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A review by grantkeegan
The Holy Bible: King James Version by Anonymous
1.0
Pretty much everyone agrees that the Holy Bible is considered the most important and influential book of all time, and a key work that helped shape and develop western culture. As someone who is passionate not only about religion, but the effects and influence it has had on our world throughout history, I knew I had to read the Bible sooner or later. I started this journey conscious that it wouldn’t be an easy task to read through such a massive book, but nevertheless I started, and I have to say it was totally worth it.
Let me start by saying that one cannot simply read this book as it is. A lot of context is needed, from multiple sources. Knowledge of history, theology, and scientific scrutiny were important tools that made my read much more enjoyable and revealing. I know a lot of the Christians and Catholics who read it will do so from their point of view shaped by their teachings and upbringing. This is because bias is inevitable, and I admit that due to my own background, I took a more objective and skeptical approach. I think that it is possible to do so while recognizing the importance and influence of each book and chapter in the Bible.
By the time I finished the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, I came with a few conclusions to my most pressing questions: What exactly is the Bible? Why is this book so important and influential in our culture and society? The Old Testament has a set of recurring themes. Most importantly, it places the worship of God above everything. It is repeated often, and in several ways, that the purpose of humanity is to love God (and later Jesus) whenever possible, with everything else being secondary. However, one cannot ignore the awful aspects of the OT. The books of Moses (from Exodus to Deuteronomy) cover different military campaigns carried out by him, which read more or less like a horror story.
The violence in the Old Testament is disgusting, to say the least. Most of the early books are so obviously the work of violent, superstitious people who didn’t know anything about the world. They had to make their own laws and explanations for seemingly supernatural phenomena.
Throughout the book, we are exposed to glorification of imperialism, genocide, infanticide, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, death, and fear. Want some examples? Check out: Deuteronomy 13:6-11, 20:20-22, 20:28-29, Numbers 15:33-36, 31:17-18, 2 Kings 8-12, Isaiah 13:16, and countless other entire sections that made me want to vomit. I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt, but now I can see why they skip them in church.
In George Orwell’s 1984, the slogan of Ingsoc, the authoritarian regime is: “war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength”. There are many similarities between these two stories, but in the Bible, this would change to: “fear is love, faith is wisdom, and submission is happiness.” The book constantly hammers down obedience to the rules it lays down, otherwise serious consequences await. This book fails the outsider's test of faith in nearly every way.
This redefinition of language extends to the one of the central contradictions in the ethos of the Bible. That God is simultaneously an all-loving being of infinite mercy and salvation, and at the same time a draconian judge who dispatches anger, destruction and fear to those who oppose him, and even those within the faith. The phrase “fear of God” is a perfect example of this dissonance.
For years, I thought that the people who where devoted to the Bible would eventually see how hateful, misogynistic, nonsensical, and oppressive this book is. But I came upon a dark conclusion: the acceptance of these parts is not a bug, it’s a feature. Through compartmentalization and indoctrination, you can get a person to believe the most detached things from reality, all while keeping those beliefs in a sheltered area where they don't conflict with other values, like human rights.
The Bible is full of contradictions. There are passages that are a direct opposition of others in terms of semantics and meaning. God is simultaneously a cruel ruler humans should fear, and at the same time the definition of pure love. And the reader is supposed to make sense of these dissonances. This is all within the book, not even counting the absurd claims it makes that contradict everything we know scientifically about the world, such as: the origin of life and the universe, that stars can’t fall from the sky, what happens when siblings interbreed, or that Noah’s Ark is logistically impossible.
By far the most interesting part about the Bible to me is that it is essentially a glimpse into the psychology of the people who wrote it thousands of years ago. Living in a world where people died at 30 and nobody even knew where the sun went at night, much less about genes, or what was on the other side of the world. Order is needed in a world where violence is expected, and seemingly supernatural events take place every day. The violence, the misogyny, the tyranny, it all makes sense when you look at it from this context.
