What books of the bible can I safely skip?

Tobith, Maccabees

the new testament.. its false anyways

Leviticus - skip entirely, it'll send you to sleep
1 & 2 Chronicles - skim these, they're mostly name lists
Psalms - definitely read, but you don't have to go through all 150, find a list of the better known ones and read those
Sirach/Ecclesiasticus - skip, it's long and is basically a retread of proverbs

>>9504635
Tobit is hilarious and Maccabees are awesome. Ignore this guy.

>>9504629
Old Testament.
Having a simple study guide reference helps a lot

>>9504629

So the really important stuff is clearly the pentateuch, the gospels, and revelation. That's ten not to be skipped right there.

I'd guess the middle OT histories stuff like Ruth etc is the more skippable stuff.

>>9504779
Don't do that.

I just finished reading the Old Testament.

If your goal is just to catch literary references, I would say you can safely skip Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Ruth, Chronicles 1,2 (basically they retell parts of Kings), and all of the 12 minor prophet books excluding Jonah.

That said, the KJV Bible contains some of the most poignant stories and best prose of any book ever written. If you're looking to just read it to flourish some literary knowledge and catch references, you are going into it with the wrong perspective, because it's entirely worth reading for itself.

If you're intimidated by the length, think of each of the stories as separate books and do intermittent readings to prevent burnout. And make sure you have a secondary source, because that is crucial to understanding many of the stories, which have important historical and political backgrounds.

The OT prophets are a slog to get through but they're required reading if you're looking to get into Christian theology down the road. If you're only looking for a historical narrative go with this:

>Genesis, Exodus 1-24, 32-40, Numbers 9-36, Deuteronomy 34, Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Maccabees, Luke, Acts.

all of it

>>9505000
The Bronze Serpent from numbers gets referenced a fair amount actually. Plus the Manna from heaven.

>>9505120
And Balaam and the ass. In either #s or Deut, can't remember.

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>>9504629
Skip nothing and also use a quality secondary source

>>9505120
Good point. Manna, however, is in Exodus

>>9505099
/thread

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>>9504652
>Ecclesiasticus - skip
Don't listen to this guy

>>9505778
9/10 chance you aren't reading exactly what he wrote.

Esther is pretty silly

>>9504641
wew

>>9505051
Geez. How fucking pleb are you?

>>9506053

What are you talking about?

>>9504629
The Deuterocanon and Chronicles.
Pay special attention to Genesis, Ecclesiastics, Psalms, Isaiah and the whole NT.

>>9504779

>skipping all the good bits

shut up

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>>9504629
Skip all of them, skip none of them.
Either way a cunt like you is going to hell for disregarding the word of God.

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>>9506642
>Word of God
>He ends up contradicting himself between the OT and the NT
>Worshipping such a rapscallion

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>>9506654
>>He ends up contradicting himself between the OT and the NT
Just spoke with God, ur done for kiddo.

>yfw God is actually a cheap plot device to make the jews win everytime the author couldn't wrap up shit in his novel he wrote to get some jew pussy

>>9506654

How does God contradict himself?

>>9504629
Pretty sure 1&2 Chronicles is just a copy of 1&2 Kings with a whole bunch of genealogies added so skip Chronicles.
Leviticus is ancient priest rules and pretty redundant.
And don't read the Psalms as a book. Go through and read a few at a time while reading other books.

Is the Bible required reading before AquInas/Augustine?

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>>9506711
Is this a serious question?

This board has cancer.

>>9506695
Malachi 3:3
>For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed

1 Samuel 15:11
>It repenteth me [the Lord] that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night.

>>9506711
yes

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>>9506826
Is that the best you can muster up?

that's it
https://innerdrive.blob.core.windows.net/images/SMBCminiBible.pdf

>>9506826

Explain this to me. What is the contradiction? God saying he won't turn away from the sons of Jacob doesn't mean the sons of Jacob can't turn away from God.

>>9506901
To repent and regret a decision is to change your mind. Yet God claimed to be unchanging.

>>9505778
t. Another dummy who confuses Ecclesiasticus with Ecclesiastes

>>9507002

God does not repent as man does (Num 23:19). The bible often describes the thoughts and actions of God in human terms in order to make the mystery of God more understandable to human minds. This is a literary device used to express the relationship between humans and God. Another class of similar figurative or anthropomorphic expressions includes those that describe God as having physical features like hands (Ex 7:5), arms (Hos11:3), feet (Ex 24:10). white hair (Dan 7:9), and a face (Ps 27:8). These and similar word pictures help to communicate the personal nature of God.

Chronicles I (DON'T skip II, there's some fresh stuff in it that leads directly into Ezra/Nehemiah), some of the minor prophets (but they're so short that its no trouble to read them anyway), all apocrypha except the Daniel additions and Maccabees (most of it is a retread of stuff already in the OT), a good amount of the NT epistles (but again they're so short you might as well read them anyway), and that's basically it. Everything else, you'll likely be missing something if you skip it. Even though Leviticus is a description of rituals (how can people not find that cool?), Proverbs is just a bunch of folk wisdom, the major prophets are long and taxing, I still wouldn't skip any of it.

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>>9507002
>>9507070
Who changed, God or Saul?
Your misunderstanding is a matter of poor interpretation.
The world God is interacting with is in continuous change, but in contrast God never changes.

>>9506884
I was ready to be mad at this but it's decent, looks like they actually read everything.

>>9506884

A lot of these are actually hilarious.

