Although it is the best-selling book of all time, the Bible is not an easy read. In the introduction to his new book How the Bible Became Holy, Michael L. Satlow, Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies at Brown University, describes his own confrontations with the Good Book.1BAR readers may find comforting this short account from a now-great scholar.
The first time I tried to read the Bible I was thirteen. I had received a two-volume set of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, for my bar mitzvah, and it was the first Bible that my family possessed. The print was small and the English translation stiff, but I was excited to finally have the opportunity to read it. The first three and a half chapters, with their dramatic accounts of creation, sin, sex and murder, were great. That’s as far as I got. The mind-numbing list of names, of who begat whom, was jarring; it was simply too boring and weird. I put the book down and turned to other, more interesting pursuits.
Over the next several decades, I made many more attempts to read the Old and the New Testaments. Sometimes I would start at the beginning and try to read through; at other times I would begin in a particular book. Each time would end in failure, and I confess that to this day I have not read the Bible, or even a single testament, cover to cover. Engaging stories come to a screeching halt at extended genealogies or detailed descriptions of buildings. Lists of peculiar laws, sometimes strung together incoherently, suddenly appear. Stories repeat, but in versions that contradict each other. Admonitions to be kind and compassionate are belied by approving accounts of almost unspeakable cruelty. Beautiful statements are buried in incomprehensible and cryptic oracles. The historical narrative lurches back and forth. The Good Book is very hard to read.
Although it is the best-selling book of all time, the Bible is not an easy read. In the introduction to his new book How the Bible Became Holy, Michael L. Satlow, Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies at Brown University, describes his own confrontations with the Good Book.1 BAR readers may find comforting this short account from a now-great scholar. The first time I tried to read the Bible I was thirteen. I had received a two-volume set of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, for my bar mitzvah, and it was the first Bible that my family […]
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