I'm planning to read the bible. Would it be wise to read the new testament before the old testament?
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I'm planning to read the bible. Would it be wise to read the new testament before the old testament?
Uh... I'm not sure. Personally, I simply pick a random book from either the old or new testament and read it. Although I think it would be good if you were acquainted with the Gospels.
Only if you want to read it from a Christian perspective. Many Christians only read the NT, and a smattering of OT when the morals happen to line up. Doing NT first would also let you read into the OT as foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, which is the Christian view.
If you're just reading from a historical or cultural perspective, you can read in order but the OT has some very dry chunks (like the second half of Exodus through Deuteronomy), so either commit to getting through that or skip around to keep it interesting.
You need to start by reading the Hebrew Bible
There is no other option
I read the NT first, then the OT. Like how they did the Star Wars movies.
hilarious comparison
You should look up various reading plans. They have chronological ones, and ones which mix OT and NT. You can just choose one you like. I recommend either starting with the Gospels and then going all the way back and reading through, reading the Gospels a second time when you come to them, or else simply starting at the beginning and reading all the way through. I can't really say in what order I read, because I used to sit and read the Bible with my sister as a child (we used to read the dictionary for fun as well, we're nerds). When I read it as an adult for the first time, I think I began with Job, but otherwise read straight through. However, I was also in Church, and therefore read whatever was being covered in services or Bible study groups as well. In any case, just read it and reread it. May God bless you, anon.
Go in this order: NT -> OT -> NT
The NT is short and there's no reason not to have read it before tackling the OT. And then you should read the NT again once you've finished the OT and your contextual knowledge is greater.
I love Jesus so much bros
Heaven was made for you, chap.
How much do you know about Christianity?
Just read it front to back, and form your own opinion on each individual story.
start at the beginning
The OT has the really unreadable trash in it, like Chronicles and the endless genealogies, etc. The key is not the order - reading chronologically is fine, starting with the end and working back is also fine, following the weekly reading in church and bouncing around that way is probably ideal. The key is realizing that parts of it are not important or interesting and will absolutely kill your motivation unless you are a monster of autism.
There are also not-bad books, which are good stories but don't have much to do with the overall story - eg the Samson story, which is a weird rip of Hercules, except the Greeks acknowledged that he was a jerk off. The OT has lots of weird bronze age barbarity which you are just going to have to ignore, or maybe go through 700 levels of exegesis to figure out why this guy having Superman temper tantrums constantly has some thematic continuity with Jesus (I don't see it at all). Church readings just avoid the weird stuff, it's a good strategy. Nobody wants to start cutting out books that have already been declared canonical, but some of this stuff is bizarre.
A wild pleb has appeared!
Large parts of Numbers are absolutely unreadable but keep pretending otherwise
KJV or NKJV?
Douay-Rheims, also become Catholic
Read the Four Gospels, then read the Pentateuch or at least Genesis, then read the rest of the New Testament. After that read the rest of the Old Testament.
Really the best one here.
I'd suggest also following along with Father Mike Schmidt's 'Bible in a Year.'
Has the full Bible and good explanations of things.
The israelite testament sucks, just read the new testament
Just go away, pseuds. We have to tolerate enough stupidity on this board without your kind sauntering in.
The Bible is indefensible. I see you tacitly acknowledge this by failing to even attempt a defense of it.
I don't treat fools as equals.
New Testament sucks just read the hood parts of the Old Testament
It would be wise to avoid it entirely. It's a muddled and immoral set of superstitions sprinkled with hackneyed stories like "what if really small boy beat really big giant?" Not to mention the central theme revolves around a human sacrifice and the ritual cannibalism of his corpse and blood. Try an actual enthralling Holy Book like the Bhagavad Gita.
>Try an actual enthralling Holy Book like the Bhagavad Gita.
good morning sirs
>Bhagavad Gita
>holy book
Lol, so holy the subcontinent on which it originated has never produced a superpower in its long history is and currently filled with the most abominable practices on the planet. The natives can't wait to escape. "Holy" book indeed!
