ShareNot gonna lie. I hated reading The Bible. I growing up in a catholic household and going to a catholic school, religion was one of those things that had to be done – tedious, but an inevitable part of life. Which is why I can comfortably say that I much like the New Testament over the Old Testament - stories about Jesus doing cool shit is much more interesting than all the naysaying and the be-a-good-person-or-you’ll-go-to-hell shit. Not that it’s shit (sorry Mum), but I stand by my point that walking on water is infinitely more interesting than psalms when you have to sit in mass while an old man reads old stories to you. Whatevs.
That said, the New Testament has its merits. Protestantism has clearly discovered this - people like the stories (or, in my case, prefer the stories), they can take guidance from it, they see value in The Bible‘s suggestion of being good moral citizens, but, most importantly (in my opinion – in a book blog sense), it is entirely readable.
Let’s ignore the fact that the language is rather old fashioned – being over 2000 years old excludes the New Testament from needing to drop to the level of colloquialisms to appeal to the masses – and consider, for example, parables. That’s that some good godammned (sorry God) story telling. Even the lackadaisical fashion it takes to get to the crux of the story (some call it the moral of the story, I call it lackadaisical) is interesting. There is excellent sentence structure considering that the majority of the population was illiterate and I always find myself impressed with the ability for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to tell the same storyline in such different and always interesting ways. They are some good skillz you got there, apostles!
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I would finish now, but I have one more thing to say. I don’t know whether it’s this God discussion that’s driving this, but I feel like, though, I need to confess something: I probably have read The Bible in full. Or, to be more correct, have had it read to me in full. In little bits. Over 20 something odd years. I don’t know whether a ‘reading fail’ qualifies if it’s just that I never read it from front cover to back and I am also not too sure that I haven’t missed anything, but I hope you don’t judge. Please don’t. Thank you for your forgiveness.
