I feel the need to warn everyone about getting into stuff like Calibre eBook management software. This kind of program claims to be an easy, free and fast way to strip the DRM from Kindle eBooks, and it is, but doing so is strictly against the terms and conditions of the Kindle store. If Amazon had literally any way of telling that someone was using this software for its intended and quite effective purpose, they'd probably be really bummed out and possibly even miffed.
Thankfully, this scourge will stop working on the 26th, so you only have a few more days to carefully refrain from using it.
And you should definetely not look around for bulk downloaders to fetch everything automatically for you.
I feel the need to warn everyone about getting into stuff like Calibre eBook management software. This kind of program claims to be an easy, free and fast way to strip the DRM from Kindle eBooks, and it is, but doing so is strictly against the terms and conditions of the Kindle store. If Amazon had literally any way of telling that someone was using this software for its intended and quite effective purpose, they'd probably be really bummed out and possibly even miffed.
Thankfully, this scourge will stop working on the 26th, so you only have a few more days to carefully refrain from using it.
And you should definetely not look around for bulk downloaders to fetch everything automatically for you.
One should not seek to subvert our cyberpunk future by learning to use scripts like this one https://github.com/chrishol/greasemonkey-scripts/blob/main/download-all-kindle-books.js as Amazon updates its methods, invoking spry responses from coders. Best to settle into the yoke early and often, lest we be tempted to fight every overreach. https://youtu.be/EGJDisov240
(This is not a recommendation on my part, but a simple walkthrough of an option. My preferences lean open-source, which Tampermonkey apparently isn't.)
pooka on
+1
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
edited February 23
Okay I used his guide to automate a script to auto download all my books. Only like fifty pages to go. Fuck do I have a lot of kindle books.
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
Finished up The Dark Side of the Sky by Francesco Dimitri the other day. It's his third book in a sort of very loosely connected series of supernatural (maybe?) horror novels set in southern Italy. I've greatly enjoyed all of them, and this one was no exception.
It's about a modern cult (well, they call it a family) of vaguely hippie sorts who run a big festival at a secluded villa, and told mostly from the perspectives of three people who get inducted into the inner circle of the cult and invited to stay indefinitely. They learn the rites and secrets of the group, maybe there's some magic there, things continue to escalate.
It feels a little bit like a magic trick of a book. It tells you what it's doing and how it works, and then continues through the perspectives of all of the people it's working on, and in a way, you as the reader are also being inducted into the Bastion, becoming, if not a participant, at least an insider of sorts. I mean you at least understand where they're coming from, you understand that they're not really a cult cult, or if they are, at least they've got a real thing they're doing, they're not crazy.
It's neat, it's very good, check it out if you like that sort of thing. You don't need to have read the other books to pick it up (although they're also very good), there's a couple of characters referenced but that's kind of it.
+6
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell was pretty good. Horror fantasy rom-com about a horrible shapeshifting blob monster catching feelings for a human woman and getting all caught up in her family drama. If there's any justice in the world, Aubrey Plaza will play the monster in a medium-budget film adaptation one day.
Hi, The Book Thread. I need a Books recommendation.
I have started to dip my toes back into the
Wait for
Bible!?!
I'm not entirely sure why since I'm not really looking for religion. I thought about making a thread about it and my thoughts on things but haven't decided on that yet since it sounds like commitment to what may just be a passing bit.
Anyway, I would like some side literature that looks at the history behind the Bible, behind Christianity, maybe looks at the themes or motifs to give some insight on the stuff happening at the time the stuff was happening, who actually wrote it, etc, etc. Specific focus on the New Testament but it can be about the whole shebang, too.
That said, I'm not necessarily looking for a repudiation of the Bible, nor anything specifically for the devout seeking affirmation of it either. I'd like something clinical, to just kind of give me a bigger perspective of how it all came about, stuff I may not have been taught in Bible class and the like. I did some googling and frankly there's a LOT of stuff that came up so I figured I'd ask in here to see if I could get a better, more sound direction to some sources that you nerds have vetted.
