My shot at reading The Holy Bible

(Originally posted on Saturday, 23 December 2017)

First of all I have to point out that I am a religious person, but I am definitely not a fanatic. Moreover I have a very good high-school-time friend who is a die-hard atheist and we have had some very interesting discussions about religions in general. Fortunately he is not a fanatic either and we respect each other in every way. One day he told me something that surprised me very much – it was something like this: “Jesus was a normal person, not a god, but he did have some very wise things to say”. Hearing something like this from an atheist is all I can dream of.

Overall I know the main objections against my religion (or religions in general) and I can see some problems myself, but it doesn’t make my faith weaker. On the contrary – it’s always uplifting when some minor issues don’t divert your attention from the main topic. In case of religion the “main topic” is all about becoming a better person and finding inner peace. At least to me, but I realise that some religious people base their faith on some kind of fear of „eternal condemnation”. It doesn't seem like a good idea to me because fear (any kind of fear) will never lead to inner peace, which makes it much harder to become „worthy of Heavens”.

The first step was to pick the “version” of the Holy Bible. This is something very important because the vast majority of people who “read the Holy Bible” in fact read a translation of the Holy Bible, not the “original” Holy Bible. The sheer fact that it is a translation should make people very careful about understanding it literally – some phrases are very hard to translate from one language to another. There are some hilarious examples of likely mistranslations, for example Moses with horns:
https://artandliturgy.com/2016/01/14/why-is-moses-depicted-with-horns/

I searched the net for discussions about the Holy Bible and I was surprised by the amount of dubious (or utterly pointless) divagations by people taking literally every single word of a particular translation without even wondering if the translation is actually correct. Very good examples are the different translations of one of the Ten Commandments (for the Catholics it’s the 5th Commandment): “You shall not kill” vs. “You shall not murder”. It appears that neither translation is perfectly correct. The translation “You shall not kill” (the one that causes many strange discussions) is claimed by some translators to be definitely too broad and the translation “You shall not murder” is claimed by some translators to be somewhat too narrow. My common sense doesn't like the translation “You shall not kill” because it leads to some contradictions within the Old Testament itself. Also this translation is dubious during wars, when you have to defend yourself from being slaughtered by enemies invading your country. Killing other people in a true self-defence is acceptable to me. Very sad, but acceptable.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of translation problems that may change the way we look at the Holy Bible, so jumping to conclusions is definitely not recommended. I must also point out that at some moments I did wonder whether some parts of the “original” Holy Bible (both the Old Testament and the New Testament) had maybe been “tweaked” for the convenience of the ones who had supervised the writing or re-writing process. It’s definitely not impossible, but as I wrote earlier: some minor issues should not divert our attention from the main topic.

I was very lucky, because there had been a relatively recent (2008) “approved” (by the Catholic Church) translation of the Holy Bible from the original languages directly to my native language that seems to be very precise and that, at the same time, reads very naturally because it uses (whenever possible) modern-day vocabulary:

At first I wanted to read the whole Holy Bible with all the theological comments given right below the text, but I failed. God forgive, but some of the comments were kind of annoying and the sheer volume of all the comments was overwhelming on its own. I can understand the fear of misinterpretation, but the reality is that somebody who is open for misinterpretation (or for a blind criticism of the text) would ignore the comments anyway. I decided to read the text without the theological comments (to speed up the process), but under the assumption that I would not jump to any conclusions. The text in vast majority of places “speaks all by itself” when you read it without prejudice. I must also point out that I do read short comments that are at the side of the text, just out of curiosity. They explain some old words and/or some old customs that are alien to modern-day people or provide some other interesting trivia.

I wanted to read the whole Holy Bible chronologically, but I failed again. The Book of Genesis was basically a “page-turner”, but after that the Old Testament got much more difficult to read. Some parts (I repeat: SOME parts, not all of them) were kind of controversial and I was, at first, overpowered by them. I don't want to get into details, but the most striking examples were the issues of slavery and divorces. Another problem was the sheer volume of the Old Testament. It is huge. Physically huge. In the above edition the Old Testament is 2100 pages long! In comparison the New Testament is “only” 600 pages long in the same edition. When I realized that it would take me months (or even years) to finish the Old Testament I got discouraged, to say the least. For these reasons I started to read the Old Testament alternately with the New Testament.

When I switched to the New Testament I instantly felt much more “at home”. It was much more to the point about moral values and about finding inner peace – the most important things about the Holy Bible (at least to me). Overall I would say that in the New Testament “the pace” is better and “the plot” is a little more consistent than in the Old Testament. Obviously there are many good things to be found in the Old Testament too, but there are also some things that seems to be more or less irrelevant for modern-day people, for example the issues of animal sacrifices.

I even found a great way to read some parts of the New Testament outside my home. There is a pocket edition of the four Evangels (Gospels) of the New Testament (which are, by the way, the most important parts of the New Testament) based on the above edition of the Holy Bible. The translation is identical and there are also all the theological comments from the full edition. Unfortunately there are no “side comments” (the ones that I actually read), so whenever I read the pocket edition I later come back to the full edition and read all the side comments up to the point where I have finished reading the main text in the pocket edition.

In the pocket edition of the four Evangels (Gospels) of the New Testament the font is smaller and more dense, but still easy to read. The most important thing is the fact that it is truly a pocket edition (it fits into the inside breast pocket of a suit jacket). The difference in size between the full edition of the Holy Bible and the pocket edition of the four Evangels (Gospels) of the New Testament is staggering:

I have to point out that I AM going to read the Old Testament till the very end. For two reasons. The first reason is the fact that the Old Testament is officially a part of the Holy Bible and many parts of the Old Testament are considered by the Catholic Church as perfectly valid. The second reason is that I want to know the part of the Holy Bible on which Jesus was raised.

At the end I have to write about something that may seem strange. When I started to read the Holy Bible my “demons” (especially my addiction to computer games) got much stronger. Obviously the Holy Bible doesn't “encourage” such things, so it seems to me that something exactly opposite was taking place – as if something was trying to divert my attention away from the Holy Bible. I'm sure my atheistic friend would find an explanation for this, but to me it was quite unsettling.