I read a Gideon Bible cover-to-cover once when I was stuck in a hotel room for two weeks without my laptop, but I’m neither Christian nor typical. And I’ll admit I skimmed a few chapters starting somewhere around II Corinthians.
“Read the Bible” isn’t bad advice for anyone that intends to spend a lot of time talking about religion in English, really. It won’t give you any moral insight worth speaking of, and on its own it won’t give you a deep understanding of Christian doctrine as it’s taught in practice, but detailed knowledge of what the Bible actually says and does not say is remarkably useful both in understanding the religion’s evolution and in self-defense against the kind of person that likes to throw chapter and verse at you.
On the other hand, that does presuppose a certain fairly well-established level of expected usefulness. From a lay perspective, the Sequences don’t have that.
I read a Gideon Bible cover-to-cover once when I was stuck in a hotel room for two weeks without my laptop, but I’m neither Christian nor typical. And I’ll admit I skimmed a few chapters starting somewhere around II Corinthians.
“Read the Bible” isn’t bad advice for anyone that intends to spend a lot of time talking about religion in English, really. It won’t give you any moral insight worth speaking of, and on its own it won’t give you a deep understanding of Christian doctrine as it’s taught in practice, but detailed knowledge of what the Bible actually says and does not say is remarkably useful both in understanding the religion’s evolution and in self-defense against the kind of person that likes to throw chapter and verse at you.
On the other hand, that does presuppose a certain fairly well-established level of expected usefulness. From a lay perspective, the Sequences don’t have that.