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
If you can get your hands on a copy and a buddy to help you team-lift it, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch sounds like exactly the tone you're looking for. It's a clear-eyed history that doesn't shy away from the human messiness of creating the New Testament canon or the rampant dirtbaggery that went into creating and spreading the faith, but it's not an atheist screed that dismisses the whole exercise as babytime frolics for idiots. It doesn't sound like you need all three thousand years of it, so I'd treat it like an encyclopedia and just dip in for the time periods you're focusing on at the moment. It hasn't yet been purged from the Open Library, so you can pillage the bits you want for free.
More widely available and a more holistic read, The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is an excellent way to get a handle on the early church. Assuming you're already pretty familiar with the New Testament as it exists today, focusing on all the other potential gospels that didn't make the cut refreshes and refocuses all the bone-deep stuff you know but don't think about and makes the whole Bible-writing era pop out like a Magic Eye picture. She also wrote The Origin of Satan, which is a neat lit-crit breakdown of what the devil does and doesn't do in his rare Biblical appearances.
Not sure if this was asked here before. But since we're on the sorta tricky subject anyway;
If I was going to read one version of the Old and one New Testament, which version would people recommend?
I'm not looking for spiritual guidance or a history lesson (though the latter might be closer). I'm just looking to have all the references, imagery, and allusions in other books spark memory of the actual context, not just a chain of references on references. Like between Dostoevsky, McCarthy, etc. I should have a better working knowledge of the actual biblical text instead of mostly knowing it through Simpsons parodies.
Also I fucking love footnotes. Gimme all of that context and errata.
I picked up the New Revised Standard Version (I think) which from some quick googling indicated it may be the more academically minded translation of the Bible. Otherwise I'd say New American Standard.
For pure unadulterated old English peotry I guess you'd need the King James Version. It is a very pretty text in that regard, and the one that probably will have the most direct link to classic literature. That said, because it's old English, it's gonna be a much... loftier and harder read? A thing I'm realizing that I didn't catch back in my churchin' youth days is that the Bible is actually very nuanced and layered. This is possibly why people have been Missing the Fucking Point for like, 1100 years. They just read it literally and take everything at absolute face value.
A trick I've learned, at least with the NT, is to read all the red text from Jesus in your head as him being an absolutely massive, catty bitch. It really flips a lot of shit on its head.
I'm pretty sure I saw a few academic versions of interlinear bibles on line. Like, you can find a site that in lines the original Greek in between verses of either KJV or NAS. That's cool but didn't help me much because I can't fuckin read ancient Greek.
Edit: it should be noted that most Bible apps will have about 10 to 15 different versions pre-loaded so you can pick which ones you want on the fly.
I'm pretty sure I saw a few academic versions of interlinear bibles on line. Like, you can find a site that in lines the original Greek in between verses of either KJV or NAS. That's cool but didn't help me much because I can't fuckin read ancient Greek.
Edit: it should be noted that most Bible apps will have about 10 to 15 different versions pre-loaded so you can pick which ones you want on the fly.
It can be a bitch being able to read Greek, Hebrew, and/or Latin, cause then you get to have fun with jumping through linguistic hoops when trying to nurse proper context out of things. Like do the Greek references to Mary's "virginity" hew closer to the Semitic word almah, or the complex Latin expression virgo intracta? What profession was actually referred to with the Greek ho-tekton, etc...
