Another post on a religious topic, while the memories are still fresh. After reading several books from the Bible, I can probably try to answer the question - Should an unbeliever read the Bible, or is it a waste of time?
I’ll start with the main thing, I think everyone knows that the Bible is not one book, but a collection of a large number of books written at different times by different people. Many books were written in those distant times, but not all of them were selected and included in the Bible. Moreover, the Bibles of different faiths differ slightly in the number of books. According to our classics, there are 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the New Testament. Don't let this number scare you, some books are quite short. This is the first important point.
The second important point is the division into the Old and New Testaments. The books of the Old Testament were written long before the birth of Christ (the first books from 1500 BC), and the books of the New Testament after his birth. This division is one of the biggest problems for beginning readers. The fact is that if you look at recommendations on the Internet from Christians, they will often convey the idea that you need to read the New Testament first, and then the Old. Those. not by the time of writing, but by novelty.
This is explained by the fact that the Old Testament was written in very old times and much in it can shock an unprepared reader. Having read the New Testament first and been imbued with the humane ideas of Christianity (if you get hit on the cheek, turn the other one), the books of the Old Testament will no longer shock you so much (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth). Because the New Testament, as it were, clarified/supplemented/modernized/developed and deepened the settings of the Old.
My recommendation will be the opposite - if after reading this article you still decide to read the Bible, start reading the Bible from the Old Testament. But before reading, you need to set yourself up correctly.
The fact is that the Old Testament was written at a time when the concept of the value of human life, equality of the sexes, etc. no one was particularly interested. Life was hard, Egypt was ruled by pharaohs, wars, raids, slaves…. This is almost living history that happened before our era! It is not surprising that the texts of the Old Testament can really shock at the first stage. Kill, throw stones, sleep with a slave, provoke, cheat on multiple moves, the notorious “eye for an eye” you will find on almost every page. There is so much blood and cruelty in the Old Testament that even Hollywood screenwriters have not yet filmed all the plots. Just be mentally prepared for this and, when faced with the horrors of those times, do not rush to shout - How is this possible! It's the Bible! It will get even worse, but over time you will get used to it.
In addition to the cruelty of modern man, illogicalities will begin to bother him. You will also encounter them often; if something seems strange to you, look for an interpretation on the Internet. Let me give simple examples of why there are two concepts: God and Lord? Why did Moses fight with God? If God is all-knowing, why did he come down to look at Sodom and Gomorrah? How could the entire animal world fit into a small Ark? Why did God “accidentally” forget his treaty with the Jews for as much as 430 years? Etc. and so on.
The interpretation or explanation of this kind of facts is in itself very interesting. I read a couple of articles on Orthodox websites and online forums to understand that there is no point in looking for explanations, because the arguments are different and sometimes raise even more questions. You just have to accept that it was meant to be. There are many such texts in the Old Testament and you will soon begin to stop paying attention to them.
I repeat once again - the books of the Old Testament were written a very, very long time ago, reflecting the difficult living conditions of those times, “their principles and morals,” so if you consider yourself a modern and logically thinking person, you need to read this part of the Bible taking into account the factor of antiquity. I would give an example of modern legislative books. By historical standards, they were written literally yesterday, in modern language, but even then they have to issue additional interpretations 10 times thicker, and after all this, questions still remain about how to understand this or that norm of the law. The books of the Bible began to be written during the reign of the pharaohs, so demanding from them the same accuracy that we want to receive (but do not always get) from modern books is probably not entirely fair.
For what
The question may arise: if everything in the Old Testament is so bad, sometimes bloody, and most of the time just boring, why read it? The Old Testament seemed more interesting to me than the New because of its historicity.
This is probably the time to discuss why read the Bible at all: - The Bible has had a very great influence on literature, cinema, art, and folk art. If you are interested in any of these topics, you need to read the Bible. — If you live in a country in which religious people make up a significant part of society; — If you are interested in the history of our society; — If you need arguments for meaningless Internet disputes; — If you want to increase your erudition in general; — Of course, if you are a believer; - If you are a pseudo-believer, it would also be nice to read. Otherwise, everyone celebrates Easter and dives into the ice hole, but they know little about its historical roots.
For me, the most interesting thing was the historical component. Not in the part that the world was created in 6 days, but the story about the life of the Jews, the over-drinking of the Jewish people and the emergence of new religions. The same books that preach moral components and norms of a criminal-administrative nature, on the contrary, did not arouse interest. You need to understand that the biblical books pay great attention to the regulatory part - how to live, how to resolve disputes, in fact, if we ignore the religious component - a kind of analogue of criminal, tax, administrative and other codes. Reading these texts is just as “interesting” as modern codes.