"Superpower" is a modern concept but India has historically been one of the major centers of civilization in Eurasia along with Europe, China, and the Near-East and some extremely powerful kingdoms rose up there. The Moguls actually had a stronger economy than the Qing for a while.
Of course it's a modern concept. We live in the present, pseud. Take your slop and your copes and shill them somewhere else. No one here cares.
Cope and seethe
Obviously false if you associate with other Christians
Glad to see that even someone as misled as yourself can still appreciate the beauty and power of the Blessed Gita.
You're the deluded one because you don't want to accept the obvious. A cursory look at the Holy Writ and the Gita would reveal that the message is the same, but you're so absorbed in your favorite lies that you choose to see things in the Bible that aren't there. Read the Gospel of St. John and note how Jesus speaking as the Logos is quite similar to how Krishna speaks as Vishnu. The Son of God has revealed Himself to many, but the Hebrews got the best and most overt revelation, including the Incarnation.
In the Bible, you are required to wade through a lot of sloppy nonsense to find a few kernels which aren't horrible. The Gita is sublime from start to finish.
This guy got filtered by the genealogies without realizing they summarize the whole story. No. The Scriptures are immaculate.
I support this increasing trend of immigrant triumphalism. You were actually a threat when you claimed you were just like us, and you wanted to fit into society. You do *not* want this race war narrative you're pushing, but since you're a low impulse control thirdie you can't help yourself.
Most of the books of the Bible are a complete mess. It's basically unsalvageable as a Holy Book. Also, we are no longer a "threat", we have become inevitable. Demographics are already set. You are less than a billion and steadily declining since your birthrate is well below 2, we are well over a billion and multiplying as our birthrate is over 2. I don't care about the "race war narrative", the race war is already over. You've lost.
Your people and your religion literally celebrate their biggest holy day by rolling around in cow shit.
True, like, does it even matter? Oh, yeah, Indians have "won" because they reproduce like rats, but they're still Indian, and they always will be. Enjoy maintaining critical infrastructure when the average IQ in Western nations is 74!
Smug, ignorant bastards.
Bro, your religion demands that you ritualistically engage in symbolic cannibalism. "Hey, we're not a cult, we just wear robes and pretend to drink blood". Clown behavior.
>literally rolls around in shit
>you guys are so weird for drinking wine!!1!!!1
>Is caught drinking the transmuted blood of a dead guy
>"Whatcha doing?"
>"...d-drinking wine"
kek
I don't get why goth kids don't read the bible, its literally a vampire cult. Jesus rose from the dead, and he has his followers drink his blood.
Also a huge number of churches reenact the ritual of drinking the blood. It's literally vampire larping!
why yes zoomer, your 20 years picking up memes and chanspeek to talk like all the cool kids is totally worth more than the sum of 3000 years of tradition and mystery, plus 2000 years of text curacy, dead language scholarship, arguments, ideas and wars.
Totally.
That said, you're here. I'm sorry your parents don't care enough.
The Eucharist will never be as strange as rolling around in cowshit you insecure thirdie.
Okay cannibals
*transubstantiated
>reenact
Actually joining the original Last Supper, transcending time and space via the power of God
The Gita is easily the single most Christian text ever penned by Pagans. The only distortion in it is all the gibberish about reincarnation. Take that away, and it's just a book about a life of selfless service to God.
What absolutely Satanic nonsense. How you pseuds look yourselves in the mirror is a mystery.
What a gay little tantrum.
Your English needs work. You don't know what a tantrum is.
Ah yes, he's so misled he's speaking the language of the Bhagavad Gita civilization on a Hindi forum...oh wait....this site was made by a israelite from a Christian nation and you're speaking the language of the Christian nations which have dominated the world for the last few centuries, having taken the reigns from the Christians which came before them. Keep coping, pagan. No matter how hard you shill that Satanic slop, one look at your society and its practices exposes it for what it is. Not even Buddhism can hold a candle, and that's the best thing India ever produced.