Some people might object, saying that I need to focus the good parts, which take place mostly in the New Testament. While this part only makes up 25% of the book, I have to admit it does have some good chapters. Jesus’s story through the gospels contrasts a lot, and I understand the meaning and significance he has in the context of the religion. But at many times I felt that the rest of the content of the Bible overshadowed this. How do you expect someone to accept a being who claims to be all-loving, but will torment you eternally if you don’t accept his love?
I could keep writing endlessly about my thoughts while reading the Bible, but I think that it's a job for people better qualified than me. All I can really have an opinion about are my personal thoughts while reading it from a neutral perspective. But I believe that it is important to be able to express those opinions and share them. Christianity, despite what is claimed here, is not the absolute truth. It is simply another idea that merits questioning, analysis, and open discussion. Reading the Bible has allowed me to have an understanding behind these ideas, to be able to make informed arguments surrounding my perspective as an atheist interpreting the same verses believers do.
Analyzing modern religion and society, I now understand how irrelevant this book is today. In fact, there is really nothing you can take out of the Old Testament that could apply to modern-day morals and society. Religion had to adapt itself to continue in our modern world, and having any kind of critical thinking against those ideas reveals a lot not only about the Bible itself, but about anthropology and the psychology of modern belief.
How do I even rate this book? Having analyzed and absorbed every part of it from many different perspectives, with a conscious effort to understand it, and forming my own conclusion, I only remain even more confused than when I started about how influential it is. Some theologians and religious people will argue: many of the ideas in the Bible are outdated, and today religion means something different, something better. I partly agree, I mean, ideas mutate, change, and are passed down over generations, adapting to a lot of external factors.
But I choose to view the Bible as it is objectively: a text written by fallible and superstitious humans millennia ago. All baggage included. It is difficult to write about it without covering its influence outside of the text itself, laying the foundation for most of our western society and most mythology surrounding it. From the good, to the bad, to the constructive, all the way to the atrocities committed (and still being committed) in the name of God, Jesus, and the religions created from the Bible.
In the end, I think people should read it and form their own conclusion. I personally thought the good parts, although scarce, gave me a perspective of why this philosophy is so important to Christians. I understand what faith means, I know the meaning behind Jesus’s story, I get it. It doesn’t convince me, much less under empty threats of eternal suffering. Having read this cover to cover, I think it seals the deal for me never becoming religious. Knowing what the book contains dispels all the mystery that surrounded it before I read it. And I urge others to do the same, whether they are religious or not.
Final Score: 05/100
Let me start by saying that one cannot simply read this book as it is. A lot of context is needed, from multiple sources. Knowledge of history, theology, and scientific scrutiny were important tools that made my read much more enjoyable and revealing. I know a lot of the Christians and Catholics who read it will do so from their point of view shaped by their teachings and upbringing. This is because bias is inevitable, and I admit that due to my own background, I took a more objective and skeptical approach. I think that it is possible to do so while recognizing the importance and influence of each book and chapter in the Bible.
By the time I finished the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, I came with a few conclusions to my most pressing questions: What exactly is the Bible? Why is this book so important and influential in our culture and society? The Old Testament has a set of recurring themes. Most importantly, it places the worship of God above everything. It is repeated often, and in several ways, that the purpose of humanity is to love God (and later Jesus) whenever possible, with everything else being secondary. However, one cannot ignore the awful aspects of the OT. The books of Moses (from Exodus to Deuteronomy) cover different military campaigns carried out by him, which read more or less like a horror story.
The violence in the Old Testament is disgusting, to say the least. Most of the early books are so obviously the work of violent, superstitious people who didn’t know anything about the world. They had to make their own laws and explanations for seemingly supernatural phenomena.
Throughout the book, we are exposed to glorification of imperialism, genocide, infanticide, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, death, and fear. Want some examples? Check out: Deuteronomy 13:6-11, 20:20-22, 20:28-29, Numbers 15:33-36, 31:17-18, 2 Kings 8-12, Isaiah 13:16, and countless other entire sections that made me want to vomit. I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt, but now I can see why they skip them in church.
In George Orwell’s 1984, the slogan of Ingsoc, the authoritarian regime is: “war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength”. There are many similarities between these two stories, but in the Bible, this would change to: “fear is love, faith is wisdom, and submission is happiness.” The book constantly hammers down obedience to the rules it lays down, otherwise serious consequences await. This book fails the outsider's test of faith in nearly every way.
