What you're reading

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

Reading the Holy Bible...the "whole" Bible (not the Cliff Notes version most people read).

Not particularly religious, more of an interest and a research project.  

I was stunned at how difficult it is to actually lay your hands on the 'entire' Bible!  Made me want to read it all the more!  I started out with the question..."What exactly is the Bible?"  (not from a qualitative perspective but from a quantitative one).  Found a whole lot of people tripping over each other to get to be the ones to give me the Absolute and "Final Answer" on that one!  (LOL!)  That quickly branched out into about a thousand different directions (who?, when?, why?, which language?, etc.) And then there's all the different translations.  It is next to impossible to get an unbiased version with just a literal translation.  Took me over 5 years to get all the books!  I also came to the conclusion that there's a whole lot of people out there who don't want people reading the whole thing.  Like really, really, don't want you to...to the point of fightin'!

Old Testament - All 46 books
New Testament - All 27 books
Apocrypha - All 54 books
Total - 127 books (as near as I've been able to collect so far)

Interesting stuff so far!

Note - I realize there are thousands of people who have dedicated their entire lives to doing this, over thousands of years, and still haven't managed to complete that effort.  I'm not Superman in any of this, but I think I've gotten pretty close to getting most of it, and without a lot of "editorial license" in it.

I haven't spent my whole life "studying" the Bible but I have been going to Bible study for about four years.

I have read the whole Bible from start to finish more than once. Reading it and understanding it, is two different tasks. Understanding the history associated with what was going on in the areas at the time the material was written is important. Understanding the actual meaning of the words that were written, and understanding how the different translations over time can impact that understanding, causes it not to be as simple as just sitting down and reading it.