Have you read the Bible?

I've read the whole thing. I'm pretty non-religious. I'm a fan of Spinozan ethics. Although technically not the Bible, the few Gnostic gospels I've read have always struck a more resonant chord with me than the authorised Bible of Rome.

atheist, plan to read all religious books. i've read the bible, the tao te king, liber al vel legis, the satanic bible and of course the principia discordia and the gospel of the FSM. the quran is still on my to-be-read stack.

Accidentally voted no when I meant to put that I've read part of it - I'm not a Christian, but I'm interested in spiritual things and ideas.

To start off, I am a Christian.


I haven't read the entire Bible, but I think the thing with the Bible is that it's really a collection of a lot of different pieces of writing, by a lot of different people, to a lot of different audiences, in a lot of different time periods, with a lot of different purposes. While I do think there's a connection to all of the material within it, I think too often the whole Bible is painted with the same brush.

The reason why I haven't read all of the Old Testament is that I think it has an overall purpose of pointing to the New Testament. I have read all of Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but many of the other books I view as background, books that set the stage and lead up to the main ideas presented in the New Testament.


For me, other than the books that I just mentioned, it's only the New Testament that directly speaks to me, mainly because most of those books have direct points. That's not to say things can't be learned from the narratives of the Old Testament. But I think the New Testament has a way of commenting on the Old Testament, and under Christianity, it has a way of bringing it all together.



Now, I can understand how if someone were to read the Bible from a strictly objective standpoint rather than looking to it for spiritual guidance , they could easily find it to be silly and a waste of time. But I think what happens a lot of times is that someone will read the Old Testament first, find it to be ridiculous and far-fetched, and then use that to make them not seriously look into what the New Testament has to say.


It seems like usually when someone has a problem with the Bible, they point to Old Testament passages (and very often books of Law like Leviticus). And then they find it surprising when a Christian hasn't even read or referred to those passages. But I think part of the reason why is that many of the epistles in the New Testament comment on those Old Testament passages and give a different way of interpreting them.


For example, all of the time I hear people say "Most Christians haven't even read Leviticus. And Jesus said he came to fulfill and uphold the Law, not to destroy it. So all of these Christians are hypocrites and don't even know their own religion or how ridiculous it is".

But in Paul's epistles, he discusses how Christians are not under the Law, but under Grace. He says the the Letter of the Law kills, but the Spirit of the Law gives life. His point is this: the whole purpose of the Law was to show people that they're sinners and can't live up to it. This is what Jesus meant when He came to fulfill and uphold the Law. If it was destroyed, then there would be no way to verify that men are sinners. That doesn't mean that Jesus instructed everyone to follow all of the laws in Leviticus. He added on to the Law by summing it up into his two main commands (Love God and love your neighbors). This is the Spirit of the Law that Paul talked about...which is why there's not a need to follow all of the outdated laws of Leviticus.

So because of this, I think many religious leaders only focus on the New Testament, even if they don't tell their followers about this reasoning. So, the followers may never go back and look into it, and they may never read the Old Testament and even know about the laws that they're not following. So I'm just giving a possible explanation of why this is the case.


(And by the way, this is my own personal interpretation of the Bible. I understand it is one biased by my own spirituality, and I can understand if a non-Christian wouldn't interpret that way).



Now, I'm not saying that Paul doesn't write plenty of controversial things, and I know that many people still find Paul's messages to be just as farfetched as as many of the Old Testament writings. But my point is that oftentimes when someone accuses a Christian of not reading or ignoring parts of the Old Testament, I think sometimes they do the same with the messages in the New Testament. So I'm just saying that just because parts of the Old Testament may strike someone as ridiculous, I don't think that should automatically keep them from giving a serious look into some of the New Testament teachings.

I was once a devout Catholic (think rosary day and night during adolescence), now I am an atheist/agnostic. Reading the bible fully through was probably the first step in dismissing the religion, there are other philosophical reasons I developed later.

The old testament is a terrible book. Not only terrible because it drags on with inaccurate and biased tale of history, but because it is also barbaric, genocidal, and primitive. I refuse to consider a murderer such as Elijah as a "holy" man. I refused to consider the God of the old Testament as a righteous and peaceful God. I'll stop going off on this, this is just my opinion, but I really don't like it.

The new testament is a good book. I admire the teachings of Jesus. I think he might have been a good person (if he did exist). Do I think his teachings were the most unique, original, and eloquent teachings of peaceful living? No (I think about Socrates, the Buddha), but I think it was a great improvement upon the old thought of the Jewish High Priests.

I'm an atheist. I've read all of the Bible in my early teens because the book happened to be lying around in the house. I read primarily for entertainment and the Bible wasn't an exception.

I remember being a bit surprised at how the contents were more graphic and violent than I'd expected.
The god of the Old Testament seemed vengeful and petty. I liked the god of the New Testament better.

While the main messages about god and love didn't really impress me TBH, I was fascinated by the people featured in the books and the lives they had lived: their architecture, currency, diet, clothing, law, customs etc. I think I experienced the kind of awe a person feels when s/he's reading a very old work of literature.

Overall it was more entertaining than I'd thought, but it didn't really change how I viewed the world.

I've read all of it once, but there are some parts which I prefer and read again and again, and some parts which I don't go back to very often.

I realise that my favourite parts of the Bible involve stories and people. Which is why my favourite books of the OT are Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Job, Esther and Daniel. Deutronomy is also fascinating to me, because it tells about the culture of the people, what makes them ritually clean and unclean. Recently, I'm exploring Isaiah and Jeremiah, because they fortell the Saviour's coming, and also books like Proverbs and Wisdom.

I love reading the four gospels, favourite being John. I also like Revelations. I've read the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles, but they aren't as familiar to me as the four gospels and Revelations are.

As a child, I read the Bible for its stories and it always makes me secure and happy. I like reading the Old Testament a lot. Genesis, Exodus, Esther, Proverbs, Daniel, Tobit and Job are my personal favorites. Among the New Testament books, I've only read Revelations from A to Z.

Being a Christian (Roman Catholic, specifically), I say that the Bible has been a great influence in my life.

I've tried....I've got such a short attention span. I'm yet to find a good Ne-proof Bible

voted: "yes, part of it. I'm not christian"
I've most definitely read Genesis, Leveticus, Songs of Solomon (i know it's not prolly not a book in the bible, my memory's a little hazy), some bit in Psalm and of course Revelation.

I read all of those but the Book of Revelation in my RE class in Year 7, when I was attending a British school in Hong Kong (When I moved to Singapore it's all gone because the school I attended here is wayy too PC for things like RE classes). I read Revelation in about '06 or '07 when I was doing a paper on Nero because he was one of those who were suspected to be the Antichrist so I was looking for clues in there. I think I also tried to draw the Beast of Revelation, but gave up after a while because I couldn't make sense of it.