The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testament in the King James… (udgave 1972)

Examples of exclusivity:
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God..." Romans 8:28.

Examples of importance of cowering to the Will of a powerful God.
"Wherefore, be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is." Ephesians 5:17.

Examples of requiring impossibilities.
"Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks; for, this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." I Thes. 5:16-18.

Examples of collective calls. "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also ye are called in one body." Col. 3:15.

Does this fill anyone with Grace?

Like most ancient works of literature, the storytelling is a sloppy and unedited collection of tall tales about questionable historical events, but this really did not have to be such a long read. The entire book should have been trimmed to maybe 200 pages, as the majority of what is written can be omitted without removing anything from the overall storyline. I understand that due to the difficulty required in writing in ancient times it was hard to edit things over, and most writings were first draft material, but the Epic of Gilgamesh was an easy read and Homer's epics weren't so bad either. There was just so much unnecessary info included in the Bible, like lists of ancestors.
The first five books obviously originated in oral tradition, especially Genesis. That's why the story is so convoluted, full of holes and missing details, with some details that sound like they've been passed through word of mouth until removed of any meaning. Several of the stories were stolen from Sumerian folklore as well. About halfway through Exodus to the end of Leviticus was a huge list of laws, most of which are extremely brutal or make absolutely no sense and lack relevance today. A large portion is dedicated to the construction of the temple, which is listed down to the smallest detail. Numbers is just a detailed census-like statement counting things.
The remainder of the Old Testament is filled with tales of God's wrath and the oppression he unleashes upon the world. God is a very brutal character, perhaps the most evil, tyrannous character in the whole novel. Not only is he a narcissistic, powerhungry brute with possessive tendencies and a huge temper problem, but he has absolutely no redeemable qualities about him. After all he created an entire world of people just to worship him and makes extreme demands of them like an abusive husband who clearly wants to be disappointed. It's no wonder that so many of the the minor characters lose faith and disobey him. People don't owe the guy just because he created them out of clay or whatever.
Psalms and Proverbs don't contain the wisdom they're reputed to have. Mostly a bunch of obvious observations, unsolicited advice, and religious fanaticism.
The New Testament was more of a political statement of its time than anything else. The story of Jesus, retold over and over in the first few books, was a criticism of the corruption that was going on among other Jews at the time under the influence of Roman authority. This was continued in Paul's letters.
Revelations showed us the true motive of the Nazarene movement, which was to overthrow the Roman Empire, or at the very least to get them to leave the Jews alone. The whole book was written in code under the wrath of Nero, who notoriously persecuted the Nazarenes. In order to escape the understanding of the Romans, it was written in a manner that only Jews at the time would understand, especially Nazarenes. It was a promise, a call-to-action, to bring forth the fall of Rome, which was already on its decline. The promise was to come "soon", within a few generations. The devil worship and blasphemies spoken of referred to the worship of the Roman emperors and their customs such as orgies, homosexuality, and prostitution that all broke the laws of the Bible. When it said the number of the beast but omitted the name, it was referring to Nero. 666 (or 616) is the sum of Hebrew letters in the name Nero[n] Caesar. The conquests, storms, and earthquakes weren't predictions of geological events; they symbolized the civil unrest and revolution that would be brought upon Rome by the Nazarenes once they'd grow in power. The mission would be to turn the entirety of Rome into a kingdom of God through violent revolution. A couple of centuries later, this became only partially true. When Constantine converted to Christianity, he set Rome up for the reign of Christianity that oppressed Europe throughout the Middle Ages, but this was far from a violent revolution. The symbolic "apocalypse" aka the fall of Rome came not from the Christians but from the Germanic invaders of the north. Christianity, too, lost its message as a mission for the liberation of the Jews and the end of corruption. The Nazarenes hadn't even hoped for anything beyond this. But instead it became a tool for corruption and oppression by the very people they sought to destroy. Instead of burning to the ground, Rome (symbolized by Babylon) became the center of Christianity instead of Jerusalem and Israel, the promised land. Constantine, being a clever politician, managed to put a stop to the rising threat of the Nazarenes by adopting their religion, simultaneously granting his successors a powerful tool to control the masses. And for almost two millennia rulers have followed in his lead, using the failed Nazarene movement to control people who were perfectly ignorant of the origins of the document.
It's absurd that after all these years people are still gullible enough take this book literally, and actually believe it to be of some value. It's hardly even useful as a historical document. ( )

For those of you who are having some trouble reading the fine in many Bibles, we have a large print King James Version Bible. It has nice large print as wellas pages that are not too thin so it is easier to turn pages. Besides the Old and New Testament it contains a dictionary/concordance and a few maps and a few other references to make Bible study easier. It is found on the library shelves under the number 220.5/Bib. Since this is a common number for Bibles, be sure to look for the words “Giant Print Presentation Edition” on the spine of the Bible.

