The Bible is not exactly .. readable? Embarking on actually reading it all the way through and understanding the references is a serious project of literary archaeology, even armed with a concordance and a Greek lexicon. Then you run in to the various hapax legomenon: the words for which we have exactly one example in one sentence in the Bible, and are forced to guess the meaning of the word from context. Then three years later you emerge blinking into the sunlight with a deep understanding of the spirituality of the European Iron age .. then what?
I highly recommend the Bible in a Year podcast series from Fr Mike Schmitz [0]. It's very approachable but also gives you enough theology and historical context to get a handle on the 'bigger picture' and how all the parts fit together. You don't have to use the sign-up link below, it's also available anonymously from all the usual podcast providers.
If that's too challenging (he does talk very fast, and there's a lot to take in), an even easier route to follow is Nicky Gumbel's Bible In One Year [1].
Of course, they both come from a believer's perspective - one Catholic, the other evangelical protestant - but after following them you will get a good idea of what adherents claim the Bible is about (i.e. the people for whom it was written) and then you are in a much better position to make sense of any archaeological/literary-analysis approaches to deconstructing it. Also, a visit to any art-history gallery will take on so much more depth because you will understand the stories behind pictures that depict Biblical themes.
The Bible, directly and indirectly, is one of the major contributor to Western Civilization. While most of them has been secularized, large amount of ideas that we take for granted or consider common in the Western Civilization, such as equality of all man and inherent dignity of human, could be traced back to The Bible. A good understanding of The Bible would give you an understanding on the process of how Western Civilization is formed as it is today.
Stanford Western Culture class had Book of Genesis and New Testaments as part of required reading [0].
I don't think that this is really correct. For around 1500 years, most philosophical, political and religious thought in Europe had to be justified by referring back to the Bible. Therefore the arguments that equality, liberalism, democracy, and so on have their roots in the Bible are well rehearsed but they are not falsifiable nor, for the most part, true.
The political philosophy underpinning the stories in Genesis (much older than the Torah), is very different from that of the Babylon era when the Pentateuch was compiled. The Second Temple Era is very different from both of these. The historical context, and the political content of Christianity in Christ's era (or in the era of the early Gospels) is yet again different, and the context of the later, Pauline Christian books yet again another thing. Modern (post-Lutheran) scholarship sees each of these eras as a development or a refinement moving towards a better fulfilment of God's word, however the contemporary view was that many of these developments were revolutionary, iconoclastic, or heretical.
The Bible is undoubtedly an extremely rich historical document. However, the work of understanding its meaning and its legacy on some modern cultural and ethnic groups is not straightforward. Someone who reads widely through the Bible from the Pentateuch to the New Testament and believes to discern a single unifying philosophical theme or a coherent message to humanity either has not really understood most of it, or is schizophrenic. (Note that reading the Book of Genesis and the New Testament is a very different thing to reading the entire Bible. Many people who think they are able to comment on 'The Bible' really only know the Gospels + Genesis + Exodus, or some other subset such as the Gideon 'Bible'.)
Of course, 'Western Civilization' is somewhat synonymous with a culture that takes the Bible seriously and attributes a sort of mystical energy to it, while not necessarily honouring the stated precepts of Christianity (or Judaism). This makes the fact that the Bible is widely read and referred to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, sometimes combined with jingoistic innuendo that people without a Christian-inspired culture are not capable of democracy, or tolerance or creative thought, or some other shiboleth of 'Western Civilization'.
There are much less obscure texts, roughly contemporary with the Bible, which discuss humanistic values such as might be associated with 'Western Civilization'. Some of these have been treated as holy by various religious groups including Early Christians, or as of a quasi-religious importance in the organization of society and its institutions. Many of these were widely read throughout the Christian era and are much easier to see as having influenced 'Enlightenment' and 'Modern Secular' values. For example, Plato's Republic. Any suggestion that the Bible is more important than that or similar works to gain "an understanding of the process of how Western Civilization is formed as it is today" just seems to me to be a hangover from Christian apologetics and bigotry.
tl;dr Placing an importance on the Bible because it's a founding text of 'equality of all man and inherent dignity of human' is no different than condemning it as a founding text of the transatlantic slave trade, or of Nazism.
While I broadly agree, I don't think you're disagreeing as strongly as I think you think you are with dsr3 — Genesis and the NT are just two of the items on the given Stanford link alongside Plato's Republic, and it recommends several other pre-Christian texts in the subsequent list.
I am not arguing that one should not read biblical texts. Just that the recommendation to read 'The Bible' is really a recommendation to read the central texts of Judaism, the central texts of Christianity plus hundreds of pages of not particularly edifying and largely irrelevant historical and spiritual marginalia, which were collected into a specific text known as 'The Bible' for fairly arbitrary reasons.
If the OP had said to read 'Genesis, Psalms and the Acts of the Apostles' it would have made some kind of sense to me. But dsr3's use of the fact that the Stanford course includes Genesis and the NT as support of the recommendation to read 'The Bible' is just sophistry.
Saying 'you should read every single thing Aristotle wrote, the important philosophy along with the archaic geometry and the incorrect biology' is on the face of it quite a lot less silly then saying 'you should read The Bible'.
Thanks for the additional comments and correction. At first, I don't see the need to be super-specific at first because, using the analogy you mentioned, most people (that I know, at least), don't mention they have specifically The Republic or Apologia or Phaedo, they will just simply mention I read Socrates. But after some thought, I do agree that I should have been more specific on this case.
