AIBU to ask whether you own a Bible?

[BeanQuisine]

Just idle curiosity, really.

We often hear right-wingers insisting "This is a Christian country", whether we're in UK, Oz or the US etc.

So I'm wondering how many of us actually own Bibles, and whether we ever read them. I did read assorted bits of it in my youth, but don't currently own a Bible.

YABU: Whether Mumsnetters own Bibles or not is none of your business.

YANBU: It's a vaguely interesting question.

aka "The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed."

European countries are regarded as 'Christian' because they have cultures rooted in books, built around a belief in the value of human life, with all those things that emerged from Christian monasticism - schools, universities, public hospitals.

Exactly - I also mentioned that lovely volume up thread. Plus Marx etc.

I'm not a believer - but I'm not a militant atheist either - if some people find value and meaning in religion, that's great and I have a few Christian friends who I wouldn't dream of offending by being rude about their faith. I think militant atheists are just as bad as religious zealots - very intolerant and absolutely certain that they are right.

To me the Bible is 1) really interesting in its own right and 2) a massive help to understanding so much about Western culture. But I've gone on about that at length upthread, so won't repeat it here.

This is what I've been trying to argue upthread.

To me it's bleedin' obvious - but not everyone agrees, of course.

It really depends what your interests are and despite being a non-religious family I made sure my children knew the main Bible stories because I wanted to give them a chance to understand so much of Western culture. They've both commented on how helpful it was - one studied art and the other history. Things like the Reformation are hard enough to understand without having no clue about the Christian religion, which, like it or not, is the background to so much history - and not only in Europe.

We have a family Bible in my house, although as I'm no longer a Christian I don't refer to it regularly. However, I have used it for performing certain hoodoo magical practices (hoodoo spells and rituals often incorporate psalms) and I'd likely need to refer to it in order to practice certain kinds of grimoire magic.

I like the Apocrypha for that purpose!

I think your point about having a degree of knowledge and understanding it perfectly correct, my contention was that you neither need to own, or have read a Christian Bible in order to attain this, because there are plenty of secondary sources offering the same insight, most of them far more easily digested than trudging through the archaic prose and outdated and irrelevant references in the bible itself.

This is what I meant when I said the bible is "dry and boring". I don't want to have to refer to other sources just to figure out what on earth a passage in the bible is droning on about because it's referring to a practice, an implement, a term, a people, or a religious/ethnic group which hasn't existed or been in common use for centuries, when I can just go directly to a source which explains this in contemporary terms. And yes, the "begats" and so on are utterly tedious, akin to reading a phone book for leisure.

Yes - I'd agree. It's the narratives that are helpful. That's why I banged on about the old Children's Bible, just to get the stories and to enjoy the lurid illustrations, which helped me remember these stories.

I do like the archaic language (English grad/teacher) and the poetry, but that's not crucial.

Bible scholars can correct me if this is wrong but -

Of course the people who put together what we now call The Bible had to choose from a huge range of writings. Some things got left out and one example in the Apocrypha (or maybe it didn't even make it into that) is a story of the child Jesus. He was with some other children and one of them took something of his, or otherwise annoyed him, so he killed the other child. It seems to have been written to show that you don't mess with Jesus, but clearly isn't on message in terms of the rest of the Gospel narratives!

Well you'll probably want to crucify me when I admit that I found Shakespeare to be exactly the same thing.

If you want to teach 13 year olds about humour, wit, allegory etc, then I see no reason why they can't read Terry Pratchett instead of torturing them with something 500 years old full of references and language which means absolutely nothing to them.

It's the single biggest reason why I plunked English classes for two entire years. Sheer boredom at being subjected to endless, mind-numbing Shakespeare. Still passed my exams despite never being in class or doing a jot of work, because yes, English Lit is interesting and worthwhile. God knows why they attempt to ruin it for children by forcing them to wade through Shakespeare though.

I like Shakespeare. I also like Terry Pratchett. Let's have both?