The greatest advancement in Western civilization occurred once the moroning influence of Christianity lessened, and even then the truly great aspects were firmly rooted in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy which was merely poached and reappropriated by Christianity. In short, Aristotle is more responsible for the greatness of the west than Jesus, and it's not even close. Also, take a peek at birth rates in the West vs birth rates in India and the general flow of migration. In a few short decades, your country will be majority brown. In a few short centuries, every person will be brown. I may speak your language, but your progeny will bear my genes. Refer to what I said above: cope and seethe.
>The Gita is easily the single most Christian text ever penned by Pagans
No, that's got to be a tossup between either the Eclogues of Virgil (specifically Eclogue IV) or the Enneads of Plotinus.
Haven't read much Greco-Roman stuff yet because I actually want to learn Latin and Greek before getting into it, but thanks for pointing this out.
If you're adamant on reading the whole thing then the New Testament will have more bang for your buck to start on but there will be a metric frickton of shit that will go over your head.
If you just want to understand the "story" of the Bible with as little of the "fluff" as possible, read
>Genesis
>Exodus
>Deuteronomy
>Joshua
>Judges
>Samuel
>Kings
>Chronicles
>Isaiah
>Jeremiah
>Micah
>Maccabees (the KJV in your OP will not have this part)
>Luke
>Acts
Read the OT first with a good study Bible (I like the Orthodox Study Bible) so that you don't miss anything.
Wonder how many itt go to church regularly or practice the teachings of Jesus. Judging by this board many so called Christians acts very unchristian
If you drop water on a stone, you'll bore through it.
Ignore all of the fools in this thread (Prov. 14:7-9, 18:2,7) and just take the advice of every pastor/priest and start with the Gospels. That's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. After you've read those four, then you can start thinking about if you want to continue reading the New Testament, or go back and read from the Old Testament. As long as you read it all, that's all that matters, since while the Bible may be a collection of books, those books all come to together to form one whole; you can't read one out of context from another.
E-Christians are like an e-gang on IQfy
Start with the Greeks
Question: why did the Church Fathers decide to include the OT when they compiled the Bible? Was it because they thought it was important to include the foundation upon which the faith of Christ and his disciples was built?
Anon, the Old Testament is still divinely inspired. The Old Testament is critical for a deeper understanding of the New. Many times there are types and prefigurements of Christ and how God saves us in the Old. Not only that, but much of it is recording history, either literally or poetically, showing God's plan for our redemption.
I'm trying to read it but it's quite gruelling. I prefer going to the church and the priest just recites the stories from it. If you attend enough times you'll have heard the entire book.
Listen to
>If you attend enough times you'll have heard the entire book.
I suppose but you won't get a holistic view of it. If I went to a book club without reading the book that was being discussed and only heard the excerpts read at the meeting do I understand the book? I would say no. I could give you some basic themes from it and maybe a general outline of events but actual understanding? I doubt it. The liturgical year and its mirroring of Christ's life and the life of the Church was useful prior to the advent of mass literacy but now with that coming to pass there's little excuse for a Christian to not read the Bible cover to cover outside of laziness.
>Would it be wise to read the new testament before the old testament?
No many stories in the new testament are made with the assumption that you have a knowledge of the old testament to get at what its trying to do. For example John's empty tomb is in reference to the holy of holies in the first temple where two cherubim are placed at the "head" and the "foot" of the ark of the covenant thus comparing Christ to the contents of the ark that being manna (Christ is the bread of life) the law (Christ is the law) and the staff of Aaron (Christ is the high priest). You aren't gonna get this if you didn't read the old testament.
So you should read OT -> NT and then if you'd like OT again with the new light given to you by the NT.
Start with the Vedas and with animistic cave painting. If you can discover such cave paintings you'll have unique insights that literally no one else has.
Just read Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. It's has exactly the same kinds of characters as the old testament.
>Would it be wise to read the new testament before the old testament?
