Holy Bible: New International Version

Holy Bible: New International Version by Anonymous


I started at the beginning of the year and it took about an hour a day for 8 months. Sometimes I'd skip a few days, but then sometimes I would do 2 hours to make up for falling behind. The Old Testament is much longer obviously and I think I made it feel even longer by reading The New Testament's Gospels, The Old Testament, and then the rest of the New Testament. I spent 6 of the 8 months on the Old Testament and only 2 months on the New Testament.

A few thoughts on the Old Testament, it's very long, and I think there's a lot of merit in the Jewish tradition of focusing on the first five books (the Torah). Genesis and Exodus are particularly interesting. [Repeat from my Tanakh review:] Much of the rest of the Old Testament is wars and God getting angry for his worshippers breaking rules, especially marrying those of other religions. A few notable exceptions: Song of Songs is very romantic, Jonah is the stuff of great adventure books, and the locusts are as scary as a Steven King novel.

As for the New Testament, the Gospels are really interesting, in particular, the Gospel of Matthew. Not to be outdone by the locusts in the Old Testament, Revelation is some scary stuff.

Since I finished the Bible in less than a year, I'm going to try to read nonfiction books about the Bible for the rest of the year.


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The Torah: The Five Books of Moses

The Torah: The Five Books of Moses by Anonymous


The Torah is also the first five books of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, the Pentateuch. From Wikipedia: Bereshit/Genesis (בְּרֵאשִׁית, literally "In the beginning"); Shemot /Exodus (שִׁמוֹת, literally "Names"); Vayikra/Leviticus (ויקרא, literally "And He called"); Bəmidbar/Numbers (במדבר, literally "In the desert [of]"); Devarim/Deuteronomy (דברים, literally "Things" or "Words")."

I'm not going to rate or review holy books, but I will mention a few things mostly for my own reference in case I want to return to something specific later.

Genesis has the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and his two wives Leah and Rachel, and finally Joseph. Joseph becomes a big deal in Egypt because he is an effective food administrator.

After Genesis, the other four books are about Moses. Exodus is the most revolutionary. Leviticus has a lot of rules with harsh punishments. Numbers is largely a census that requires some skimming. Deuteronomy is very violent in the beginning, and then becomes a summary of the story of Moses and the rules of Leviticus. And then it becomes very violent again.

Some of the rules are fascinating. We hear about Biblical prohibitions of gay relationships all the time, but sleeping with a man's wife is also punishable by death (that would affect a lot of Congressmen which is perhaps why they are so silent on the matter). If a man rapes an unengaged virgin woman , the rapist must marry her. (But if she was engaged to a man, the rapist must be put to death.) Men may have multiple wives, but he can't disinherit his first born son even if the first born son comes from the wife he doesn't love as much. No wearing linen and wool together. A widow must marry her brother-in-law unless he totally refuses to marry her, which he shouldn't do. There is a harsh punishment for a step-brother and step-sister that marry too, and various other marriages that don't involve blood relations. There are so many more but these stood out in my memory for obvious reasons.

Also, I'm strangley curious about the "Nephilim":

"When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, 'My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.' The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." (Genesis 6:1-4, New Revised Standard Version)

and:

"The Lord said to Moses, 'Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites' . . . So they went up and spied out the land . . . And they told him: '. . . Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.' . . . So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, 'The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. 33 There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.'" (Numbers 13:1-2; 21; 27-28; 32-33. New Revised Standard Version).

Numbers (and I think Deuteronomy?) also mention Anak, the Anakim, and the Rephaim.

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The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Meh. At least it was really short. It would be a cute children's book. For adult readers it is not sufficiently sophisticated in either writing style or philosophy.

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The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike

The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked the writing in this one better than the first one- less flowery. I also thought that this one by showing the ways in which the women did and didn't change over the years, solidified that Updike really knew who they were. Regarding this, I think reviewers are unfair to Updike in his character not being feminist creations. I don't think reviewers would be so aghast if the author were a woman (but possibly a little). Yes, these aren't morally inspirational women, but neither are they the same evil cartoon of a person. They are three very unique and developed characters. Everybody has at least a bit of a dark side, these women are witches, so obviously they going to be darker, but they are unique and dark in different ways. And without Daryl in this one, there is no element of being manipulated by outside forces in this one. Which is, at a minimum, empowering.

The aging perspective of the characters is interesting and realistic. They seem very much of their time. (Though this point gets boring sometimes- I didn't really need to read about Sukie complaining about computers like every grandma on the planet.) I can definitely relate to Suzanne's daughter and her relationship with her mom Suzanne.

That said, the story was less interesting or maybe just less fun than the first. I know that's not a fair reason to give it less stars, but there it is.

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