ShackledNoMore Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 It was boring. I only made it through the whole thing once, it was painful, and I pretty much turned my brain off as my eyes scanned over the words for large parts of the bible. For genealogies, surreal stuff like in Daniel and Revelation, and in a different way, passages that caused me a lot of cognitive dissonance because they were bloodthirsty or promoted what I would now consider moral atrocities, I would read chapters on end without absorbing practically anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godlessgrrl Posted October 18, 2009 Share Posted October 18, 2009 I found portions of the Bible so boring that I used to read them on nights when I couldn't sleep. After a chapter or two, I'd nod right off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franko47 Posted October 18, 2009 Share Posted October 18, 2009 After I started studying the Greek Myths, I went back and had a look at the OT. It's even more pedantic and dull than I thought. Must they have "the LORD" on every page ? I mean, talk about overkill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted October 18, 2009 Share Posted October 18, 2009 Since I went to a private school for many years reading the bible was mandatory. It was painfully boring. We had to read it over and over and over again. Out of class. In the dedicated bible class. In the other classes that weren't bible class but somehow they fit it in. In assemblies. On field trips. It was every-fucking-where. And then I had my normal church services, Sunday school, catechism, and youth group (fortunately I after I was confirmed I stopped youth group not to mention all the years I spent in vacation bible school years earlier). The funny thing is that during all my "reading" the same sections appeared over and over again. Sure, we read (quickly, very quickly) the entire bible and the hard to digest stuff but we spent a-g-e-s on the same feel good bullshit passages year after year. Look how "jesus" wants to give every candy and handjobs. Lets read it at home, in class, in this assembly with some singing moron preacher, at church and everywhere else. Lets read and re-read it. Blah blah blah. Same with the exodus and all that. Lets skip all these stupid rules, except these 10, but lets look at them realllllllly close for a month or two. Memorize them and have a test. And do the same on all this other crap except the "bad" stuff. We can gloss over that and write essays on the rest (oh, yeah, punishments included writing essays using the bible with approved verses...I wrote many essays). mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bird28 Posted October 18, 2009 Share Posted October 18, 2009 I have "The Quest" study bible and I enjoyed reading the explanations in the side bars better than the text for some reason, it's like it's trying to explain the weird/nonsensical stuff logically. Nowadays, I haven't read it for a while, but I just might again to remind myself of the arguments xtains use and stuff to explain the bad away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vixentrox Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Some boring, some not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hungrydingo Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 I went to a half price book store the other day. Apparently non-christians aren't the only ones who find the bible boring. I was browsing the religious section to see what I could find, bought a book on Hinduism because I can't understand the religion for the life of me with it's long ass names and terms. There was a whole section dedicated to "teen bibles" and they are trying really hard to make them appealing to teens. I saw "The eXtreme teen bible" and it's binding was all neon colors and flashy designs running all over it. There were several like it, apparently the whole "eXtreme!!!" study bible and teen bible thing was or is very popular. When I was a christian I was catholic, we didn't really do thing like youth camps and study bibles, we were far too traditional and proper for that, those kinds of things struck me as a very protestant thing. I do find it funny they have to resort to selling them for half price though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I Broke Free Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 I have yet to find a book more boring than the bible. I spent two of my teenage years reading it daily when I was Mormon and never understood anything. I consistently found myself at the bottom of a page and thinking to myself “How did get here? I don’t remember a thing I just read!” All those foreign names and King James English did not help either. If there was a point or a lesson in there, I sure never found it. God was in great need of a good editor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEEtheScorn Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 Never. Never ever ever did I find it boring. From the day my mom read me Pslams as bedtime stories, to today I've been completely enthralled. But I'm biased. I have a year left to a Bible (or Judaic Studies) bachelor and I'm seeking a Ph.D in Old Testament studies with focus on ancient Mesopotamian cultures and languages. I fucking love the Bible. To me, it's the most fascinating book ever written. The fact that it has influenced so many people throughout so much time is simply amazing. It invokes so much curiosity in me. It's hard for me to wave off such wide-spread influence. The base for 3 of the world's major religions? Millenia of influence? That's phenomenal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MultifariousBirdLady Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 Yes! My dad always told me that it was like an onion, you just had to peel off the layers and get at the meat. I found it more like a banana; easy to peel and only one layer underneath. I thought the whole point of an onion analogy was that no matter how many layers you peel, there is no "meat". The place I have heard this analogy used most often, BTW, was in our church youth group. More than once I remember being told that despite the fact that many people wish to peel back their facades in order to "find themselves," they would only find more layers, like an onion, and ultimately there would be nothing inside... unless you have Jesus, in which case there is a gem in the heart of the onion. Or something like