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May I recommend this translation? It's, er, a little inaccurate (because the translators are obsessed with cheeseburgers), but it has a certain cute style.

My brother has a French translation called La Bible des Peuples. It's supposed to be written for uneducated people, which is hardly unique by itself.

What's more interesting is that the translators chose their own order for the Old Testament, different from both the Jewish order and the traditional Christian order. It's more or less a compromise between the two. As in the Jewish Tanakh, all Prophets come before the Wisdom/Writings books; Lamentations, Ruth and Esther are with the Wisdom books. But, as in Christian Bibles, Chronicles and Ezra–Nehemiah are counted as Historical books, and put right after Kings; also, Daniel comes with the Prophets. Also, it's a Catholic Bible, so it includes the Deuterocanonical books.

I find this choice interesting. Indeed, if I had to choose the order myself, I would probably go with something similar.

Thoughts?

Maybe this is just my American + conservative (in terms of traditional/orthodox interpretation) Christian background showing, but the idea of declaring yourself to be a devout Christian and not being familiar with/being interested in studying the Bible is so utterly incomprehensible to me that I don't even know where to start with it.

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I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

Well, that's partly a Protestant vs Catholic thing. For a long time, it was actually forbidden by the Catholic Church for laypeople to own a Bible. The idea was that, without the proper context and training, it would be too easy to misunderstand the text and to become a heretic. Less charitably, the Church didn't want people to know that so much of their stuff had been made up much later.

In a way, it almost makes sense. The Bible is a big and confusing book, hard to understand if you're not prepared.

As a scientist, I can understand that. To understand physics, you don't have to read the original papers by Einstein, or the Principia Mathematica by Newton: you read a modern textbook. Only dedicated scholars can be bothered to read the original texts.

I think putting Malachi last is important for Christians because it ends with the prophecy of the return of Elijah, the forerunner to the Messiah. Even so, i can see the logic behing separating Psalms/Proverbs/etc from those others, since they aren't generally thought of as being part of a historical sequence leading up to the birth of Jesus.

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Sunàqʷa the Sea Lamprey says:

I'm not sure the Bible is really that hard to understand. I think it's hard to read it and come to the same understanding as a particular Christian denomination or preacher, but that's rather a different issue.

^^ I think I agree with you. Certainly parts of the Bible can be kinda esoteric (we will now break for a six-hour word study on "gold" in the book of Leviticus), but by and large I think if people would actually read the thing, they'd discover a lot of the confusing bits aren't that confusing in context.

Of course, being a Christian with firmly-held beliefs myself, I obviously do think there are more correct and less correct readings of Scripture, and that proper understanding of various passages can be determined through study and prayer, and that there is a single correct interpretation that only God can know, etc. etc. And indeed most major Christian denominations agree on a lot of central things (I don't mean things like "is birth control of the devil", but stuff like "does the Trinity exist"). But inconveniently, none of us are God, and the Bible is a rather large book with a lot of details in it that can be interpreted very differently depending on your perspective. If any two people claim to hold the exact same interpretation of the Bible, I would have to side-eye them pretty hard.

(If one of you is God, by the way, please PM me with what on earth Revelation means because I'm not entirely certain I'm convinced by any of the predominant theories I've heard.)

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I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

True.

I once thought that both the Old Testament (in its Christian order) and the New Testament have a similar three-part structure: past, present, and future.

Old Testament:

• Past: Pentateuch and Historical books (the history of the Jewish people)
• Present: Wisdom books (how to live your life day-to-day)
• Future: Prophets (what will happen to the Kingdom of Israel)

New Testament:

• Past: Gospels and Acts (the story of Jesus and his followers)
• Present: Epistles (how to live as a Christian, and how to operate a Church)
• Future: Revelations (what will happen at the end of times)

In Unsong, the Archangel Uriel confesses that he didn't have the time to make a proper Book of Revelations, so he just gave John of Patmos a pot of mushrooms.


You're probably right. It doesn't help that the first five books are among the most difficult to read, with episodes appearing in two versions (e.g. the story of Abraham) or even out of order (looking at you, Numbers). That can be discouraging for a first-time reader.

If I may present to you https://www.biblegateway.com, a website with hundreds of translations in many languages?