True Christians know and study the Bible
Also in the Gospel of John there is one incident when the Lord Jesus spoke to a multitude from Jerusalem and...
When He said this, many believed in Him. Then Jesus said to the Jews who believed in Him: If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (John 8:30-32)
Do you see what the Savior says? We are His true disciples, that is, true Christians, only if we abide in His Word, because this way we will know the truth, and the truth frees us from false teachings and from sin and helps us to live a holy life pleasing to Him. How can you call yourself a Christian if you have never read the Bible in your life? The Lord Jesus tells us to abide in His Word, that is, to systematically study the Bible, since only in this way can we know the truth. The Bible contains the Word of God, and if someone does not read the Bible, let him not even dare to call himself a disciple of Jesus Christ, that is, a Christian, since he is not one.
Before His ascension into heaven, the Savior gave the disciples the following commandment:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. (Matthew 28:19-20)
According to this commandment, a disciple of Jesus Christ is one who has heard the Gospel (the good news of salvation that God gives through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ), is baptized and then devotes himself to studying all the commandments of Jesus Christ in order to fulfill them. If he does not do all these things, he is not a true disciple of Christ.
How to read the Bible?
My method was the following. I started reading from the Old Testament, got mentally ready and read the first 5 books (the Pentateuch). They describe the main historical events - the creation of the world, the flood, the Tower of Babel, the exodus from Egypt, etc. Next, on Wikipedia, I looked at the summary of the remaining books, click on each link and read the summary. If you are interested, read, if not, skip. For example, it was interesting to read the Book of Ecclesiastes, a very unique view of life, it is surprising that this book is included in the Bible. In the books, I skipped the parts where genealogies are listed, as well as, as I wrote earlier, a description of the norms and rules of life. You can read them once, which is generally enough to understand, unless, of course, you plan to build your life in accordance with such instructions.
If you have made it this far and (suddenly) you have even read or leafed through the Old Testament, then now there will be one of the key points from my point of view. It will become clear why it is still more correct to follow the Old-New Testament path, and not vice versa, New-Old Testament, as Christians recommend (and they recommend reading the Old Testament selectively).
What have we learned from the Old Testament? Jews = Jews = “sons of Israel” are God’s chosen people because they signed a contract with God (Covenant = agreement). You may be indignant at this fact, but every people has the right to consider themselves God’s chosen ones, some are just unlucky, for example, the Egyptians with their religion, now there are neither Egyptians nor the god Ra (although the miracles of that religion are still recognized as the Wonder of the World), and Jews are conditionally “lucky”.
So, the Jews lived according to their religion, described in the Old Testament, until the birth of Christ. As is known (although disputed by some), Jesus was a Jew and on the basis of Judaism he developed a somewhat new direction, which later resulted in Christianity. In essence, the Jews would say that he created a sect.
What is the fundamental difference between Christianity and Judaism? Jews do not consider Jesus the son of God, and believe in one God, while Christians believe in Jesus as the son of God, and as a result are forced to introduce the concept of the Trinity - they believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Read the difference between Judaism and Christianity, you will learn a lot of interesting things.
Christians could not discard the Old Testament, because without it the foundation of the religion would collapse, but they also could not follow the Old Testament literally, as the Jews/Jews did, due to understandable fundamental disagreements. As a result, the New Testament was born (i.e., a kind of new agreement between people and God), which corresponded to the spirit of the new religion.
Here, in my opinion, one more important point should be noted. According to the Old Testament, to be objective, then according to the Jewish Old Testament, Jews are God's chosen people. The question is: how can an ordinary person also become God’s chosen one or are there no options? It is on this issue, it seems to me, that Judaism lost the competition to other religions. The fact is that the Old Testament recommends expelling or destroying the local population when seizing a territory; there is no talk of implanting one’s own religion there. (Cruel? Probably yes. But the same principles applied to the Jews. Those were the times). You can be a Jew either by blood from your mother, or by going through a special procedure - conversion. This is not easy, now the process takes from 2 to 5 years and it is not a fact that it ends successfully for the applicant. Thus, the Jews created a religion that, in principle, could not be scaled to large masses of people. Christianity (and Islam) is free of this problem; they expand their audience not only through volunteers, but also, as world history has shown, at times by force.
