Writing a review of the Bible is difficult, because I read it in a way it was probably not meant to be read: from cover to cover in chronological order. Read in this way, it’s incredibly repetitive and dull. Perhaps when read in small parts during religious festivals and prayers, it seems more meaningful and profound.

At least in translation, most of the poetry is not compelling and most of the stories are boring. The morals are terrible; virtually everyone in the Bible is a terrible person, even the protagonists. The amount of violence is horrific, and is often treated by the narrative as a good thing, when when it happens to the ’right people’.

Speaking of violence: most of the victims of God’s wrath, especially in the old testament are the Jews themselves. The book is an endless repetition of the same cycle of abuse: the Jews do something that makes God angry -> God dispatches some terrible punishment on them, like a foreign army that kills or enslaves the Jews -> after a while the Jews repent and make up with God, who saves them from the very problems he’s put them in -> all is good for a while, until the Jews break God’s rules once more and the cycle begins again.

These narratives were likely a way for the Jews to explain, why they seemed to be constantly the victims of terrible events, like being conquered by foreign empires or being enslaved, despite being the chosen people of the one and only God. Rather than their victimization being a sign that their God was too weak to protect them, these calamities were actually punishments from God himself; therefore, their God is actually in control of everything all the time, and they WILL be saved by him, as long as they follow his rules.

Perhaps this brought some comfort to the ancient Hebrews, but reading it from beginning to end as a modern person just makes being one of God’s chosen people seem like a bad deal.

There were a few parts that I enjoyed; especially the book of Job and Ecclesiastes. Job’s lamentation in the depths of his suffering was about the only thing that touched me emotionally, and Ecclesiastes was somewhat interesting, if only because the philosophy is so different from the rest of the Bible.

The new testament is just a fraud; it was written by Greeks pretending to be Hebrew-speaking Israelites, trying to convert the Jews to their new religion. Some of the philosophy seems to be inspired by Plato, to the point some lines are copied word for word.

I admit that I skimmed some parts, and by the middle the only thing that kept me going through to the end was bragging rights; being able to say that I have in fact read the whole thing.

I’m not going to rate this book. Despite the fact that the Bible itself is not great, I’m sure the translators worked really hard and did a good job, so I don’t want to leave a bad rating. Leaving a good rating doesn’t feel right either because it’s an awful book.

The most interesting parts were not the text of the Bible itself, but the annotations, introductions and essays by the scholars and translators that worked on this edition. (I read the fifth edition.) It really would have been difficult to understand anything without the context that these essays gave to the text.

Especially interesting were the parts explaining how the Bible was composed, explaining the many different versions of it and why they exist, and the difficulty of translating from an ancient semitic language without vowels. Despite how ancient the text is, new discoveries continue to be made; the NSRV fifth edition is only five years old. Bible scholarship is a very interesting field, even - or even especially if - you’re not a believer. I really recommend Bart D. Ehrman’s work if you’re interested in the origins of the Bible and Christianity.

I read this book on Kindle, which was convenient, since the physical book is so large and heavy it would have been difficult to carry it around to read outside. Kindle also makes it easy to do notes and highlights without damaing an actual book.