But I would still argue that The Bible (or to be more specific in this context, Genesis and NT. I will continue to use The Bible as a term for the sake of brevity.), have significant contribution to the contemporary ideas in Western Civilization. Or at least, the thoughts that is derived from it. [1] argues that the Western idea of identity is born out of Luther and [2-3] has an extensive chronology about how The Bible influences Western thinking. For starter, directly quoting from [3], "The Greco-Romans despised the feeble, the poor, the sick, and the disabled; Christianity glorified the weak, the downtrodden, and the untouchable; and does that all the way to the top of the pecking order". I think Nietzsche also share the same sentiment about how the ideas started in The Bible caused the West to become 'weaker' compared to the original, dominant Greco-Romans values.
[1-3], and of course Nietzche, are secular source that does not rely on the claim that The Bible is divinely inspired. I also would not claim that The Bible itself is not influenced by outside thinking, especially Greek philosophy. [2] directly writes that in the Paul labors, there is a fusion between Jewish morality and Greek philosophy. As a matter of fact, these external influences is probably why the NT canon is so successful.
I also have to note that I do not claim that The Bible is 'the' contributor to the current thinking in the West, my main arguments is that it is 'a major contributor' to the current Western thought, without diminishing other texts. For bad and good, The Bible is indeed a major contributor. Diminishing the influence and contribution of The Bible to the current Western discourses seems like a forced attempt to understate the contribution of the Christianity.
And re: "jingoistic innuendo that people without a Christian-inspired culture are not capable of democracy". This is a different question for another day, and to discuss about that claim etc is outside of my circle of (semi) competence.
Your use of these citations is an example of exactly the fallacy which I am talking about.
[2] and [3] are about the impact of Christianity on the modern world. I have never argued that this is not significant. My point is that reading the Bible is a terrible way to learn about this.
Firstly, most of the Bible is not about Christianity at all, since it was written before the birth of Christ. Secondly, large parts of it are not about anything interesting at all. Thirdly, most of the parts that are about Christianity, are not particularly useful for someone seeking to understand Christian ideas or culture.
[1] is about the ideas of Luther. Again, these are certainly important. Do you think that it was necessary for Max Weber to read the Bible in order to write the key sociological text on European Protestantism? For that matter, do you think that Francis Fukuyama had to read it in order to write that book? What about Nietzsche? If they didn't need to read the Bible in order to reason about the ideas and the mythos of Christianity, why should we?
The logical step from "Christianity (and/or Judaism) have profoundly influenced us, and should be examined and understood", to "one should read the Bible" is completely flawed, and only made because of the lingering Christian superstition that doing so is 'good for one' or leads to some nebulous form of well-being.
> There are much less obscure texts, roughly contemporary with the Bible, which discuss humanistic values such as might be associated with 'Western Civilization'. Some of these have been treated as holy by various religious groups including Early Christians, or as of a quasi-religious importance in the organization of society and its institutions. Many of these were widely read throughout the Christian era and are much easier to see as having influenced 'Enlightenment' and 'Modern Secular' values. For example, Plato's Republic. Any suggestion that the Bible is more important than that or similar works to gain "an understanding of the process of how Western Civilization is formed as it is today" just seems to me to be a hangover from Christian apologetics and bigotry.
Have an upvote!
Can you draw some broader pictures here for the relatively uninformed how you would get a broadly humanistic view from, e.g., The Republic? If that's too broad an ask, could you draw a line from Plato (and others) to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
I think the bible and a lot of other such religious books are "comfort books". You don't really understand every single word or passage and you have your own interpretation of most of the book which might not have been originally intended by whoever the authors were. But it provides peace and comfort and that's good enough for most people.
You are describing people mumbling through long and repetitive narratives about the history of the Jewish people without understanding or taking much in, because they believe it makes them closer to God, or simply reading the parts which feature well-known 'Bible stories' while ignoring most of the rest, thinking that they are reading 'The Bible'.
This does not invalidate what the GP said: [paraphrasing] that the Bible is difficult to understand and mostly of questionable value to a modern reader.
I can appreciate why people might say this, but modern translations are not that hard, and large parts are narrative and relatively straightforward. Probably a bit of an explainer is helpful, just like any other major work of literature.
As to whether OP would find it worthwhile reading, that obviously depends. But as others point out it is the most important book in shaping Western civilization as we know it...so there is probably some value.
On that subject Luc Ferry's Brief History of Thought has perspectives on several major thought streams. I don't know how accessible it is, but when I read it a few years ago, I found it reasonable, and I don't know much about philosophy.
> Is something you're meant to read through out your life, not in one sitting.
Meant by whom? The original authors of the Torah? The various prophets and Kings? The original authors of the New Testament? The Jewish scholars who compiled the Tanakh? The Christian scholars who combined the Septuagint and the New Testament into a single work? Pope Innocent I who ratified the choice of Gospels?
Why are you replying as if you were a teen cringelord?
It's not a question of who decided that, but because it's a complex book.
And that is also true to pretty much every other religious book in the world, where believers reach to their respective holy texts on a regular basis to study them and have a deeper understanding of their faith.
But the words 'meant to' suggest that it is designed or intended to be read piecemeal over a lifetime, when in fact the history of what we call 'The Bible' makes it clear that this is not true.
Your final sentence is simply not true. Many religions have central texts which are short, unified in style and content, written over one person's lifetime, and intended to be completely read and understood by followers with limited time and educational resources. For example, the Qu'ran.