First Edition Thus. First impression of the first edition thus - illustrated with woodcuts by Bernard Salomon. The Nonesuch Bible. Complete Three Volume Set. ***Typeface: Monotype Ehrhardt, with Garamond and Augustea Open Capitals. Printed on quality Indian paper by Oxford University Press (Vol I & II) and Cambridge University Press (Vol III). ***Vol I & Vol II: designed by Francis Meynell and printed by Vivian Ridler, Printer to the University, at the University Press, Oxford. ***Vol III: Designed by Francis Meynell and printed by Bernard Crutchley, printer to the University, at the University Press, Cambridge.

***All three volumes are near fine in olive green cloth-covered boards with decorative gilt fleurons tooling and borders to spines and front and rear boards. Decorative vignette titles pages. Reproductions of the woodcuts of Bernard Salomon.

A few pages in each volume have very light production paper creases - thin India paper used. No tears. No inscriptions. No foxing. No fading. Pages clean. Printed on quality cream paper, with exceptionally readable typography and in quality decorative bindings. All three volumes have their original loose protective clear acetate covers (not adhered to the volumes) also in fine condition. ***248 mm x158 mm. Vol I: 700 pages. Vol. II: 806 pages. Vol III: 778 pages (for the three volumes). ***First impression of the first edition thus, illustrated with reproductions of the 16th Century woodcuts by Bernard Salomon. ***Of interest to collectors of The Nonesuch Press and quality produced editions of the Holy Bible and The Apocrypha. ( )

This book is a bit of a mess, frankly. Characters are introduced and then disappear without explanation, sometimes to turn up again chapters later. The narration is a mix of first, second and third person, and the tenses are all over the place, which I suppose is due to the fact that it is the product of innumerable authors and sources, and repeated translation.

The cast of characters is huge but, frankly, none of them are likable. The main character in the first half - the Old Testament - is quite seriously the most unpleasant character I've ever come across. This God character is venal, spiteful, petty, self-aggrandising, controlling, dishonest, murderous and constantly demanding. He sets impossible tasks for people and then punishes them for failure; he encourages (even orders!) the genocide of whole peoples that are doing nothing so much as living peacefully on a patch of land that he had promised generations earlier to a different bunch of people; he personally arranges the destruction of whole cities for violating rules that he has set down, even though they are nothing to do with him, the death of children for calling one of his followers names, the execution of an old man for collecting firewood on the wrong day - the list goes on and on.

The second part starts more promisingly. The main character here is God's son, Jesus (although there does seem to be an issue of parentage; Jesus is described as belonging to the bloodline of King David through his 'foster father' Joseph) who, when we rejoin him as an adult, is preaching some pretty nifty ideas about peace and brotherly love - curiously rather consonant with some Buddhist teachings that probably arrived in the Middle East in the first century BCE, but that's another story. Jesus has obviously inherited a few of his dad's less pleasant aspects; he has a temper on him, and can be seriously controlling - he tells his followers that they have to give up (indeed "hate") their families to follow him, in the manner that has been beloved of modern cult leaders, and he reinforces the earlier injunctions ("commandments"), although i was never clear on which set of sometimes contradictory orders he meant. But maybe that's just me.

Then, after Jesus is killed by the Romans for being a trouble maker, it gets seriously weird again. It's interesting that the four witnesses to the execution that write about it give massively contradictory accounts, both of the execution and Jesus life (kind of a Rashomon difference of perception thing going on there, I guess), then it rapidly gets weird and nasty again. Paul, the guy who takes over Jesus' work, is frankly a nutter. I think he's one of these "operating psychopaths" that you sometimes find in senior management positions, with a healthy dose of misogyny and self loathing thrown in. The drugs he must be taking probably don't help. I mean, you can see how bipolar he is in some of his letters to the Corinthians, but then by Revelations he's completely lost it. The apocalyptic rantings here fail as horror, mostly because they just don't make any sense. A decent horror writer knows that terror works when it connects with the reader, touches something in their psyche, but this just seems like random, drug-fuelled imagery.

Perhaps I'm being a little unfair. This book should probably be approached as a massive collection of (sometimes loosely) connected stories. Some of them are obviously meant to be parables - although sometimes you have to wonder just what lesson the reader is meant to take away - and probably not take it too seriously. And the saving grace, in this edition at least, is that some of the language is simply wonderful, he imagery occasionally breathtaking. It's interesting to compare to [b:The Epic of Gilgamesh|19351|The Epic of Gilgamesh|Anonymous|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167203587s/19351.jpg|3802528] or the [b:Mahabharata|1382693|Mahabharata|R.A. Kosasih|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183140875s/1382693.jpg|1372685], books from different cultures on similar themes, although I think both of those are told better. ( )