>Zephaniah - presumably giving in to peer pressure among the prophet crowd - prophesies doom for the faithless.

>>9506880
>God is not a man
>Oops a man is now god

>Don't make idols of me
>Please worship this cross

>The messiah will be from the house of David
>The messiah is connected to the house of David by his non father

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>>9507346
Checkmate

>>9507346
>Don't make idols of me
>Please worship this cross
It's don't worship false idols, the golden calf was not representative of god, and the cross is not an idol, it is the symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus, which represents humanity's current covenant with the lord

>>9507346
>Don't make idols of me
>Please worship this cross

Do you come from a protestant background? They seem to consistently misunderstand what an idol is so I assume that's where you're coming from. We don't believe the cross is literally God.

>>9507362
"make not any graven image"
the cross being worshiped as a totem of Christianity has more to do with the proliferation of early Church teachings among gentiles who had only a grasping understanding of Hebrew culture or religious background. Early New Testament Apocrypha conflates the Cross much with idols of other religions.

What's the best secondary source/study guide that isn't 500+ pages?

>>9507382
Biblical scholarship is an immense field, you're not going to get a one book that has everything.

Can anyone explain why the Lord's instructions unto the Jews are written in full 3 times in Exodus? What was the reasoning behind that?

>>9507391
God dam it, I didn't ask for everything. That's why I want the short version that's from a experts pen that has pre decided for me what you need for context. The whole point of experts, bealive it or not is so non experts can benefit from thier study, NOT so everyone can become thier own expert in every field.

>>9504629
john is trash

>>9507382

Scott Hahn has a nice pocket bible guide.

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>>9504629
The question is what OP's purpose is for reading the Bible.

The New and Old Testaments are not reconcilable and should never have been compiled into one Bible. Any attempt at reconciling the two only leads to blatant retardation and nonsense, e.g. Aquinas.

>>9507418
john is bae fagboi

i bet u like mark

>>9507430
This. The Old Testament is pretty obviously a collection of pagan Hebrew stories (ie God literally appearing in person, saying only that he is the highest but not the only god)

>>9507430
maybe you can
like
read them
and like
keep in mind
that they're two separate works from different times and cultures

w o a h

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>>9507440
>>9507430

>>9507456
not an argument

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>>9507473
>taking internet atheists seriously
The fire and brimstone was destined a long time before you came around.

>>9507489
ooh, spooky!

Not even trying to be fedora, but what even makes people look at the bible as a fact. It's just a derivative book from a desert religion that's a derivative from other desert religions. There's so much blatantly false (Jews as slaves in Egypt) about the OT that anything that's based off of it just doesn't make any sense.

>>9507573
>muh OT

>>9507397

Do you mean things like the instructions to build the tabernacle and laws? Compositionally the repetition of sanctuary laws has the effect of framing the golden-calf episode and its aftermath for special attention.

>>9507573

You don't believe that Jews were in Egypt about the time of the Exodus? Egyptologists have discovered the presence of Semitic names in Egyptian records from the time of the Exodus. They have also found descriptions of forced laborers making bricks in order to meet quotas as well as failures to meet those quotas because of a lack of straw--details that can all be found in the book of Exodus. Additionally the famed Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner, who was generally dismissive of the historicity of the Old Testament, said "that Israel was in Egypt under one form or another no historian could possibly doubt."

James K Hoffmeier, The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 64.

Cited in Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 112.

>>9507609
stop looking for sources that back-up your preconceptions and look at the research to find out what to conclude

>>9507584
Well there would be no NT without it.

>>9506654
>not worshiping a based angry G*d
how pleb can you be?

>>9506675
He sure has a funny way of doing it considering the OT is predominately stories about God torturing and punishing jews.

>>9507376
a graven image is an idol taken to be and worshiped as a god. A cross is not understood to be God. Yes, some uneducated Catholics in south america worship statues as if they actually were Mary and so forth, but they are in a slim minority of idolaters within the faith

>>9504641
oy vey

>>9505051
>no Job
>arguably the most important piece connecting the new testament to the old

>>9504629
>>9504652
Leviticus actually has great importance. There is a lot of symbolic meaning in the construction and ritual of the temple, as well as the commands given by God to the Israelis. Not to mention, understanding the Pentateuch/Torah (and really, the entire Old Testament/Tanakh) is paramount for appreciating the New Testament fully.

Ecclesiastes is an incredibly easy read, and fantastic. Why skip a book which can be read in an hour?

Truthfully OP, you should not skip anything. Just take your time and read it all, book by book. It goes by faster and more enjoyably than you might think; you can study it for a lifetime and learn new things perpetually. It merely depends on how much thought and attention you give to your study.

>>9508674
Ecclesiastes isn't the same thing as Ecclesiasticus. You shouldn't skip either though.

>>9505162
examples of good secondary sources?

>>9508656

A standalone piece for poetry is not important to the overall historical narrative of the bible. Job tells us how Jews viewed suffering in relation to sin but it doesn't tell us what's going on in Israel.

>>9507642

>Stop looking for evidence for the things you believe

Okay

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>>9504641

>>9504629
All

>>9504629
>safely
Leviticus, unless you are a Levite.

>>9504652
Skipping Ecclesiastics is madness.

>>9504629
'leave no stone unturned' - jesus christ, numbers 8:88

>>9507346
>>Please worship this cross
Do you jews worship the star of David?

either skip all of them
or none of them

>>9505162
>Skip nothing
shoulda stopped there anon