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
0
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
Just to be a stickler for details, King James Version is modern English. There are no surviving complete translations of the bible in Old English, but here's an excerpt from Genesis of one of the partial texts we have (Junius manuscript):
Him þa Noe gewat, swa hine nergend het,
under earce bord eaforan lædan,
weras on wægþæl and heora wif somed; and eall þæt to fæsle frea ælmihtig
habban wolde under hrof gefor
to heora ætgifan, swa him ælmihtig
weroda drihten þurh his word abead. Him on hoh beleac heofonrices weard
merehuses muð mundum sinum,
sigora waldend, and segnade
earce innan agenum spedum
nergend usser. Noe hæfde,
sunu Lameches, syxhund wintra
þa he mid bearnum under bord gestah,
gleaw mid geogoðe, be godes hæse,
dugeðum dyrum. Drihten sende
regn from roderum and eac rume let
willeburnan on woruld þringan
of ædra gehwære, egorstreamas
swearte swogan. Sæs up stigon
ofer stæðweallas. Strang wæs and reðe
se ðe wætrum weold; wreah and þeahte
manfæhðu bearn middangeardes
wonnan wæge, wera eðelland; hof hergode, hygeteonan wræc
metod on monnum. Mere swiðe grap
on fæge folc feowertig daga,
nihta oðer swilc. Nið wæs reðe,
wællgrim werum; wuldorcyninges
yða wræcon arleasra feorh
of flæschoman. Flod ealle wreah,
hreoh under heofonum hea beorgas
geond sidne grund and on sund ahof
earce from eorðan and þa æðelo mid,
þa segnade selfa drihten,
scyppend usser, þa he þæt scip beleac.
Just to be a stickler for details, King James Version is modern English. There are no surviving complete translations of the bible in Old English, but here's an excerpt from Genesis of one of the partial texts we have (Junius manuscript):
Him þa Noe gewat, swa hine nergend het,
under earce bord eaforan lædan,
weras on wægþæl and heora wif somed; and eall þæt to fæsle frea ælmihtig
habban wolde under hrof gefor
to heora ætgifan, swa him ælmihtig
weroda drihten þurh his word abead. Him on hoh beleac heofonrices weard
merehuses muð mundum sinum,
sigora waldend, and segnade
earce innan agenum spedum
nergend usser. Noe hæfde,
sunu Lameches, syxhund wintra
þa he mid bearnum under bord gestah,
gleaw mid geogoðe, be godes hæse,
dugeðum dyrum. Drihten sende
regn from roderum and eac rume let
willeburnan on woruld þringan
of ædra gehwære, egorstreamas
swearte swogan. Sæs up stigon
ofer stæðweallas. Strang wæs and reðe
se ðe wætrum weold; wreah and þeahte
manfæhðu bearn middangeardes
wonnan wæge, wera eðelland; hof hergode, hygeteonan wræc
metod on monnum. Mere swiðe grap
on fæge folc feowertig daga,
nihta oðer swilc. Nið wæs reðe,
wællgrim werum; wuldorcyninges
yða wræcon arleasra feorh
of flæschoman. Flod ealle wreah,
hreoh under heofonum hea beorgas
geond sidne grund and on sund ahof
earce from eorðan and þa æðelo mid,
þa segnade selfa drihten,
scyppend usser, þa he þæt scip beleac.
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
Old English is a completely separate language from Modern English, it's what was spoken in England and parts of Scotland from roughly 450-1100. It was specifically spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic people that settled in England in around the fifth century, and contains very little of the romance language influence that later forms of English do. This is what Beowulf was written in, and while there are clear paths that you can trace, it's essentially incomprehensible to Modern English readers. It was succeeded by Middle English, which is a fair bit more recognizable, though still difficult for modern English speakers to read--this was heavily influenced by the Norman invasion, which brought a form of old French with them (Anglo-Norman French). With Middle English we start seeing more of the structure of Modern English beginning to show up, with some significant grammatical changes and similar, though the vocabulary can still be pretty difficult to parse from a modern perspective. This is the language that The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight were written in, and it lasted until about 1500. Early Modern English starts there, and proceeds about 150 years before we get to what is properly called Modern English, though the two are very similar all told. Early Modern English is what the King James bible was written in, as well as Shakespeare. These texts, while sometimes difficult to read still, are considered to be functionally very similar to Modern English or Standard English.
