I was raised Roman Catholic and to me it was always a head scratcher why would someone insist on a certain translation which is at least two languages away from the original.
It's a whole field of study and there's broad agreement that as language evolves translations need to be updated, otherwise you'd have to become an expert in that old language the work was written in on top of everything else.
OP specifically indicates he wanted to read it because of its high valency with other texts he had read, so his choice makes sense.
> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before.
Having been raised in a Christian tradition as well, I don't get this. I don't get how you can, as an educated, rational, thinking adult, go from 0 religion to learning about Christianity and saying, "yeah, that sounds plausible."
The only reason I stuck to it so long was familial fear mongering and cultural momentum. Once I deprogrammed myself far enough to start being able to ask questions, I realized Christianity's construction is indistinguishable from a scam. If you don't start with the cult programming, how do you get far enough down the religion rabbit hole without first running head-first into the obvious self-protective indoctrination designed specifically to avoid scrutiny?
It's a cult. If God were real, he'd be a sociopath.
Rather than eternal torment (and heaven) it was originally a bit more vague and esotheric. Not a place of fire and demons and a place in the clouds with golden gates and all things nice which the catholic church declines to support regardless of what some church frescos depict.
Supposedly hell is/was more more like eternal absence of god. Eternal nothingness which supposedly is horrifying to some rather than eternally being with god or becoming one with him.
The ancient Israelites originally believed in Sheol[0,1], an afterlife where everyone went, regardless of their morality. The modern concept of Hell is a political construct meant to answer the problem of evil and the absence of God's justice in times of persecution[2..4].
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUCW-PMBvKE
[2]https://old.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1fsatrp/o...
However people read it and find connection to their past/present and somehow brings them peace. No different than any other old philosophical old book.
When I hear these rants against people deciding to choose a reglion, I hear projection. I hear people struggling to come up with their own belief system (maybe a little here as well)
My decisive moment was pretty silly in hindsight, but I stopped going to church after that. I was ten and me and my friend spent the better part of an afternoon after school collecting buckeyes (aka conkers, horse chestnuts). We were headed home with our spoils but when we were passing a church, my friend recalled that there was some kind of holiday that day and he had to attend mass. He gave me everything he had collected and joined the crowd standing there in the cold.
Exodus 20:5
As an atheist myself, it took me a long to to realize that a lot of modern conflict between rationality and Christianity stems from the rationalists not understanding that the belief is often beyond the literal, especially when the Christian is of a more intellectual bent. A lot of times the believers don't even realize they only believe symbolically, or can't articulate it. I won't do the ideas justice, so I won't try to explain them.
It’s probably not a great thing for a modern English speaker to read if they want to actually understand it; in particular the meaning of certain English words has changed enough that they can give a false impression.