How would you review and rate a Holy Bible?

Sure it gets reviewed all the time

My review: “A must read for understanding context of political and cultural dichotomy in America today”

Decently plotted, but more characters than a Russian novel! Some of the plot is highly contrived and unbelievable / unrealistic: Flooding the whole world, but having a boat with breeding pairs of all species on board (what about the plants)? A man swallowed by a whale – who lives to tell about it? Humans living hundreds of years with primitive health care and no insurance? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Still, there are good themes developed and continuing story lines. The main character is a dick, for sure.

“For a book that styles itself as “non-fiction”, it surely is chock full of claims that run contrary to established scientific fact.
The main character is a murderous psychopath who casually commits acts of genocide, infanticide and mass murder, yet the reader is supposed to consider this character the good guy.
The book is also full of murder, rape, and at best questionable moral choices by its main characters. One of the supposedly good guys actually offers his own daughters to be raped by a mob! Can you even fathom this?!.
The characters are terrible role models, and in general this book is wholly inappropriate for children of any age.
I rated “Mein Kampf” a 1/5, so it should come as no surprise that this book receives the same rating”

The King James Bible is a wonderful epic poem with great plot development but no conclusion or resolution. One is left with the question, “Why”.

Plot development is really uneven. Some stories are too brief and others are too detailed.

Many episodes and stories are told more than once in different chapters of the book, and they are not remotely consistent.

Some chapters are just long lists of names add nothing to the plot.

And let’s not even get into the crappy King James translation of the original work – the translation is more than awful; it was written for political not literary reasons.

Literary merit: 1 star
Plot: 2, maybe 3 stars
Science fiction appeal: possibly 4
Character development: 2
Popularity: 5

A lot like Fifty Shades of Grey.

every book deserves a review

Why?

^It’s not a must but it helps other people who isn’t well acquainted with the book to recognize the quality of the book.

OK… I’ll play.

“The Holy Bible – or, 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and Sill No Plot”, by Seek

This book is guilty of one of my pet peeves when it comes to fantasy fiction. The author spends the preface building up an elaborate world, complete with flora and fauna and a whole cast of characters, then kicks them out of the land, kills them off, and starts over in some under-developed wasteland that no one cares about. Then, to add insult to injury, does it again, even more dramatically. Floods? Seriously?

At no point is any setting better described than Eden, which we lose by the middle of the first book. I’m not even sure where the characters are. It’s certainly not a historical fiction novel because we know there were no Jewish people in Egypt at that time.

The author goes off on huge tangents, even taking over 170 chapters to practice his mediocre poetry and play Confucius Says with himself.

There’s so much violence at the hands of this “Lord God” character. By the time Poetry Hour starts he’s already killed off the entire world once, and then over a third of the people who actually like him, not to mention ordering the survivors to slaughter entire tribes of people.

Where did they all come from, anyway? Didn’t we just have a flood and a bunch of plagues? I’m so confused.

Then the guy who likes him the best of all gets to be the butt-end of this God/Satan betting match and has a house dropped on his family. I’m half-expecting a troupe of dancing Munchkins to offer to take Job to Oz, but instead he just gets sores and boils, and eventually a new family or something.

Blah blah, some vague premonitions that could mean anything but are obviously going to be Retconned later, and now Part Two.

OK, Part Two. More tangents and geneaology and boringness, and who’s this Jesus guy anyway? He’s either the son of this Joseph guy or the son of this God character – I’m not really sure because one book says one thing and another book says another and two more books don’t even mention where he was born. Anyway this guy is either a carpenter or a scholar (again the books don’t agree) and he either lives in Bethlehem or Egypt or both? Anyway he wants everyone to be meek and quiet and be nice to each other except when he’s preaching in the streets and beating up bankers. He likes to perform miracles and heal people except when it’s a menstruating woman because ew, and he really likes sluts and whores because they’re allowed to touch him. Also he really hates fig trees and pigs.

Oh, the part where the Jesus guy told his buddy to steal a horse was kind of weird. I thought his dad/god thing didn’t like theft? and didn’t he just beat up some bankers for stealing money?

And now he’s being executed either for being annoying or for being a horse thief or for claiming to be god. Again the books disagree. Maybe that water/wine thing is against alcohol distribution laws. Or maybe his healings make him guilty of practicing medicine without a license? I don’t know.

But he’s not really dead? or he is but he’s a ghost or a zombie or something? When did that power start? I didn’t know this was urban paranormal fantasy. We’re switching genres completely here.

Well, either way they wrote him out of the story 40 days later. Now his 12 (11? 12?) follower-people are now running around preaching a bunch of stuff he never said. This Paul guy really hates women. And sex. He must have been fondled by an aunt or something. People are all running around drunk and getting arrested for public disturbances and writing letters inciting violence all over the Roman empire. (is it even time for the Roman empire yet? this timeline is so screwy).