Oh sorry, I was actually making the reference towards the weird elvish lookin stuff that is the Old English translation of Genesis, not necessarily the difference between Old and Modern English. That's my b, didn't mean to make you type up a whole thing, but I always appreciate a chance to do some learnin'.
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
Oh yeah, Old English is wild, I've learned enough to be able to occasionally recognize words and snippets but it's very different (it also relies heavily on structures that we don't have anymore, like, OE poetry is very dependent on the caesura, there's a lot more focus on assonance and alliteration than we think of for modern poetry, &c).
The Junius manuscript specifically is also a weird thing, it's less a translation of the Bible and more someone writing down the Bible stories as they know them. Someone who knows the Bible very well, naturally, but there's some big changes and apocryphal bits and all that.
0
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Oh also, @Jedoc I went ahead and downloaded the Gnostic Gospel and this is a fascinating read.
Right off the bat it's making a lot of stuff clearer that never got properly explained to me when I was a kid, as well as highlighting the dirty, dirty politics of it all that kicked off right out of the gate.
Which, in hindsight is maybe why it was never explained? Despite not being of the Catholic branch of religion (and being taught catholics were at best misled and at worst actively evil, for, you see, Southern Baptists had the only REAL belief system) we apparently all collectively agreed the Gnostics were crazy and threatened the fundamental Order of things. Funny that that particular belief, in fact, came from the early orthodoxy and diffused all the way down to Northside Baptist Church, where we just Didn't Talk About It™️.
Oh yeah, Old English is wild, I've learned enough to be able to occasionally recognize words and snippets but it's very different (it also relies heavily on structures that we don't have anymore, like, OE poetry is very dependent on the caesura, there's a lot more focus on assonance and alliteration than we think of for modern poetry, &c).
The Junius manuscript specifically is also a weird thing, it's less a translation of the Bible and more someone writing down the Bible stories as they know them. Someone who knows the Bible very well, naturally, but there's some big changes and apocryphal bits and all that.
One thing I love about Seamus Heaney's Beowulf translation, aside from Heaney's translation, ofc, is that it has the OE text on the other side. It's very aesthetic, and I love looking at it even though I can't read it.
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
Yeah, it's a really cool version in that. Headley's translation is my preferred version these days, but Heaney does a great job (and it's probably the better uhh academic version, even if I absolutely believe that we should talk about how Beowulf is #blessed).
I read the entire Headley translation out loud to myself (and occasionally my partner) when I got my copy, it's so fun to do with that version
I'm a big proponent of all poetry being verbalized when possible, even if you're by yourself, but the Headley version makes doing so absolutely delightful.
I'm pretty sure I saw a few academic versions of interlinear bibles on line. Like, you can find a site that in lines the original Greek in between verses of either KJV or NAS. That's cool but didn't help me much because I can't fuckin read ancient Greek.
Edit: it should be noted that most Bible apps will have about 10 to 15 different versions pre-loaded so you can pick which ones you want on the fly.
It can be a bitch being able to read Greek, Hebrew, and/or Latin, cause then you get to have fun with jumping through linguistic hoops when trying to nurse proper context out of things. Like do the Greek references to Mary's "virginity" hew closer to the Semitic word almah, or the complex Latin expression virgo intracta? What profession was actually referred to with the Greek ho-tekton, etc...
I decided to dip my toes into classical Greek while I was mucking around with all of this, as well.
I've been on too much of a learning kick and now I've had a headache for about two days.
I'm pretty sure I saw a few academic versions of interlinear bibles on line. Like, you can find a site that in lines the original Greek in between verses of either KJV or NAS. That's cool but didn't help me much because I can't fuckin read ancient Greek.
Edit: it should be noted that most Bible apps will have about 10 to 15 different versions pre-loaded so you can pick which ones you want on the fly.