It would be wise to read the new testament and stay away entirely from the old. Wisest of all would be to read the Gospel According to John and the Pauline Epistles several times in KJV and skip the rest.
advise to read it old to new, just so you don't miss bits.
use ESV because it adheres to the literal heeb and Greek the most.
>why tho
because a lot of the versions frick around and don't give you 1:1 fidelity.
example: Isaiah 9 per NKJV, "everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer", is bullshit, because "hypocrite" here in original heeb is "ungodly or profane or debased". the English "hypocrite" is a transliteration of the Greek word for "actor", whose popular meaning as we know it came only after Jesus' usage.
tldr, translators are theologically invested, which make their translations untrustworthy.
Whats the most literal translation version? One that avoids any cultural or religious bias?
see
Right now im using ESV and Hebrew/Greek Interlinear App (Strong's concordance included in the app).
it's slow going.
I use the TLV because it keeps the key heavy terms untranslated, like YHVH for LORD and Elohim for God, Kadoshim (Holy Ones) for Saints, and Shalom for Peace. As English based readers the weight of such words are glossed over because their English equivalents are lightweight; better to leave them untranslated, my opinion, so certain parts hit properly.
Saint sounds cringing and quailing almost.
Holy One sounds boss.
I recently purchased the NRSVue, first time really reading the Bible, is it considered a decent translation? I chose it because it was
ecumenical and in contemporary English.
I really have no idea man.
I'm picking ESV for fidelity based on internet hearsay. No conclusion yet.
I found Young's Literal Translation not really literal; shabbier or equal to NKJV, my opinion.
there ARE apps with 1:1 transliterations with Strong's concordance tho, like the Hebrew/Greek Interlinear app I'm using right now. Reading is slow as ughhhh, but having 6 back to back readings worth of prior knowledge (plus a hundred hours of audio bible) helps a bit.
Decent is NIV, my opinion.
I am skeevy of easy read contemporary versions, because their translation teams may have unreported doctrinal bents. Such as, Sarah being taken for a wife by Pharaoh not because of her youth being biologically renewed, but for "inner beauty". Take nothing absolutely, if you are reading any contemporary easy read version like Good News or American Standard.
But that said, if it is your first run, take any version, do a casual full read to get a general map of things and ideas.
Unless you are dead serious about doctrine, most versions are ok.
>Decent is NIV
The NIV is probably one of the worst modern translations for a host of reasons that are explained very well here
>https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resources/deliberate-mistranslation-in-the-new-international-version-niv/
As you said changing what the bible is saying to uphold a doctrinal bent is a problem.
I'd say the NRSVUE is one of the best of the contemporary translations. It deals with some of the issues the old NRSV had with it's liberal use of gender neutral pronouns that caused some passages that were meant to be addressed to a specifically male audience to become gender neutral when that wasn't originally the case. Plus they translated the apocrypha which is a big plus for me.
Yeah, heard arguments against NIV too.
I'm taking a best of the lot by personal aggregate, since I don't know heeb and Greek, and I don't have the time to do text by text line by line across all versions.
You got an aggregate best? Or are you the Oxford Annotated anon?
It really depends on what you're attempting to accomplish with your bible reading. If you're trying to understand what the original authors were intending then I would say go for the New Oxford Annotated. If you're looking for devotional reading then that's something that is entirely up to you and and is about personal preference and doctrinal adherence. If you're looking to understand the bible by its influence on literature and the English language the KJV 1611 with apocrypha is your best bet. It's also my favorite version lol
>my favorite is KJV
How DO you manage. Original Shakespeare and peers were easier to follow.
I was reading KJV just DYING
You get used to it the more you read it like any other book. That's one of the things I like about it is that it is an artificial language while also being spoken in the vernacular. It sets itself apart while also being familiar.
sorry, forgot you mentioned the VUE.
I'll look at it, too.
Excuse my phoneposting.
You should read something like Frye's The Great Code/Words With Power in order to enrich your experience. After reading either one or both of those you can move on to something like the Oxford Annotated Bible (and you'll likely want to start with the OT because it informs much of the NT).