I think both Shakespeare and the Bible probably suffer from a similar issue, which is that the format they're presented in is unnecessarily difficult and inaccessible. For Shakespeare it's the combo of reading the plays as "books" (or seeing overly-dramatic portrayals of them instead of actors who give the lines a conversational rhythm), and having the lines read as a class by bored 15yos. For Bibles it's the thin paper and tiny text and little numbers in totally random places so you have no idea where one concept begins and ends. The only Bible I actually open is my "reader's" one which just prints the text on normal paper, normal font, with reasonable modern paragraphing etc. It feels a lot more like reading a book of individual stories/essays which can be digested as coherent pieces.

I'd have no issues with it being an either/or proposition and letting individual children choose what they want to read. My ire and irritation stems from the fact I was never given the option because it was Shakespeare or nowt, so I chose nowt by buggering off home if there was an English Lit period on the timetable.

It's the only subject I actively avoided, even Mathematics didn't have that effect on me, so it's entirely down to the fact they made Shakespeare compulsory rather than offering me the choice of something which did actually grab me. I think that's desperately sad in hindsight, because I did devour an enormous number of books at that age (well pre-internet), and yet school ruined English Lit for me to the point that I was willing to be expelled rather than attend that class.

I think this is probably because English lit classes for teenagers are universally dreadful regardless of the subject matter. It took me about 10 years after finishing school to even try to engage with poetry after some of the trite "analyses" we had to do

ITA - the development of culture in Western Europe happened with the Catholic Church being a central influence. It makes it easier to understand fully the meaning of art, literature, sculpture and music with a background knowledge of Christianity, whether we believe in it or not.

I admire Shakespeare hugely and honestly, he's revered for good reasons which I won't bore you with here.

But I am totally against children being made to read his plays in school. It's unfair to judge Shakespeare just because this totally artificial method of learning about his work is used. The plays need to be seen - and then, even despite the archaic language, most people can understand what's going on and it can be very funny.

I have a particular dislike of that ruddy 'rude mechanicals' play from Midsummer Night's Dream being forced on Year 7s. If I were teaching Shakespeare (I'm retired now and don't like the way English teaching has gone) I'd start with Macbeth: short, exciting, bloodthirsty and memorable, with few, if any, tedious sub-plots. Oh - but with loads of memorable speeches. MND is actually one of the most complicated, trivial and annoying of the plays, I think, and the easiest way to turn kids off.

I had superb English teachers when I was at school, but I've also seen some very uninspiring lessons being taught more recently. I blame the tyranny of the National Curriculum and exam syllabuses and the pressure on teachers to get good exam results above all other consideratins which leads to formulaic, safe and repetitive lessons.

If the NC doesn't put people off reading and writing for life, I don't know what will.

No but I would really like one. I am not Catholic but was brought up one and I find it fascinating.

Quite! And the misguided choice of plays to 'teach' the children. Tedious, silly, twee love comedies are not the way to go, but somehow that's what syllabus creators seem to think.

On the subject of Shakespeare -

We were once in Stratford on Avon with the kids (when my son was about 9) and we were walking past Shakespeare's school. I mentioned this and my son asked why it was called a grammar school. I explained that the boys would learn Greek and Latin grammar and little else. My husband then grunted 'Well, they didn't have to do any Shakespeare!' 😂

I don't - I have no religion though

Yes, we have several.

There was a comedy skit decades ago, can't recall precisely which show or which comedians, but the jist of it was a contemporary physics teacher and their class invents a time machine which brings significant historical figures into their class room. William Shakespeare appears, and the class promptly kicks the living daylights out of him.

😂

No, we were steeped in it at RC schools and it’s a load of tosh designed to keep women subservient.

All religions- more or less- are designed to keep women subservient, no?

I have three.
one children’s picture bible I was given at my christening. It has never been read. The spine was cracked to write a dedication to me, since then nothing.
A pure white holy bible from my Catholic grandmother. Read all the way through once and then put aside. I read it because it was the last book in the house that I hadn’t yet read. Spoiler, Jesus died for our sins, but people still sin…
A brown st James bible I was gifted after I played a priest in a theatre show. Again, has a dedication to me inside the front cover. Very battered and ripped up. Probably not legible from the marks and things I put on it during the show. (It was also dropped and I had to kick it into the wings for the stage crew to pick up).
Thats it, that’s all the bibles in this house. None are worth anything, or even vaguely interesting.