It can be a bitch being able to read Greek, Hebrew, and/or Latin, cause then you get to have fun with jumping through linguistic hoops when trying to nurse proper context out of things. Like do the Greek references to Mary's "virginity" hew closer to the Semitic word almah, or the complex Latin expression virgo intracta? What profession was actually referred to with the Greek ho-tekton, etc...
I decided to dip my toes into classical Greek while I was mucking around with all of this, as well.
I've been on too much of a learning kick and now I've had a headache for about two days.
Oh yeah, Old English is wild, I've learned enough to be able to occasionally recognize words and snippets but it's very different (it also relies heavily on structures that we don't have anymore, like, OE poetry is very dependent on the caesura, there's a lot more focus on assonance and alliteration than we think of for modern poetry, &c).
The Junius manuscript specifically is also a weird thing, it's less a translation of the Bible and more someone writing down the Bible stories as they know them. Someone who knows the Bible very well, naturally, but there's some big changes and apocryphal bits and all that.
One thing I love about Seamus Heaney's Beowulf translation, aside from Heaney's translation, ofc, is that it has the OE text on the other side. It's very aesthetic, and I love looking at it even though I can't read it.
Yeah, I'm trying to find the translation that hits, but for whichever college class (likely Survey of Brit Lit), we had a bilingual printout of the text facing / in parallel. (I seem to recall the original on the left, and the translation starting with Lo!, but I'm less sure on that.)
I'd read enough Modern English works over the years to be completely comfortable in that milieu, and I think that may have been the semester I also had History of the English Language, so it was a fun linguistics puzzle. I may have to pick up the edition that has vocab words facing, if I can find it -- Michael Alexander's gloss, ISBN 0140433775
I picked up the New Revised Standard Version (I think) which from some quick googling indicated it may be the more academically minded translation of the Bible. Otherwise I'd say New American Standard.
For pure unadulterated old English peotry I guess you'd need the King James Version. It is a very pretty text in that regard, and the one that probably will have the most direct link to classic literature. That said, because it's old English, it's gonna be a much... loftier and harder read? A thing I'm realizing that I didn't catch back in my churchin' youth days is that the Bible is actually very nuanced and layered. This is possibly why people have been Missing the Fucking Point for like, 1100 years. They just read it literally and take everything at absolute face value.
A trick I've learned, at least with the NT, is to read all the red text from Jesus in your head as him being an absolutely massive, catty bitch. It really flips a lot of shit on its head.
I'm pretty sure I saw a few academic versions of interlinear bibles on line. Like, you can find a site that in lines the original Greek in between verses of either KJV or NAS. That's cool but didn't help me much because I can't fuckin read ancient Greek.
Edit: it should be noted that most Bible apps will have about 10 to 15 different versions pre-loaded so you can pick which ones you want on the fly.
Appreciate the recommendations people. Finally added to the 'to read' list.
My partner has this one, idk how the translation itself stacks up, but the footnotes are great for contextualisation and light to medium-depth etymological exploration.
What else would you want your garden to smell like?
They have a list of their scent options on the back, this one comes between "variety pack" and "patchouli"
Disbelief by Will Gervais was a frustrating book. First, the casual and "humorous" tone is something he's just bad at. More importantly, I was ready to go online and recommend it based on the opening sections dunking on Dawkins, because I too am an atheist with leftist beliefs who is exasperated by many atheists. If someone is /r/atheism pilled and has a lot of their beliefs about their world from small sample size psychology studies, that's definitely a good thing to read. And his claim that he thinks 2 billion people don't believe in any god (even if don't identify as atheist) is startling and should change how a lot of powerful people see the world. But yet, by the end of it I was more convinced that the most popular religions of today are a "mind virus" than I was before! You're telling me that the your research shows the most common reason to be atheist is never being taught to believe, and how the world's most popular religions are very unusual historically, and how there's intuitive moral distrust of nonbelievers even in secular countries because of those differences, and how some beliefs spread much more effectively than others by having women make as many children as possible. And I'm supposed to have a totally neutral mindset like we're talking about why a specific plant is more successful? Maybe this tension is between his academic background and a pop book, but he was willing to get into it with anti-capitalist polemics and had almost nothing to say about the values of certain beliefs. I don't care that a religious conservative's beliefs are as much a more or less inevitable result of their cultural upbringing as me leaving religion is of mine?
