Ready for a challenge?

This book is for people who don't want to read the Bible and who are offended by large religious organizations.

When we consider all the agendas the Bible is used to support, we might conclude that the whole thing would be better off burned and forgotten. HOWEVER, the fact remains that its influence continues to creep across our planet today, and every thinking human would do better to know what it's all about.

The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible will fill a gap (unnoticed) between scholarly Bible literature and popular interpretations. In scholarly works, writers try to figure out who might have written the Bible's various texts and what their motives were, and they try to date the compositions. If the scholars are Jewish or Christian, their conclusions are tainted by their need to cling to their beliefs - so that even when they uncover strange things in the writings, they try to explain them away as the mysterious doings of their god.

Scholars with no religious needs to protect can launch stinging attacks on The Book. But unfortunately, the scholarly writing style is just too formal to reach most people. Many begin their books by saying "This is written for the layman...", but they have studied the Bible for so long that they've lost sight of just how unfamiliar the layman really is with their subject; and so their presentations, though they think they're for the layman, are too much work to read and not enough fun. Their formality taxes the reader, who is already struggling with piles of new information.

Though pop Bible literature tries to fix this, in the process it creates new problems of its own. The field is large, and includes every possible attempt at making the Bible palatable to a large audience: "modern English" translations, comic book versions, theories that connect The Bible to UFO activity or fantastic prehistoric events, and all kinds of cultic interpretations from proof that the end-of-the-world is here, to new-age impressions of Bible characters and their lives.

But they all tend to leave the reader with more questions than they started with, and no real understanding of the Bible's contents. Many pop Bible-interpreters will liberally use the parts of The Book they need to support their theories, while ignoring the contexts and motivations of the Bible's authors.

So, while scholars will give valuable lessons on how to approach The Book, they will not usually entertain. And while pop Bible interpreters may entertain, they will give only a narrow view of The Book, and do not provide the reader with tools to go further.

The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible is designed with two purposes in mind. First: This is pop literature. If the reader is entertained then the endeavour is a success. If the reader puts these volumes down at the end and never picks them up again or ever looks at a Bible as long as they live...that's fine, as long as they had a good ride while they were here.

Second: After reading the assertions in my books, some will be inspired to go and read parts of the Bible themselves, to see if I'm making things up.

Ultimately, the goal here is NOT to convince you that my interpretations are right, and to get you to agree with me. The intention is to show HOW interpretations are made, and to equip you to go into the Bible and make your own decisions about what's being said. The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible will serve as a Reference Commentary for people who will periodically want to scrutinize parts of The Book and make their own interpretations, but who don't want a god shoved down their throats while they do it.

At last the reader is relieved of this burden. You won't find a god here. Not even a hint of one. But how can a book about the Bible leave out GOD?? Isn't the Bible all about...GOD? No, ladies and gentlemen, it isn't. Come on in and find out the ugly truth.

The Bible is a weapon, one that you can learn how to use. It is one of the most frightening tools ever developed by man. Today, two thousand years after its birth*, The Book is alive and violently kicking on every part of our planet. People of various races, with vastly different cultures, class opportunities, attitudes and morals, with dramatically disparate and often even opposing agendas, can all base their lives and motives on this one same book. Remarkable!

The deeper you dive into it, the better you're able to draw your own conclusions. And then eventually you realize: THAT'S ALL EVERYONE IS DOING. They're all just deciding for themselves what this thing means. Each sect of Judaism and Christianity has at its root a particular interpretation of the Bible, with a hierarchy erected to control the followers of that particular interpretation. But no one knows who wrote this book. No one knows who edited it into its present agenda-ridden state. No one working for a hierarchy based on the Bible knows what GOD wants, or what happens to you after you die. If they say they know these things they are lying.

All interpretations of Bible events are made by men who have studied previous interpretations, some of which have been handed down as truth. But they are all just interpretations. The Book is so old, and so many kinds of people have applied their purposes to it, that it's very difficult to remove it from those impressions. We'll view The Book from an angle dictated by these two questions:

1) What does it really say? This requires that we examine the weird and rarely mentioned parts, glossed over or ignored by those who preach this book, and we'll hold the Bible to its words.

2) What was the final agenda for putting it together the way it is? First we have to acknowledge that The Book is sewn together and includes many different pieces of writing, some ancient and some not so (no scholar disputes this; it is at the root of all Bible studies). Never forgetting this I still kept my own purpose clear: to examine the work of the final editors. The Israelite editors (assembling the Old Testament) had their own very specific agenda: that of raising the Israelites up above all other peoples. The Christian editors (assembling the New Testament) also had an agenda, which was to build their own religious power-base, and ultimately usurp the Israelites' position as God's Favorite People.

The fact that the Bible is sewn together becomes clear as you examine the seeming cohesion of the various tales. The cohesion proves to be false - the stitches and quilting get more obvious the closer you look. The Bible's final authors have to their advantage the sheer size of The Book, a gigantic tapestry impossible to examine in a hurry. This keeps people from noticing the peculiar editing. Few bother to venture into the Bible's rigors without at least a path to follow. And this is what any Jewish or Christian leader offers: a path through the Bible; an explanation of God's Word THEIR WAY. If you want to walk down their path with them, you avoid the parts of The Book they tell you to avoid and you accept the interpretations they hand you.

There are many paths through the Bible. We'll take some rarely-traveled, and forge some brand new ones. It will be kept simple, but without removing the complexities of the stories to do it. This will be the composition I searched for when I began studying the Bible but which I found didn't exist. This is an interpretation of A BOOK, just a book, called The Bible. This is a Book Report. "What does it say and what do you think it means?"

Why Should You Read
The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible?

If you don't want to read the Bible because you are irritated by its followers and everything they seem to stand for, then this work is for you. You will not be asked to believe ANYTHING, you will be taken through strange parts of The Book with no apologies made for attitude, and you may be shocked. Hopefully there will be laughs along the way. At the end you will have been introduced to the Bible, Old and New Testaments. You will be armed (though not necessarily ready for full battle). If you are a Jew or Christian who is so reformed that you are unrecognizable to your brethren, you may enjoy this tour. To all who might be interested in learning the Bible, but who harbour fantasies about it being "the word of God"...beware. You may not like it here. And anyone with strong Jewish or Christian tendencies should consider themselves warned at the outset by my book's title. This book will seriously challenge you.

(* The Old Testament was compiled and frozen for all time around 100CE. The New Testament was compiled and set around 350CE.)