WOAH. Whoever wrote that last book is on some serious drugs. I’m not even going to spoil that. Just read it. CRAZY.

All in all, I’m still not sure what the hell it’s all about. But god, isn’t God a shit?

No review would be complete without talking about the language used. I have been told that the Old Testament reads much better in Hebrew, but even translated into English there are portions that read like poetry. I am thinking particularly of Ecclesiastes. Other parts of the Bible can be rather tedious. I seem to recall a whole page devoted to people begetting one another.

My problem is that the book must receive terrible reviews as the be all and end all authority on the many subjects its fans assign it. I view the book as a compilation of improbable fables , while it’s fans pronounce the thing a law book, history text, rule book, instruction manual, almanac, etc.

A collection of short stories that try to explain how the world is formed in a tradition of the familiar folk tales we know. I’m quite surprised that the book doesn’t attempt to brainwash in a blatant way, nor does it present an out-of-context set of rules like I used to imagine. Remember the good old day when you wonder what the origin of something was, then your mom sat down and told a fastinating and moral story about it for you, then you know what to expect from the Holy Bible.

The stories are quite intriguing, especially the ones about heroes like David or Jesus. They remind me of the ancient Greek sagas with all the glory and tragedy for the heroes. But sometimes the stories are a bit too long, leading to some scene becoming a drag with too many unnecessary detailed. It results in the details becoming forgettable and irritating readers who want to know what happens next.

All in all, it is a decent read. Recommended for children and people who like folk tales.

3/5

@Seek, please post that in an amazon review

There are several Bibles, the King James version being only one of them. Catholics don’t use it, they use an older version.
But to answer your question, The Book contains many stories and some are great reads, be you Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, or other.
How one twists the higher implications is another question altogether.

@ARE_you_kidding_me – I’ve just tried four times, removing and altering anything that could possibly be considered offensive, and Amazon won’t accept it. Alas.

haha

@Seek Congratulations on the best critique I’ve seen regarding “the book”.

Haha, thanks, @stanleybmanly

You review it on the quality of translation.
A few years ago, I read 4 different translations at once, and was shocked how different, and often conflicting, they were.

Seek. Nice job. But perhaps more thorough next time. And tell us what you really think.

@MrGrimm888 – You’re totally right. I completely left out all the fun Old Testament stories: People getting thrown into ovens and lion’s dens, Good People burning down the Bad People’s farms by setting foxes on fire and releasing them in the fields, the guy who handed his daughters over to a mob of rapists to save an angel (the girls later raped their father), the dancing skeletons, and the furry porno that is Song of Solomon (your breasts are like two young roes that are twins, they feed among the lilies) .

Seriously, it’s a weeeeird book.

Also there’s a really beautiful homoerotic sub-plot between David and this guy Jonathan. It has a sad ending, though.

Lol. I’m afraid that I tried to read the bible several times, but didn’t get far. Wasn’t sure if it was a difference in translation and time, or I just couldn’t seriously absorb any of it. Kudos to seek and her attention span. I couldn’t do it. Not that I cared about the content per say. But I wanted to see what ‘all the fuss was about. ’ All I took away from my attempts to digest it was what I already suspected…People are quite gullible, and it’s a shame that people believe such nonsense, but the same people wouldn’t believe a book about climate change, or evolution etc.

” A hard to follow, chopped up work of fiction, replete with supernatural encounters, dramatic action and a diverse cast of characters. A must have to complete ones library of mythological sci-fi fiction.” lol

I actually tried to read the bible a couple of times, but couldn’t get into it. So I couldn’t really give an accurate review. But I think they are just stories to live by. 1/5

5 from me.

To understand the bible, the first thing you have to get straight is to whom it is addressed. Like a letter written to somebody else, you can read it and learn from it, but when it commands to do something you are not bound by that command because it was not addressed to you.

The second thing you need to deal with is that the bible was not written in English. You have to check references and compare versions to figure out whether verses are correctly translated.

The big stumbling block for most people is that there are so many preachers telling everybody what the bible says, and the bible does not say any such thing. It is not reliable to let people tell you what the bible says. Many people will make up stuff because they don’t know what it says, and many will make up stuff because they wish it would not say what it says. You just have to read it for yourself. Read a chapter of Proverbs every day. Proverbs has 31 chapters so you can keep your place by just looking at a calendar. There is no religion or nothing in Proverbs and you don’t have to believe anything. Just read to find comfort and confidence. When you are comfortable with that, then read the bible from Romans to 2 Thessalonians over and over until you start to remember what it says. That is the part that applies to Christians. Here is a book to help you to understand the bible. It’s a free download and you can get a hard copy at any bible book store.
http://philologos.org/__eb-htetb/ “How To Enjoy The Bible”