Ask HN: Have you read the Bible in its entirety, and what was your impression?
I have.  Though frankly I skipped a lot of Isaiah, just couldn&#x27;t choke it down.<p>No single impression is possible.  Too many authors over too many centuries, but here are a few, working backwards.<p>Revelation. No clue. But more of Terry Pratchett&#x27;s one-offs are funny if you know the references.<p>The epistles attributed to Paul.  Best way to understand USA protestants.  It&#x27;s the only thing they read except for the &quot;Book of Moses&quot; which has rules they like.  But to answer your question I found them to be incomprehensible. Either Paul was a lousy writer, he was confused, or both.  Compared to the other books it&#x27;s hard to discern a clear thesis, perhaps because they were intended as advice to various churches that had problems but are treated as holy writ.<p>The book of James.  IMHO the most beatiful in the collection.  Worth the purchase price of the entire collection.  Fun fact: AA was originally going to call themselves the St James club due to this book&#x27;s very practical presentation of spiritual ideas.<p>Other epistles: no impression.<p>The four gospels and Acts of the Apostles.  I can&#x27;t add to the centuries of back and forth.  But they are worth a thorough reading if you are curious. I don&#x27;t regret the effort I put in.<p>Macaques. Fascinating to a student of history as it contains correspondence with regional powers such as Rome.<p>Minor prophets.  No impression.<p>Major prophets.  Isaiah and Jeremiah are the most fascinating theology I&#x27;ve ever read, more the enjoyable if you prep by reading &quot;The Prophets&quot; by Heschel.  These two interpret the laws of Moses by discerning its underlying assumptions, drawing out an incredible view of what a faith could be.  Example:  Isaiah lays out his thesis clearly that God is disgusted with the leaders of the nation for exploiting &quot;the widow and orphan&quot;, and for &quot;joining house to house&quot; (wealth accumulation) . He says he does not want them worshiping him because they stink like manure. But then he says &quot;let us reason together! Stop oppressing the widow and the orphan...&quot; liberal balderdash! Is that really in the Bible?<p>Ezekiel is a pornographic ridiculing of the Israelite kings attempts to form alliances.<p>Daniel is interesting and is the source of Jesus&#x27;s self referential term &quot;son of man&quot;, a figure in Daniel&#x27;s vision who was given all authority over heaven and earth by the &quot;ancient of days.&quot; So there is your claim that Jesus claimed to be divine.<p>Interesting fact:  give or take a century, the major prophets and their development of a philosophical underpinning of the law of Moses were coincidental with the founding of Buddhism, Janism and zoroastrianism. Makes you wonder what everybody was drinking.<p>history beginning with Solomon: it seems to me most people miss the point of these books.  They are often interpreted as tribal inasmuch as the kings are condemned for taking pagan brides and worshiped &quot;the Baals&quot;.  But the actual problem was that the locals believed in human sacrifice, specifically their own children, who were made to &quot;pass through fire&quot;. This practice was finally wiped out by the Romans when they destroyed Carthage, a Phoenician colony.<p>Solomon is said to have had 300 concubines and 700 wives.  Everybody seems to miss the obvious point here.  700 women with legal rights? More than the number of concubines?  WTF? Point is, every two bit warlord within a few hundred miles was Solomons farther-in-law. Made him the fe facto arbiter of all disputes.<p>History of David.  One right fit bastard. When he was old and unresponsive they put a young maiden in bed with him (figure maybe 14-16 years old). When he didn&#x27;t touch her they said &quot;the king is surely going to die.&quot; He did.  Worth reading if only to see the development of the idea of absolute kingship in an individual and how he played it.  Also fascinating as it contains the first example in the collection of speaking truth to power and living to tell the tale.<p>Story of Saul, first king. You&#x27;ve read this much, why not?  . Ditto for everything back to the book of Moses.<p>Book of Moses, books 2 to 5, where all the laws are.  Best read as a constitution for a self sustaining loosely organized culture that will eventually face resurgent regional powers in Egypt and Mesopotamia.  My impression is that the laws are examples to give a flavor to how the population was to live.  Example: &quot;if your neighbor loses his crops, don&#x27;t be a dueschebag and try to steal his land with a predatory loan he can&#x27;t pay back.&quot; See notes above on Jeremiah and Isaiah.  Guess which law is repeated the most often?  Taking a day off every 7 days.<p>Genesis.  Best read with some modern neutral analysis that explains cool stuff like Cain and Abel are an allegory to the rise of farming over herding, reinforced by the later story that Esau, a hairy gruff game hunter, is portrayed as having no value.  Hunters and gatherers are so late Paleolithic.<p>Creation. Best understood as a thesis statement (similar to the Digha Nikaya #1 of Buddhism being a thesis statement) which I believe would have received an A+ from Aristotle for its systematic depiction of all that was visible to the human eye, using such depiction to deliver the two main theses: a single city created it all, and said deity was certain everybody,  even farm animals,  got to have a day off every 7 days.<p>You asked