In the past two months, I read the Bible (King James Version) cover-to-cover for the first time ever. It feels late-in-life to have completed this effort at the age of 35. Then again, many people older than me who profess to be Christians still haven’t done it. It’s not an easy book! Anyway, I don’t want to get too puffed up about it, so here are a few leisurely-jotted notes, and let’s move on.
Mainly, the Bible is stranger than one might suppose, based on the image of a “Good American Christian” upholding family values and voting in every election. For example, Luke 14:26 says,
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
Of course, you can rationalize this quote so “hate” doesn’t mean hate, exactly; instead, it means you must love God more than you love your family. Even granting that, however, it still appears strange to me that such an hierarchy seemed necessary or expedient to ancient writers. Nonetheless, the perception of strangeness is just one of the text’s many effects, and given its utter familiarity, such a perception is uncanny.
Secondly (this is another too-late observation), the book is overtly patriarchal. I mightn’t have noticed or assigned this much importance without being married to a feminist for the past ten years, and I don’t know what to do with the sexist verses from Paul, etc., but it’s worth knowing—for example—that he forbid women from speaking in church. This is 1 Corinthians 14: 34:
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
That’s not fair. Happily, I haven’t met many (I won’t say none, but they are few) who believe these verses in particular are inerrant. The idea clashes violently with our progressive 21st century.
Lastly (for now), I find some parts very moving, such as Psalm 23 and the “Sermon on the Mount” in Luke. That didn’t surprise me, and there is nothing strange about it. I’ve always known the Bible contains beautiful poetry.
So, nothing here is new, but now I’m the person writing it (Ecclesiastes). YOLO.