This redefinition of language extends to the one of the central contradictions in the ethos of the Bible. That God is simultaneously an all-loving being of infinite mercy and salvation, and at the same time a draconian judge who dispatches anger, destruction and fear to those who oppose him, and even those within the faith. The phrase “fear of God” is a perfect example of this dissonance.
For years, I thought that the people who where devoted to the Bible would eventually see how hateful, misogynistic, nonsensical, and oppressive this book is. But I came upon a dark conclusion: the acceptance of these parts is not a bug, it’s a feature. Through compartmentalization and indoctrination, you can get a person to believe the most detached things from reality, all while keeping those beliefs in a sheltered area where they don't conflict with other values, like human rights.
The Bible is full of contradictions. There are passages that are a direct opposition of others in terms of semantics and meaning. God is simultaneously a cruel ruler humans should fear, and at the same time the definition of pure love. And the reader is supposed to make sense of these dissonances. This is all within the book, not even counting the absurd claims it makes that contradict everything we know scientifically about the world, such as: the origin of life and the universe, that stars can’t fall from the sky, what happens when siblings interbreed, or that Noah’s Ark is logistically impossible.
By far the most interesting part about the Bible to me is that it is essentially a glimpse into the psychology of the people who wrote it thousands of years ago. Living in a world where people died at 30 and nobody even knew where the sun went at night, much less about genes, or what was on the other side of the world. Order is needed in a world where violence is expected, and seemingly supernatural events take place every day. The violence, the misogyny, the tyranny, it all makes sense when you look at it from this context.
Some people might object, saying that I need to focus the good parts, which take place mostly in the New Testament. While this part only makes up 25% of the book, I have to admit it does have some good chapters. Jesus’s story through the gospels contrasts a lot, and I understand the meaning and significance he has in the context of the religion. But at many times I felt that the rest of the content of the Bible overshadowed this. How do you expect someone to accept a being who claims to be all-loving, but will torment you eternally if you don’t accept his love?
I could keep writing endlessly about my thoughts while reading the Bible, but I think that it's a job for people better qualified than me. All I can really have an opinion about are my personal thoughts while reading it from a neutral perspective. But I believe that it is important to be able to express those opinions and share them. Christianity, despite what is claimed here, is not the absolute truth. It is simply another idea that merits questioning, analysis, and open discussion. Reading the Bible has allowed me to have an understanding behind these ideas, to be able to make informed arguments surrounding my perspective as an atheist interpreting the same verses believers do.
Analyzing modern religion and society, I now understand how irrelevant this book is today. In fact, there is really nothing you can take out of the Old Testament that could apply to modern-day morals and society. Religion had to adapt itself to continue in our modern world, and having any kind of critical thinking against those ideas reveals a lot not only about the Bible itself, but about anthropology and the psychology of modern belief.
How do I even rate this book? Having analyzed and absorbed every part of it from many different perspectives, with a conscious effort to understand it, and forming my own conclusion, I only remain even more confused than when I started about how influential it is. Some theologians and religious people will argue: many of the ideas in the Bible are outdated, and today religion means something different, something better. I partly agree, I mean, ideas mutate, change, and are passed down over generations, adapting to a lot of external factors.
But I choose to view the Bible as it is objectively: a text written by fallible and superstitious humans millennia ago. All baggage included. It is difficult to write about it without covering its influence outside of the text itself, laying the foundation for most of our western society and most mythology surrounding it. From the good, to the bad, to the constructive, all the way to the atrocities committed (and still being committed) in the name of God, Jesus, and the religions created from the Bible.
In the end, I think people should read it and form their own conclusion. I personally thought the good parts, although scarce, gave me a perspective of why this philosophy is so important to Christians. I understand what faith means, I know the meaning behind Jesus’s story, I get it. It doesn’t convince me, much less under empty threats of eternal suffering. Having read this cover to cover, I think it seals the deal for me never becoming religious. Knowing what the book contains dispels all the mystery that surrounded it before I read it. And I urge others to do the same, whether they are religious or not.
Final Score: 05/100