His recommendations are that we try to make life less sucky for everyone in the world so religion will gradually fade into irrelevance as it has in Europe, and that sounds probably true. Trying to use your epic reddit brain to convince Christians and Muslims to Just Stop obviously hasn't been very effective, but oh my god yes I'm still going to be mad about it. I'm more mad now than I was before that, apparently, the human brain's natural tendency towards inventing local supernatural powers was hijacked into global oppression because some people came up with the idea of Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism for some reason.
Coinage on
Happiness is within reach!
0
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Look, man. All I can really say about Ada Palmer is that I just started book three of their four-book series and this is the first time I've ever cussed out loud just from reading the dramatis personae.
I need at least one of you weirdos to read this shit so we can fight about it, I can't ask anyone in real life to engage with this latter-day horny Dune nonsense.
+3
smof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I took a look and my country library service has a single Ada Palmer book, and it is the third book in her series.
I know I bang on about this a lot but I don't understand how my library is so bad.
0
CornerEagleMagic Man by HeartCopenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
I mean, this is clearly a five book series at least.
Not saying I won't try it, mind you. If nothing else, for the dramatis personae.
Look, man. All I can really say about Ada Palmer is that I just started book three of their four-book series and this is the first time I've ever cussed out loud just from reading the dramatis personae.
I need at least one of you weirdos to read this shit so we can fight about it, I can't ask anyone in real life to engage with this latter-day horny Dune nonsense.
It's in my queue! Because you reminded me!
Anyone else on LibraryThing? I feel like it never gets mentioned in discussions of book database / recommendations and reading trackers online.
It has forums, but isn't social in the way Goodreads is; you can share updates, but it's opt-in rather than opt-out.
There's way more focus on your catalog and however you want to use it, and finding connections to new reads or people via that. The system is robust without requiring you to get into the nitty-gritty, but also capable of logging some real minutiae. Evidence of the librarians in the company. Oh, the data! Oh, the visualization! Want to click through a piechart colorwheel to the relevant book covers in your collection? One of many stats you can play with.
smof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I am currently reading All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Enjoying it a lot, because I love his writing. He makes me feel nostalgic for a time and place I have never experienced.
I think I have some ptsd from Blood Meridian and The Road though, because so far AtPH has been very normal and chill but I'm constantly on edge waiting for some horrific shit to happen.
I'm reading WG Sebald's Rings of Saturn and having similar flashes of faux-nostalgia, though mostly Im just rolling with the magic of the sentences and occasionally wondering how I ended up at an anatomical dissection in 17th century Holland when I started with looking out a window in southern England in the 1990s.
I am currently reading All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Enjoying it a lot, because I love his writing. He makes me feel nostalgic for a time and place I have never experienced.
I think I have some ptsd from Blood Meridian and The Road though, because so far AtPH has been very normal and chill but I'm constantly on edge waiting for some horrific shit to happen.
They filmed a lot of the movie adaptation around where I grew up! Pretty much all of the rocky yellowish bits without a lot of trees are on ranches that I delivered hay to as a feckless teen.
Posts
And you should definetely not look around for bulk downloaders to fetch everything automatically for you.
One should not seek to subvert our cyberpunk future by learning to use scripts like this one https://github.com/chrishol/greasemonkey-scripts/blob/main/download-all-kindle-books.js as Amazon updates its methods, invoking spry responses from coders. Best to settle into the yoke early and often, lest we be tempted to fight every overreach.
(This is not a recommendation on my part, but a simple walkthrough of an option. My preferences lean open-source, which Tampermonkey apparently isn't.)
