophecies, which can be summed up as "God will reward the righteous and punish the wicked." More specifically, various nations will rise and fall, although God seems to only be concerned with nations which were known to the folks who wrote this book. (And is it too cynical of me to say that predicting the rise and fall of nations is not a particularly prescient bit of divination?) Isaiah seems to have been at least partially written during Israel's period of captivity and exile; God admits that he turned his back on Israel and Judah because of their wickedness, but promises that it won't happen again.

Some passages prophecy the coming of a king who will bring salvation to Israel. These passages are often taken as predictions of Jesus Christ, but to me they read as if they are talking about an earthly king, except for the bit about the king's virgin birth. A little bit of research reveals that the use of the word "virgin" may be the result of bad translation, but I'll let folks check that out on their own. People will undoubtedly interpret this book very differently depending on what they believe.

5/23/12: Jeremiah: God, through the prophet Jeremiah, tells Israel and Judah that they will be conquered because of their evil ways. Their conquerors, in turn, will be overthrown and Jerusalem will be restored. Even to a layman like myself, it seems obvious that this book was assembled from a variety of sources. It's very poorly "edited"; there is much repetition, it jumps around chronologically, and it seems to have been written some years after the events described took place. I'll let those who believe that it was inspired by God work out the implications of that.

5/24/12: Lamentations: Poems written during the Jewish captivity, presumably. God has afflicted his people, "killing without pity," but the author (said to be Jeremiah) has hope that God will restore them, "unless you have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us."

5/31/12: Ezekiel: Ezekiel's prophecies from the period of Babylonian captivity; God will (continue to) punish Israel, then restore Israel in the promised land and punish Israel's enemies, and the Temple will be rebuilt. Ezekiel is a pretty intense character, some of his prophecies are among the most bizarre I've read in the Bible so far. Did he really lie on his left side for 390 days and on his right side for 40 days to symbolize the years of punishment for Israel and Judah?

And the whole issue of prophecy in the Bible.... Well, this lengthy "review" has almost taken up all the space Goodreads will allow, so I'll continue in the comments sections, starting with a digression on one of Ezekiel's prophecies.