This really isn't something you can "review" as such, so I'm just gonna scribble down some of my thoughts in no particular order now that I've finally reached the end of this eight month journey.

1. Anyone who tells you to simply "read the Bible", with the expectation that it will change your faith has gotta be more specific. Not saying I didn't learn anything, the read certainly helped me understand a lot more about where we come from as a cultural tradition, but I didn't find anything that challenged me spiritually or belief-wise.
2. Whoever edited this needs to take a literal page from Tolkien and move some of this stuff to the appendices. Too often an engaging narrative will be interrupted by a long-ass genealogy or extremely specific measurements for a tabernacle or a census or some other highly uninteresting minutiae.
3. I was not ready for the use of "circumcised" and "uncircumcised" as shorthand for "holy" and "not holy". Moses telling God that he was not worthy to speak of him, citing his "uncircumcised lips" THREW me.
4. Reading the Bible really brings out the absurdity of the claim that it's in any way the literal word of God, or dictated by God, or perfect and complete. It's very obviously written by human hands, many of them at that, over hundreds of years. As one of my favourite Youtube channels (Esoterica) pointed out, the Bible works best when thought of not as a book but a library.
4. The darkest part: If God tells you to enact a genocide, does that mean it's not only morally right, but morally REQUIRED to do so? What could have been an interesting question about ancient belief systems becomes highly disturbing in light of current events.
5. You know that "Rivers of Babylon" song by Boney M? It's a bop, right? Do NOT look up the second half of the psalm the lyrics are based on.
6. It slays me that one of the big conflicts Jesus had with the establishment was about him not washing his hands before eating. Like I get what you're going for with the analogy, what goes into us is not what defiles up, but what comes out, our words and actions and all that. But dude, you gotta wash your hands.
7. Paul, you had me at "interminable genealogies".
8. At times, I thought that reading this would give me the knowledge I needed to respond to people who state that the Bible supports this or that position. But then I had the depressing realisation that they probably don't care what the Bible "really" says.

Worth it? Yeah. For me at least, I'm a big fan of mythology and ancient stories. What's unusual for this one is that it has had such cultural staying power, and impact on peoples beliefs and actions until this day. A lot of "title drop" moments where I recognised a phrase or saying that's still used in everyday language.

Life changing? Nah. Not more than any other collection of literature. ( )