My original plan was to read The Great Code, then a Reader's Bible, then Words With Power, then go back and read the Oxford Annotated Bible. It ended up being not as straightforward as I'd thought and I switched to make the Annotated Bible second while watching Frye's lectures and will probably have to revisit The Great Code in detail before reading Words With Power. I expected it to take me about a year, reading other things as well, but it will probably take me at least 2 (not counting reading stuff about the history of the church itself and what we know about the civilizations that birthed it).
Why do most english bibles, even modern ones, have everyone in them speak in old english, when they never spoke actual english in the first place? Does the old english make people think its more legit?
Stylistic choice
Not sure about "a lot". Only seen KJV do it, myself. Which one you read that does this?
(Seen a Dharmapada Treasury try Olde English for affect tho. It cheapened the text into a performance. Not based at all o ye bhikkus. Yea, indeed, ye have been most cringe.)
Just as an example on how the KJV absolutely bodies any other translation in terms of style throughout much of the bible here's an excerpt from one of my favorite chapters.
NRSVUE:
>13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
KJV:
>13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
There's a quality to it that I can't really put into words, but it just makes it so much better sounding.
Yeah ok the KJV will be found in the hands of a postapocalypse gunslinger, give you that.
Why do the protty versions omit several OT books? I'm gonna buy a Catholic Bible, more content in it
>Why do the protty versions omit several OT books?
So Luther viewed these books as "Apocrypha, that is, books that are not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures but are useful and good to read." and moved them in between the Old and New Testaments in their own section titled Apocrypha. They remained this way until the 19th century, when the British and Foreign Bible Society decided to save money and remove the Apocrypha section because they saw these books as not getting as much use compared to the rest of the bible. I think this was a massive mistake and has led to a lot of strange misunderstandings from people who refuse to do simple Google searches and are missing out on a lot of good reading.
Not only did he instigate wars that killed tens of millions of people, this is even worse. Lol
>Not only did he instigate wars that killed tens of millions of people
I don't think you realize how awful the Catholic Church has been throughout history or the various factors that went into causing the Reformation. Imagine finally being able to read the Bible after the introduction of printing into Europe, reading the seven woes Jesus spoke unto the pharisees, and then going to mass. You'd feel like Jesus was speaking directly to the ecclesial hierarchy of your day. Here's a few excerpts from that:
>13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in you stop them. 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
>23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
>25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.
>27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. 28 So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
The level of corruption and hypocrisy by the clergy is kind of hard to even imagine. Especially given that it is meant to be a religious institution and thus is expected to have a higher standard. Even most Catholics would agree that Luther was right to criticize indulgences, and most modern Catholics and the Roman hierarchy have had to subtly concede to a lot of modernist beliefs, like the freedom of religion, in order for the Catholic Church to survive.
It takes more than peabrain protestant propaganda to be dissuaded from God's Church, Anon.
The Church has never taught to do these things.
Oh, did humans sin? Joining God's Church doesn't precedent you from failing, Anon. The israelites sinned. The people before them sinned. Catholics sinned and sin. Atheists and agnostics sin. Protestants sin. [Megachurches, am I right? Or, You'll just say they aren't "true" Christians to cope, yes?]
Despite all that, God's Catholic Church has Saints who rise above sin with God's help.
The difference here is that Jesus promised that Hell wouldn't prevail against His Church. Are you calling Christ a liar?
>higher standard
A higher standard indeed. And those that fall short have and will be judged.
>indulgences
Uneducated Catholics may criticize indulgences. Luther's complaints about indulgences really just stem to Germans consistently ruining things throughout history. Indulgences were not and still are never sold and are still active things to this day.
God's Church is a living Church with authority given to it by God to teach and expand its understanding of God's teachings and rule on law and morals for mankind.
Incorrect. The Eucharist consists of the substance of Christ, not the accidents or physical features. The accidents remain that of bread and whine, save for Eucharistic miracles, which are then preserved rather than eaten.