that... it was a pretty strange analogy, but at the time it was frightening to think that in my "heart of hearts" I would be nothing at all without Jesus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vendredie Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 There's a reason I still ahven't read the Bible cover to cover. One is, I never seem to find one that isn't KJV, and while I'm smart and an English nerd, I can't understand that. It gets really confusing. Then you have all of those chapters that are "1.Bob begat Joe who begat Jim who begat Fred who begat Jill but Jill was a chick so she had to marry Tim and they begat Bob (different Bob) who begat another Joe who begat Can'tpronouncethisnamekhabel, who begat Al, who begat Dick who begat Joe (which was a ridiculously popular name back then) who begat yet another Bob who begat a bunch of people whose names we can't be bothered to remember because some jackass Greeks decided to burn or genealogy records in the latest war, and these people begat this dude named Dave 2. who begat another dude name Joe who begat Josh, who this whole story is about." Then I just decided to read Revelation one time becauase I was in church and bored out of my skull... dude, seriously, that's scary as shit So the rest of it was boring, other than Revelation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MultifariousBirdLady Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 When you were a Christian did you find the Bible interesting enough to read? I have to admit, I found the Bible to not just be boring, but painfully boring. Like almost to the point of tears boring. One, I have a very short attention span as it is, and two, I find ancient mythology to be probably one of the most brain numbing, coma inducing topics of study that I can possibly think of. Anytime I would attempt the read the Bible, within 10 minutes of reading I was either so unable to focus I wouldn't know what I had just read, or I would just flat out fall asleep. Honestly, if there really is a hell the perfect way to torture me would be to sentence me to an eternity of reading the Bible. Was your experience similar or did you enjoy reading the Bible? As a kid I sure did think it was boring, mostly because all we were expected to do was memorize out-of-context bible verses (for which we would get a piece of candy). I had a small children's 45rpm record player and a whole stack of bible records (and some others like "The Poky Little Puppy"). The bible stories as a whole were deadly boring compared to the other children's records, with a few exceptions like Jonah and the Whale and Noah's Ark. As a teen I had mixed feelings about it. Much of it (esp. the who begat whom and who was king when) was really boring, but some individual verses I found meaningful, and Revelations was freaky and scary. In college it got a lot more interesting, maybe in part because I was thinking and questioning it more by then. Also, I was involved in a bible study where we actually read whole books chapter by chapter to get the whole context... (at least in one group... a different group I was involved with skipped around and read verses out of context by topic, as dictated by a study guide). So some parts I really found inspiring, and some were dull, while other parts I really wrestled with or found repugnant. The repugnant parts did provide additional incentive for me to leave. Then I took a class in the O.T. Prophets and it really opened my eyes, but by then I had left Christianity. Learning the historical context helped me to appreciate them in ways I hadn't been able to before. I started reading other parts of the bible again, too, but didn't have to treat it like it was the Word of God, and that was really refreshing. I don't read it much now, but I do ironically have more of an appreciation for it now than when I was a Christian... mostly as literature that tells us important info about the people for whom and time periods in which the different parts were written. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Genesis Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 I went to a half price book store the other day. Apparently non-christians aren't the only ones who find the bible boring. I was browsing the religious section to see what I could find, bought a book on Hinduism because I can't understand the religion for the life of me with it's long ass names and terms. There was a whole section dedicated to "teen bibles" and they are trying really hard to make them appealing to teens. I still want to get the Harper Collins' NRSV study bible which comes complete with commentaries by biblical scholars, translates Peter's nickname correctly as Rocky, and notes comparisons between stories of Moses to fairytales like Snow White: http://www.amazon.com/HarperCollins-Study-Bible-Apocryphal-Deuterocanonical/dp/0060655275/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258171909&sr=1-1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heathen Monkey Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 I actually only read the bible in comic book form. My parents bought me the same thing when I was little, but it backfired because seeing the flood and other wrathful acts in comic book form crystallized just how scary Jehovah was. Here was this powerful being who could control the weather and turn people into salt at will, and he was dictating terms to humanity. In my other comics, the Justice League dealt with global threats like him, but in the bible comic, the people just kept taking the abuse and giving him tribute. The next time mankind invents a god, they should at least make him as moral as Batman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MultifariousBirdLady Posted November 14, 2009 Share Posted November 14, 2009 I still want to get the Harper Collins' NRSV study bible which comes complete with commentaries by biblical scholars, translates Peter's nickname correctly as Rocky, and notes comparisons between stories of Moses to fairytales like Snow White: http://www.amazon.com/HarperCollins-Study-Bible-Apocryphal-Deuterocanonical/dp/0060655275/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258171909&sr=1-1 Wow, this sounds great! Some of the most helpful bible tools I have are a couple concordances (one being Strong's) and books by people like Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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