Bible buying

[rebelraising]

So, I want to buy a Bible. There are many and various reasons for this, that I'll maybe go into another time- anyway, rest assured that I'm still the heathen you all know and love. No theism happening any time soon.

Anyway. So I went to see if I could get the cool little box-set book-by-book version off Amazon, because I can't find it in the shops anywhere, and I'm embarassed to ask for it (go figure). And, well. I'm enormously amused by what they've got in the "perfect partner" program with it.

Comments

Also good...

[jinty]

I also like the two reviews they have just below it:

(1 star - 2 of 10 found the following review helpful)
Biblical nonsense, 6 August, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from England If a huge lie makes you feel better about yourself, then this is the book for you. Usually such history books are backed up with masses of evidence to prove its hypothesis. This book, however, seems to have no evidence to back up it's highly dubious story. In fact, one might even deem it a story book.

(5 stars - 13 of 27 found the following review helpful)
This book will literally save your life., 30 November, 2000
Reviewer: (n.m.thomas@salford.ac.uk) from England This is the book of life. It will cure you from sickness, both physical and mental. It will comfort you in times of trouble. Its will de-stress you. It will give you help you sort out your finances. This book is essential for life.

Re: Also good...

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

:bangs head: I went and wrote a review of it. Argh.

Re: Also good...

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I'm so tempted to use the "I am the author and I want to comment on my book" link. Which would be still funnier (and yet more blasphemous) with the Koran.

Re: Also good...

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

how would it be more blasphemous? anyway, i dare you.

Re: Also good...

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Technically? Because the Koran is, word-for-word, the revealed word of God, and the Bible isn't quite that- for example, it can be translated, wheras the Koran can't, because it would then cease to be the Koran. The Bible is sort of the interpreted word of God. (With the proviso that this is my heathen unbeliever take on it.)

But, actually, if I can think of a thing worth putting there, I really will...

Re: Also good...

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

Unless you're a very observant Jew, in which case the Bible (by which I mean our Bible, not this newfangled Jesus stuff) is the literal word of God. No translation hang-ups though.

I would love to see someone submit author's comments. Really. What a great idea.

Re: Also good...

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Thanks. More information is good information. And, heh.

Re: Also good...

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Please, please do.

Re: Also good...

[(Anonymous)]

Tried that. They asked me for my publisher's address. Oh, Me.

Re: Also good...

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

It will give you help you sort out your finances.

Doesn't do much for your grammar, though.

Oh, and speaking of reviews . . .

[wouldprefernot2.livejournal.com]

". . . many of the essays in this volume show an almost obsessive desire to pin everything on one simple cause. The essay on Job is a case in point. It seems clear from the material presented that divine intervention was an important factor in the social and economic dislocations suffered by this hapless agriculturalist. But it is the reviewer's painful duty to report that the authors seem to have completely ignored other salient factors. One looks in vain for evidence that the recent works on soil depletion in ancient Palestine have so much as been consulted. Similarly, there is no mention of any rainfall statistics or studies of the prevalence of skin diseases in the Middle East. The need to ferret out this kind of relevant data should have been obvious."

More here (http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/humor/bible.html).

Re: Oh, and speaking of reviews . . .

[jinty]

That is great. Thanks for the link.

Don't buy!

[wouldprefernot2.livejournal.com]

Steal one the next time you stay at a hotel. Actually, I don't know if you have this in the Ukane, but here in North America there's a Protestant evangelical lay organization called The Gideons, who place bibles in hotel rooms. I think they actually want travellers to take them; figuring that each time that happens, another soul has been saved from hellfire. I got mine outside of Memphis, Tennessee. The translation is the old Authorized Version, full of that inaccurate, confusing, poetic Jacobethan prose that shaped the way people read and wrote for three centuries.

Re: Don't buy!

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I was school-age the Gideons gave out Bibles to every 13-year-old. I think mine is still at my mum's house. But it's New Testament only. And I literally never stay in hotels.

I do have a complete King James version from Project Gutenberg- it's just hard to read extended texts on screen. So, well- anyway, I'm shallow. I think the Pocket Canon editions are cute.

Re: Don't buy!

[oddcellist.livejournal.com]

Just in case you were still looking -- you can get the boxed sets off Canongate's website, and as you live in UK-land, it'll cost you a bit less to get them shipped.

Re: Don't buy!

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the version of the Bible that the UK Gideons now leave in hotel rooms so that guests will "swipe, repent, reform" (as was summarised brilliantly in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn) is now the Good News Bible, which is a perfectly awful translation, no sense of style, and no apparent sense of responsibility to provide a sound translation.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

c.f.: Rocky Raccoon

"... Rocky Racoon
checked into a room
only to find Gideon's Bible.
Gideon checked out
and left it, no doubt,
to help with poor Rocky's
revival. ..."

[seaya.livejournal.com]

You can find the complete text of the bible online, well at least the many christian versions.

In addition you can find it in the original greek, and translate it yourself, if you feel so inclined :)

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Well, I read the first bit of the Koran last year & it was really like 'Bible 2', with all your favourites returning like Gabriel etc. And yet not, sort of like Grease and Grease 2.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Stockard Channing's in them both? Cool.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's in Grease 2, but she may be in the Koran (I didn't read it all).

Though actually, she being the One True Goddess, I guess she's in the Bible and the Koran...

[althea5000.livejournal.com]

I'm particularly amused because I know jeskaradia needs to buy a Koran. Perhaps you two should team up?

[foxymoron.livejournal.com]

the bible's exciting! ...even though its all a load of crap ::gets struck by lightning::....you seem fun... please add me before you go friends only