Lick the blobs off

Atheist is a convenient term. I said in my initial post that I'm more accurately an obligate agnostic (we can't "know") and also aspiritual (I have no spiritual beliefs of any sort) and an apatheist (the question of whatever the supernatural exists is of no consequence to me and I don't care.)

Also, to add to the mix I'm a scientist. Professionally. By training and as a career. You're getting riled up at the wrong guy and it's fruitless getting riled up the way you are anyway. Definitely rail against religion in public life, in politics, its place in society, that's healthy and constructive discourse. The rise of religious "ethics" in national and international politics is worrying. I just mean that commenting on reddit threads talking about the bible and its place in literary cannon with scathing comments about how religious people are deluded? Okay, I 100% agree with you from a personal perspective, but it's no good for your blood pressure and not helping anyone. I still hold all the same opinions as I did in my "edgy anti-religion" phase, I just realised nobody cares what I think about what they personally believe, and nor should they.

Calm down, bud. I've always been an atheist and a vehement secularist but I've learned nobody likes atheists screeching about it. Discourse about whether religion has a place in public life (I believe it doesn't) and whether you should inflict your religion on anybody including your own kids (I believe you shouldn't) are important, but what any individual believes isn't important or interesting. You don't make any friends by saying that people's religious beliefs are fantasy. They believe that they're not and the rest of us think that they are.

I think you mean fantasy but okay.

My favourite passage is from this book.

I said You don't know what worry is. I don't know what it is. I don't know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not . I don't know whether I can cry or not. I don't know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

>When you're reading for cultural relevance, I think understanding what Christians take a verse to mean is less important than seeing the words that have been referenced elsewhere.

Exactly my thinking. Thank you

>These would be an important consideration if you were reading for religious reasons but not so much for you.

Thank you! I think you've understood what I'm looking for so thanks for your recommendations.

Thank you, I have never heard of a "concordance", looks very much like something that would help me out a lot.

I am mostly pretty aware of the stuff you mention but it hadn't really occurred to me that the "originals" were likely in totally vernacular or common speech and not especially poetic. I suppose that makes sense but I get the probably false impression that the prose was high-faluting because the KJV is in English... not really considering that they didn't write it in English, high-faluting or otherwise.

Thanks for the recommendation!

The funny thing is I'm pretty sure both of these things riff very heavily on theology...

>The Bible can be considered from a mundane lens as with a spiritual lens.

While I resent the implication that I'm mundane because I'm not spiritual... ;) I really appreciate your thorough response. KJV but looking up other versions where I might struggle with a verse sounds like a good compromise.

Good tip, thank you. If you do find the one you use, let me know!

For a good introduction to basically any frigging thing you can think of, "A Very Brief Introduction to:" series from Oxford University Press. They're written by leading academics in their field and could fit in a front pocket of your jeans.

There is A Very Brief Introduction to The Anglo-Saxons.

Hmm, I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the Venerable Bede or Asser of Wales or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 🤔

I guess "not much" is a vague statement that I might be massively misconstruing but there's masses of contemporary record of the Anglo-Saxons. They write extensively about themselves, they loved it, Anglo-Saxon England was a centre of wealth and learning.

"In Our Time" is an incredible podcast that's been going for decades (firstly as a radio programme) on the BBC. Not sure about how accessible BBC podcasts are outside the UK though.

It's the age generally known as Anglo-Saxon England (Wales, Cornwall and Yr Hen Ogledd, "the old North", were still Brittonic and Scotland was a mix of Pictish, Brittonic and Gaelic peoples.) The Viking Invasions/settlements of Great Britain and Ireland also happened in this period. That part of history in this part of the world is known in general as the 'Migration Period', the Anglo-Saxon settlement of present-day England being one of those migrations.

A Very Brief Introduction to Roman Britain

A Very Brief Introduction to The Anglo Saxons

A Very Brief Introduction to The Vikings

A Very Brief Introduction to The Normans

All Oxford University Press. Should bracket the period beginning and end (Roman and Norman) and describe the two most notable peoples/systems of the period itself, the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.