Reading the Bible cover-to-cover is a brave and noble thing to do but does, I think, miss the point slightly; that the Bible is a collection of many different books and stories, made for different reasons, and addressed to different audiences. I wouldn't expect to grasp "the plot" of the whole thing like that.

Aldabra's point about oral history is well made. In skipping the endless indistinguishable psalms you probably missed some of the "best" output of the time (modulo translation).

I do like "(2 Fellowship 5:19-20)" though. :-)

Are you going to read the apocrypha next?

You say that, but there is an overall plot, at least in the OT. Almost everything from Genesis to 2 Kings inclusive at least purports to be a single continuous history; each book picks up pretty much where the previous one left off and refers back to some of the same characters, and there's plot continuity. The later bits of the OT are more scattered, and some of them aren't really localised in the chronology at all, but it all basically fits together.

I didn't quite skip the psalms; I just skimmed over them very fast and only stopped when I saw a turn of phrase I thought I recognised, in order to say "aha, that's where that came from". Nice though it would have been if I could have read them closely enough that I'd recognise a reference to a previously unfamiliar psalm if I saw it in future, I just don't think I'd have had that kind of staying power.

The apocrypha are of limited interest to me, I think, since my primary aim was to have some knowledge of the Bible as context for other literature, and I imagine other literature would refer to the apocrypha rather less often than to the canon. I might have a go at some point, but right now I'm having a rest and reading more legible stuff :-)

Apocrypha is generally more fun. Lots more interesting narrative, for starters.

Anyway, most Christians don't believe in 'the Bible'. They believe in 'the Bible as moderated through years of tradition and wossname'. And as you know, because of that key word 'tradition' you can use the Bible as a starting point for a fairly sensible philosophy of life and living, or you can use it to justify your totally barking daftness of evil.

And yes, The Epistles are terribly important to christians. Just also mostly barking and bloody annoying.

I do like "(2 Fellowship 5:19-20)" though. :-)

Thanks; I was quite pleased with that bit too. Although it's only just occurred to me that actually if I'd picked a different example from LotR I could have had the fictitious Bible book be "2 Towers", so now I'm kicking myself...

Actually, (1) "Fellowship" sounds much more Biblical than "Towers" and (2) it would have to be "2 Two Towers" rather than just "2 Towers", which would sound awful. So I think you did just fine :-).