As someone who has a secular fascination with religion and its interplay with history, I don't think reading the Bible has the same value that the author thinks it does. Most people who get really into bible scholarship don't go read the bible -> become a Christian. It's nearly universally the other way around. If you are religious, reading a holy text feels meaningful and profound. Meaningfulness and profundity being hallmarks of a good religious experience, they become convinced if more people simply read their holy text, more people would convert.

Problem is, that's not how this works. If you aren't already primed to find it profound, it's a pretty dull read that's about half "I know this part already through cultural osmosis" and the rest split between "too boring for anyone to really care about" and "directly contradictory to other parts, and there probably have been historical schisms about it".

It's worth reading in the same way any other cultural touchstone work is worth reading, but if you're going to force yourself to get through a long, dry text that has fundamentally steered the course of history, I'd recommend some Hegel first.

Opinion: The Bible and other works, let's say, The Lotus Sutra, are metaphorical. Anything that is truly timeless is, because times change.

Again, IMO, the purpose of metaphor is for you to create a special meaning from your experience, knowledge, mental processing and emotions, and thereby enrich the universe in Buddhist terms,[0] or otherwise, glorify a creator.

Otherwise, as they say, "It's a Cookbook" and most get the dinner completely wrong, or become the dinner. Teachers teach us to cook. Intermediaries teach us to follow instructions, because if they taught us to cook, they lose their "privileged" position.

     “Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.” [1]



    Heaven is not divorced from the earth; enlightenment is not separate from ordinary mind [2]

[0] https://palisuttas.com/tag/sutra-of-innumerable-meanings/

[1] Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

[2] https://irarabois.com/read-the-eternities-who-knew-there-was...

Author might have a bit more luck if they had some focus. That post kinda meandered all over and ended in an off topic joke about a nun's name.

Also unless she's trying to convince orthodox Christians to read the bible being a woman isn't likely to make a lick of difference to whomever she's imploring to read it.

I have been trying to read the Bible for most of my life. I find it hard to get through (at least in my begging to end attempts). Having recently finished Genesis (Creation, Abraham through Joseph). I think many people have a fairly romanticized[1] view of the Bible.

[1]: I also commented in another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335600) that deals some with romanticism.

I read the bible 5 times cover to cover in 5 translations it is filled with patterns for living and gives me hope of a better future