Two religions based on the Old Testament began to develop in parallel. They developed like this for six centuries, until the third religion arose - Islam. In many ways, it has more in common with Judaism than with Christianity, since Islam also does not recognize the divinity of Jesus, considering him one of the Prophets, nothing more. Muslims, like Jews, believe in one God, and not in the Holy Trinity, in addition, only among Christians a person is born sinful (original sin), in competing religions a person is born sinless and accumulates sins in the process of life. Or it doesn't make money.
It is for this reason that I recommend starting your reading with the Old Testament, as it is the basis of Judaism and Christianity, and has had a great influence on Islam.
Now, if you are interested in Christianity, you can move on to the New Testament.
Understanding the Unseen through the Bible
The Bible describes not the material world, but two other invisible worlds: the world of the mind and the spiritual world, dissolved in each other, like tea and sugar in hot water. They cannot be touched or seen, they are nearby, but covered by matter, that is, we live on the other side of matter from them, and therefore they are invisible and not felt by the material senses.
And so, in order to understand these invisible worlds, their origin, the origin of living entities, including humans, the laws of this world, the system of management, control, judicial system, system of punishment, the Bible was dictated to us, which in essence is the Constitution and Instructions for humanity .
New Testament
According to the New Testament, it makes sense to read the entire Gospel, there are four of them. Why four, and not 12, since there were exactly 12 apostles? Because... four cardinal directions. There are other justifications, for example, because the rest of the Gospels did not fit into “party politics.” But in general, you shouldn’t be particularly picky about the choice of number 4; Newton at one time identified 5 colors of the rainbow, but the number seemed not very harmonious to him and so he added 2 more colors, bringing them to the number of notes - 7. The magic of numbers follows us everywhere. But I digress.
After reading the entire Gospel, you can use the list of New Testament books on Wiki and choose those that seem most interesting to you. At a minimum, you should definitely read Apocalypse = Revelations in order to understand what awaits believers at the end of their journey and what provides such rich food for screenwriters, novelists and poets.
Let me point out that it is best to read the Bible in this order. Those. a mandatory minimum of reading, then a conscious choice; if you immediately start jumping through books randomly, you may not have a single picture in your head. Conditionally united, let's say.
After delving a little into the topic, you may have more specific questions that you want to know more about. Again we look for answers on the Internet and return to the Bible. For example, the agreement with the Jews provided for mandatory circumcision:
Chapter 17 Art. 10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you: that all your males shall be circumcised;
this norm is observed among Jews and Islam, but not among Christians. Answer:
Chapter 10 Art. 16 Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart
One of the goals of the New Testament is precisely to get away from the strict restrictions imposed by the Old Testament (circumcision, Sabbath, etc.), focusing no longer on the formal adherence to the letter of the Testament, but on the spiritual component.
You can read the Bible in different ways, I downloaded and installed the “Bible - Synodal Translation” application on my tablet, this version of the translation is recommended for reading as the most accurate.
Saving Faith Begins in the Bible
The Apostle Paul wrote this about how a person can be saved from eternal destruction:
For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, because with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation. For the Scripture says: Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. There is no difference here between Jew and Greek, because there is one Lord of all, rich for all who call on Him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can we call upon Him in whom we have not believed? How can one believe in One about whom one has not heard? How to hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:9-14)
Salvation can only come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and this faith does not appear in our heart by itself, but comes as a result of hearing and understanding the Word of God. The Bible records the Word of God, and the Apostle John wrote this:
Jesus did many other miracles before His disciples that are not written in this book. These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name. (John 20:30-31)
Supper and foot washing
(John 13:1)
Before the Feast of Easter, Jesus, knowing that His hour had come to pass from this world to the Father,
showed by deed that
, having loved His beings in the world, He loved them to the end.
“To the end” is not a matter of time, it is a matter of degree. He loved them extremely much.
(John 13:2)
And during the supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Simon Iscariot to betray Him.
The Supper is a remembrance of His death.
(John 13:3-4)
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given everything into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, got up from the supper, took off His
outer
garment, and, taking a towel, girded Himself.
Jesus rose from supper - this is a type of His resurrection.
He arose after His death.
What was the Lord Jesus going to do after His resurrection?
He took off His outer clothing and dressed as a slave.
(Rev 1:12-13)
I turned to see whose voice was speaking to me; and turning, he saw seven golden lampstands and, in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man, clothed in a robe and girded around the chest with a golden belt.
John saw Jesus, girded with a golden belt in all His glory, and fell at His feet. Jesus is still serving in heaven.
(John 13:5)
Then he poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel with which he was girded.
