Holy Bible English Standard Version with Cross References by Anonymous
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Whew! Now there is something I never thought I would be able to say. “I have read the Bible cover to cover.” Scratch that off of lists of buckets to dump!
I never would have been able to do it without David Heath narrating the Audible version as I read the free Kindle version. Okay, since this version did have text-to-speech, I might have been able to read it that way. But Mr. Heath was able to put enthusiasm or other emotions where needed to help get through what can sometimes be a slog.
Sometimes? I actually felt sorry for David Heath as he read the English Standard Version of the ‘begets’. Or the books and books of anger and judgments pour out onto the ‘chosen ones’ wiping them out again and again. As literary consumption, this book is full of repetition. Now you would think that having been raised in Sunday School and Church 6 or 7 days a week for most of my youth, I would be used to the repeats. But I have to say that most of my Biblical teachers spared me most of that. In fact, most of them steered the young biblical scholar away from books of prophesy and condemnation. As I wrote that last sentence I nearly choked! What? I certainly memorized a brainful of prophesy and condemnation. But I learned them one by one and rarely read them all in order. Oh, I read around the preacher or teacher’s key scripture of the lesson, making sure I read the chapter before and the chapter following, checking concordances along the way. But rarely the whole book. By the way, while still on the narrator, I still set the speed at triple the normal as it was the only way to ensure I would accomplish this feat.
I tried to read the Bible straight through when my children were young, using it for devotions but somewhere around Leviticus through the Chronicles I found so much inconsistency in the teaching and what I felt was right, I could no longer tolerate the writing or the incoherent rules. So I quit but with so many questions that the church couldn’t tolerate this woman. Maybe that was for the best as I feel I have a much greater grasp on LOVE than I did way back then.
Now in my usual reviews I speak about the author, but, in this case, there are so many. And I speak about how my goal for reading as mainly for strong fem leads, written by strong fem authors. Obviously, in this patriarchal book. men who are afraid of womyn as they can’t control their own bodies and must blame their very unholy existence on ‘the other’ in this case the bodies of those who did, indeed, bear them, you find no strong fem. Written out of the histories are fem. So much of what I read disgusted me.
Still. I think there is one message that either gender can learn: LOVE. Not repeated as often as anger and judgment, Love does seem to be the one piece of advice we all can take from this huge and often misquote book. ‘And the greatest of these is LOVE’ Best scripture. Had to wait a long time, histories and histories for that. Still, and maybe because of the wait, that cream rises to the top.
Darswords 
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