The Super-Abridged Bible Project

A lot of blogs/websites/podcasts promote the idea that they are “reading the Bible so you don’t have to”. This type of thing is found in skeptical/atheist material as well as other material. I think it’s a great idea: like it or not, the Bible is one of the most influential books in the history of the world. If you want to be at a level of basic literacy for literature, history, religion, politics, current events and so forth, you need to know about the Bible. But, it’s no easy read and unless your reading is coloured by the belief that these are the words of a god, it’s not that pleasant.

I also noticed that while most of these sites/blogs usually do a good job, they don’t actually provide an extensive summary of the Bible that someone can read through in an hour and get most of the info. Also, a while ago my girlfriend mentioned that although she liked my old blogging-the-bible posts, she didn’t have enough background knowledge to get the most out of them.

So I thought, why not do a proper summary of the Bible? This little project is aimed at people in this situation: who want to know more but don’t want to wade through BS. The aim is to go for super-abridgement, with each book taking up just 1 post. I’ll start with the narrative books from the Hebrew Bible only, then see how I go. It might be hard to summarise Psalms if you know what I mean. Of course this cannot be an “objective” project: you’ll be able to see my editorialising and I make no apology for it. But to be concise, I try to limit this to the way I tell the story — asides take up too much space.

I’ve tried to keep every story unless it’s very short (eg. 1-2 verses) in which case I needed to make a judgement call. All genealogies and other boring lists will go — that alone should make the Bible much more accessible to you, Dearest Reader. As to how I’ll deal with the law parts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, I’ll decide when I get there. I’ll probably have to summarise as best I can because unlike the genealogies, the actual content of the law is important to literature-history-religion-politics-and-all-that.

This is an index post so I’ll add links to each book below as I finish:

1. Genesis (3427 words)
2. Exodus (2408 words)
3. Leviticus (2067 words)
4. Numbers (2720 words)
5. Deuteronomy (2193 words)
6. Joshua (1196 words)
7. Judges (2116 words)
8. 1 Samuel (2520 words)
9. 2 Samuel (2442 words)
10. 1 Kings (2009 words)
11. 2 Kings (2171 words)
12. Isaiah (2942 words)
13. Jeremiah (2818 words)
14. 12 Minor Prophets (Part 1) (2288 words)
15. 12 Minor Prophets (Part 2) (1954 words)
16. Song of Songs (671 words)
17. Ruth (415 words)
18. Lamentations (365 words)
19. Ecclesiastes (992 words)
20. Esther (725 words)