Big thick book-of-books

I may have set a goal to read the whole Bible in 2018.

In my almost two decades as a true believer, I never read the whole thing. But I read most of it and sections of it multiple times.

I'm reading sequentially, but from two different books at the same time - three chapters from the Old Testament, and, the same day, three chapters from the New Testament. If I get to my reading today I'll have read Matthew, chapters 1 through 21, and Genesis, chapters 1 through 21. I'm reading The Amplified Bible.

I like reading two books at once. Keeps my mind fresh, I guess. And usually when I read other books (outside the Bible), I read a couple (or more) books at the same time.

When I was around 13 years old before my true-believer daze, I read the four Gospels. I remember the exact words I thought about Jesus -"ego maniac." That's how he came across to me in the Gospels. And that's how he comes across to me now. And, it's pretty clear that today's wealth-and-health preachers emulate Jesus' tactics, at least so far in Matthew.

Genesis is more stimulating to me than Matthew. I enjoy the historical perspective. I think of various cultures ( such as Native American or Native of Any-land) that passed along their own oral legends and myths, intertwined with facts, explaining the origin and purpose of life. I think of how those oral stories were written in pictures and, later, in words. And I like the human aspects in Genesis - relationships with all their complexities and emotions.

I may offend some folks by stating the following. But, reading both the books at face value - well, God and Jesus are both manipulative. They don't answer questions directly. They speak in riddles. They demand obedience without explaining why. Jesus demands secrecy without explanation, and he talks down to people. They use fear motivation - beware of this and that with threats that if you disobey you'll be tormented. Just to list a few of the characteristics that I notice.

In my true-believer daze I explained that the language comes across like that, at least in part, due to:

• the culture at the time a particular book was written and that God could only work with the writer's ("men of God," which did include some women) own knowledge and ways of communicating; ie: God didn't use automatic writing or possession to have His Word written and had to limit Himself to a narrator's will and language and culture and spiritual understanding at the time.
• our limited (or lack of) knowledge regarding history, orientalisms, and the cultures of the times.
• translation - that the original would have been clearer.
• God's foreknowledge - not that God controls the future, but that He knows where it is going; ie: when God foretells it's not that God makes that happen or that it is even His will, but that He knows that's what is going to happen.
• the spiritual warfare that has raged since before the current heaven and earth and how the devil has maligned God and caused confusion.
• our limited spiritual understanding - God's ways are higher than ours and all things are not yet revealed.
• God's use of different writers to convey different aspects of a given situation - one book may give one angle, but that must be taken in the broader context of what other books convey.

Looking back I think those explanations were, for the most part, rationalizations to try to make the Bible fit, since it was supposed to be perfect. (Hmmm, I guess that rationalization spilled over into other parts of life, especially when it came to "things in the Ministry"...)

Will I make it all the way through the big, thick book-of-books? I don't know. I might lose interest.

I've thought that maybe I should read the Koran at some point. I've only read a few paragraphs hither and yon online.