The slave, who did the dirtiest work in the house, also washed the feet of all the people who entered the house.
(John 13:6)
He approaches Simon Peter, and he says to Him: Lord! Should you wash my feet?
The fact that Jesus girded Himself with a towel, washed the disciples’ feet and wiped them dry with the towel with which He girded Himself - He did this intentionally.
Washing the disciples' feet is a form of preaching.
If you spend time reading the Word every morning, you get your daily bread, you open your heart to the washing of water. All this washes your feet.
Having completed his washing, Jesus wipes his feet with the towel with which he was girded. The towel was tied around His belt.
The "towel" is a symbol of righteousness.
(Isaiah 11:5)
And righteousness will be the girdle of His loins, and truth will be the girdle of His thighs.
After preaching, even if the sermon serves to correct the hearers, end by drying their feet with a sense of righteousness. Remind them that they have the righteousness of God in Christ. This doesn't just apply to preaching from the pulpit. The word may be spoken by a friend or you may read it in Scripture. Be open to the water of the word. Otherwise, sin will be on you, and you may become prey to the devil. God said to the devil: “You will eat dust all the days of your life (see Gen. 3:14).” That's why you need water.
(John 13:7)
Jesus answered and said to him, “What I do you do not know now, but you will understand later.”
They thought it was an ordinary ablution, but it was an unusual ablution.
This washing is only a symbol of the larger truth about what Jesus does for us after His return to the Father.
Washing with water still occurs today.
You have been renewed, washed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, now you need to “wash your feet” daily. If you cannot do it yourself, God will send someone to you. What did Jesus say? “Do to one another as I have done to you.” Share the word. Wash each other's feet.
(John 13:8)
Peter says to Him: You will never wash my feet.
The flesh does not understand what is happening: it either runs ahead of everyone or lags behind.
(John 13:8-9)
Jesus answered him: If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me. Simon Peter says to Him: Lord! not only my feet, but also my hands and head.
The flesh never keeps pace with God. Towards the end of the chapter, Peter says to Jesus, “I will follow You.” Flesh can be very bold.
(John 13:38)
Jesus answered him, “Will you lay down your life for Me?” Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow until you have denied Me three times.
This is cowardice. The flesh can be fickle, so don't rely on your own strength.
Jesus said, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” He did not say that this is a washing for salvation.
What happens if Jesus doesn't wash?
“You have no part in Me” would mean no salvation.
“You have no part with Me.” This means that you will not be able to move with Jesus. You will either run ahead or fall behind.
You need to be washed in the water of the word.
(John 13:9)
Simon Peter says to Him: Lord! not only my feet, but also my hands and head.
Jesus says to him, washed.
Washed is one who is washed from head to toe. This is salvation accomplished by the Blood. The one who has been washed only needs to wash his feet.
You are saved once and for all. You are washed in the Blood once and for all. The blood cleanses you. The one who has been washed only needs to wash his feet. You are faced with defilement, negativity and misjudgment every day. No matter what we are talking about, these judgments try to penetrate your mind, and you subconsciously accept them, which means you become defiled.
Desecration is pictures that you don't need to see, but there are plenty of them and your attention is there.
Have you sinned?
No, but you have become defiled. Your mind has become defiled.
How to wash yourself from all this?
Water of words. This does not mean that you have lost your position. You are still righteous in the eyes of God, and you are still living in His glory, enjoying what He has given you. You do not lose what you received in water baptism. But your feet are dirty.
There is daily cleansing. Don't forget to do it. Read the Bible often and you will feel washed. A saved person, that is, washed once and for all, only needs to wash his feet, because he is completely clean.
Looking at the disciples, Jesus said: “You are clean, but not all of you.”
Jesus spoke about Judas Iscariot.
How can you perform something that has never touched your heart?
King David was a righteous man, and through him God wrote the book of Psalms, that is, holy songs with very rich spiritual content and many instructions. The longest psalm is Psalm 119, and it is entirely dedicated to the Bible. Here is what the psalmist says about the connection between Bible study and the heart:
How can a young man keep his path pure? - By keeping yourself according to Your word. I seek You with all my heart; do not let me wander from Your commandments. I have hidden Your word in my heart, so as not to sin against You. (Psalm 119:9-11)
Because he hid the Word of God in his heart by studying deeply, that is why he does not sin and can keep his path, that is, life, pure. And then, if you say that you love and seek God with all your heart, then you do not deviate from His commandments and therefore study them because you do not want to deviate.