Please stop playing in cow dung
>Incorrect. The Eucharist consists of the substance of Christ, not the accidents or physical features
>"n-no, we just eat h-his substance"
Cannibal. Cope and seethe with your vampire larping.
If there's no flesh physically present, there's no cannibalism.
Please stop playing in cow dung
Yeah it just depends on the frame you're working inside. It helps to understand that Christianity is decidedly not israeli, or is even anti-israeli. From the standpoint of "the law" all that ritualized death and cannibalism stuff is insanely bad, but Christianity at its core is about personal faith and is not morally concerned with precise interpretation of the Torah.
Christianity is a fulfillment of the religion of the Hebrews. It is distinctly different from the modern Judaic religion which is different and younger than the precursor Hebrew religion.
It is a personal faith and also a communal faith as Christ empowered His Catholic Church to guide us in His stead until His return
Jesus was a israelite, that was hugely important (descendant of King David). The whole point of Jesus is that he fulfilled a israeli prophecy, he even says "I have not come to abolish the old laws but to fulfill them". Also, you are still eating the essence of a dead israelite body and drinking dead israelite blood essence. Jesus explicitly says the bread is his body and the wine his blood. Don't try to blaspheme your religion, embrace what it is, vampire larping.
I really don't want to break out the webms of your people eating cow shit rakesh.
Nice deflection, but it betrays the fact that you have no defense, cannibal.
>Judaism in the 200~ years before Jesus was heavily hellenized/romanized (more israelites lived in Egypt than in Judea during Jesus' lifetime)
>Greek is the lingua franca of the israelites of this era and several books of the Old Testament are composed in it (along with basically the entirety of the New Testament but that's not relevant here)
>The Jerusalem Temple gets destroyed in 70 AD and Temple Judaism morphs into Rabbinical Judaism
>Rabbinical Judaism places explicit emphasis on "muh Hebrew tradition" that needs to be preserved
>They throw out the stuff that was primarily known through Greek
>The Christians don't care about muh Hebrew so, with a few anecdotes, they largely keep the Greek stuff
>Reformation happens
>The Reformers side with the israelites rather than the Christian tradition
>They still keep the books in their bible but say it isn't "true and honest" scripture
>Catholics follow the tradition of St. Augustine and the Council of Rome which said it is
>Protestant bibles eventually drop the books entirely to save money on paper
You need to read the Old Testament to understand the New Testament prophecies and have context for the bullshit they try to pull.
In honesty, you probably actually need the Tanakh. You can skip the 5 books of Abraham, though it gives more context into the mindset and why the israelites disliked Jesus.
At least read the Pentateuch first
It's not something you read all the way through.
Here's how I would do it if I had to go back:
>genesis
>exodus
>deuteronomy
>matthew
>john
>dabble in the major prophets
>dabble in the minor prophets
>acts
>revelation (although feel free to take your time to get to this one, but it's really good)
The main way I'd look at the Bible is through covenants (promises).
I hope that's a helpful post for you.
It is better the read the literature on NDEs if you want to know what reality is, as NDEs are actually irrefutable proof that heaven really is awaiting us all because (1) people see things during their NDEs when they are out of their bodies that they should not be able to under the assumption that the brain creates consciousness, and (2) anyone can have an NDE and everyone is convinced by it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U00ibBGZp7o
So any atheist or materialist or agnostic would be too if they had an NDE, so pic related is literally irrefutable proof of life after death. As one NDEr pointed out:
>"I'm still trying to fit it in with this dream that I'm walking around in, in this world. The reality of the experience is undeniable. This world that we live in, this game that we play called life is almost a phantom in comparison to the reality of that."
If NDEs were just hallucinations then extreme atheists and neuroscientists who had NDEs would agree that they were halluinations after having them. But the opposite happens as NDEs convince every skeptic when they have a really deep NDE themselves.
The Soul After Death does it better
Read the Jefferson Bible, then the New Testament, then the Old Testament.