It's about a modern cult (well, they call it a family) of vaguely hippie sorts who run a big festival at a secluded villa, and told mostly from the perspectives of three people who get inducted into the inner circle of the cult and invited to stay indefinitely. They learn the rites and secrets of the group, maybe there's some magic there, things continue to escalate.
It feels a little bit like a magic trick of a book. It tells you what it's doing and how it works, and then continues through the perspectives of all of the people it's working on, and in a way, you as the reader are also being inducted into the Bastion, becoming, if not a participant, at least an insider of sorts. I mean you at least understand where they're coming from, you understand that they're not really a cult cult, or if they are, at least they've got a real thing they're doing, they're not crazy.
It's neat, it's very good, check it out if you like that sort of thing. You don't need to have read the other books to pick it up (although they're also very good), there's a couple of characters referenced but that's kind of it.
I have started to dip my toes back into the
Wait for
Bible!?!
I'm not entirely sure why since I'm not really looking for religion. I thought about making a thread about it and my thoughts on things but haven't decided on that yet since it sounds like commitment to what may just be a passing bit.
Anyway, I would like some side literature that looks at the history behind the Bible, behind Christianity, maybe looks at the themes or motifs to give some insight on the stuff happening at the time the stuff was happening, who actually wrote it, etc, etc. Specific focus on the New Testament but it can be about the whole shebang, too.
That said, I'm not necessarily looking for a repudiation of the Bible, nor anything specifically for the devout seeking affirmation of it either. I'd like something clinical, to just kind of give me a bigger perspective of how it all came about, stuff I may not have been taught in Bible class and the like. I did some googling and frankly there's a LOT of stuff that came up so I figured I'd ask in here to see if I could get a better, more sound direction to some sources that you nerds have vetted.
Thank.
More widely available and a more holistic read, The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is an excellent way to get a handle on the early church. Assuming you're already pretty familiar with the New Testament as it exists today, focusing on all the other potential gospels that didn't make the cut refreshes and refocuses all the bone-deep stuff you know but don't think about and makes the whole Bible-writing era pop out like a Magic Eye picture. She also wrote The Origin of Satan, which is a neat lit-crit breakdown of what the devil does and doesn't do in his rare Biblical appearances.
The idea of a reference guide to read along to sounds like exactly what I want.
If I was going to read one version of the Old and one New Testament, which version would people recommend?
I'm not looking for spiritual guidance or a history lesson (though the latter might be closer). I'm just looking to have all the references, imagery, and allusions in other books spark memory of the actual context, not just a chain of references on references. Like between Dostoevsky, McCarthy, etc. I should have a better working knowledge of the actual biblical text instead of mostly knowing it through Simpsons parodies.
Also I fucking love footnotes. Gimme all of that context and errata.
For pure unadulterated old English peotry I guess you'd need the King James Version. It is a very pretty text in that regard, and the one that probably will have the most direct link to classic literature. That said, because it's old English, it's gonna be a much... loftier and harder read? A thing I'm realizing that I didn't catch back in my churchin' youth days is that the Bible is actually very nuanced and layered. This is possibly why people have been Missing the Fucking Point for like, 1100 years. They just read it literally and take everything at absolute face value.
A trick I've learned, at least with the NT, is to read all the red text from Jesus in your head as him being an absolutely massive, catty bitch. It really flips a lot of shit on its head.
I'm pretty sure I saw a few academic versions of interlinear bibles on line. Like, you can find a site that in lines the original Greek in between verses of either KJV or NAS. That's cool but didn't help me much because I can't fuckin read ancient Greek.
Edit: it should be noted that most Bible apps will have about 10 to 15 different versions pre-loaded so you can pick which ones you want on the fly.
It can be a bitch being able to read Greek, Hebrew, and/or Latin, cause then you get to have fun with jumping through linguistic hoops when trying to nurse proper context out of things. Like do the Greek references to Mary's "virginity" hew closer to the Semitic word almah, or the complex Latin expression virgo intracta? What profession was actually referred to with the Greek ho-tekton, etc...
~ Buckaroo Banzai
The Junius manuscript specifically is also a weird thing, it's less a translation of the Bible and more someone writing down the Bible stories as they know them. Someone who knows the Bible very well, naturally, but there's some big changes and apocryphal bits and all that.
Right off the bat it's making a lot of stuff clearer that never got properly explained to me when I was a kid, as well as highlighting the dirty, dirty politics of it all that kicked off right out of the gate.
Which, in hindsight is maybe why it was never explained? Despite not being of the Catholic branch of religion (and being taught catholics were at best misled and at worst actively evil, for, you see, Southern Baptists had the only REAL belief system) we apparently all collectively agreed the Gnostics were crazy and threatened the fundamental Order of things. Funny that that particular belief, in fact, came from the early orthodoxy and diffused all the way down to Northside Baptist Church, where we just Didn't Talk About It™️.
One thing I love about Seamus Heaney's Beowulf translation, aside from Heaney's translation, ofc, is that it has the OE text on the other side. It's very aesthetic, and I love looking at it even though I can't read it.
wish list
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I'm a big proponent of all poetry being verbalized when possible, even if you're by yourself, but the Headley version makes doing so absolutely delightful.
This is not at all a coincidence, btw.
I decided to dip my toes into classical Greek while I was mucking around with all of this, as well.
I've been on too much of a learning kick and now I've had a headache for about two days.
vorkosigan will cure that.
or becky chambers
Yeah, I'm trying to find the translation that hits, but for whichever college class (likely Survey of Brit Lit), we had a bilingual printout of the text facing / in parallel. (I seem to recall the original on the left, and the translation starting with Lo!, but I'm less sure on that.)
I'd read enough Modern English works over the years to be completely comfortable in that milieu, and I think that may have been the semester I also had History of the English Language, so it was a fun linguistics puzzle. I may have to pick up the edition that has vocab words facing, if I can find it -- Michael Alexander's gloss, ISBN 0140433775
Appreciate the recommendations people. Finally added to the 'to read' list.
Garden
Insence
pussy
They have a list of their scent options on the back, this one comes between "variety pack" and "patchouli"
His recommendations are that we try to make life less sucky for everyone in the world so religion will gradually fade into irrelevance as it has in Europe, and that sounds probably true. Trying to use your epic reddit brain to convince Christians and Muslims to Just Stop obviously hasn't been very effective, but oh my god yes I'm still going to be mad about it. I'm more mad now than I was before that, apparently, the human brain's natural tendency towards inventing local supernatural powers was hijacked into global oppression because some people came up with the idea of Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism for some reason.
I need at least one of you weirdos to read this shit so we can fight about it, I can't ask anyone in real life to engage with this latter-day horny Dune nonsense.
I know I bang on about this a lot but I don't understand how my library is so bad.
Not saying I won't try it, mind you. If nothing else, for the dramatis personae.
Anyone else on LibraryThing? I feel like it never gets mentioned in discussions of book database / recommendations and reading trackers online.
It has forums, but isn't social in the way Goodreads is; you can share updates, but it's opt-in rather than opt-out.
There's way more focus on your catalog and however you want to use it, and finding connections to new reads or people via that. The system is robust without requiring you to get into the nitty-gritty, but also capable of logging some real minutiae. Evidence of the librarians in the company. Oh, the data! Oh, the visualization! Want to click through a piechart colorwheel to the relevant book covers in your collection? One of many stats you can play with.
And there's a wiki, which is often relevant to the scavenger hunts they run on certain holidays. https://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge
I think I have some ptsd from Blood Meridian and The Road though, because so far AtPH has been very normal and chill but I'm constantly on edge waiting for some horrific shit to happen.
Wonderfully discursive.
They filmed a lot of the movie adaptation around where I grew up! Pretty much all of the rocky yellowish bits without a lot of trees are on ranches that I delivered hay to as a feckless teen.