THE UNKNOWN BOOK

Episode #004
What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.
-Plato.
While this is an exercise in demonstrating that the inside of this Book is largely unknown.
It's existence, influence, power, literary brilliance, reach, effects, appeal, and wonder are universal.

What we are speaking about today is the ignorance of what lies within it pages.
That is the issue.
All the talk, facts, oratory, quotes and more by people show their ignorance.
There is only one way to know the Unknown Book.
You must read it from cover to cover, and that more than once or twice.
It is a lifetimes worth of reading.
Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.
-Charles Spurgeon.
No one, absolutely no one can claim to be educated without having truely read this Book. The question is and always will be. "Have your read it?"
A Throrough knowledge of the Bible is worth moree than a college education.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Nothing you have heard, or been told about The Unknown Book can or will ever prepare you for what is a reading experience.
It cannot be expressed by another, it is something you must experience for yourself.
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand
-Mark Twain.
Every person brings something to reading this Book and every person takes something away from it that only they can know.
Some people are taken a way by the Book and are filled with the desire to cultivate that Book in their country.
While others not so much at all.

Here is a slice of both views:
For the book...

The Bible is the most thought-suggesting book in the world. No other deals with such grand themes.
-Herrick Johnson

Against the book...

One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament; the proximity of  such impurity almost compels this...
I have searched in it vainly for even a single congenial trait... everything in it is cowardice and self-deception.
-Fredrich Nietzche

For the book...

It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.
-Horace Greeley

Against the Book...

As far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-Bertrand Russell

For the Book...

It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.
- George Washington

Against the Book...

The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infalibility of the popes.
-Thomas Henry Huxley

For the Book...

To read the Bible is to take a trip to a fair land where the spirit is strengthened and faith renewed
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Against the Book...

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
-Alfred North Whitehead

For the Book...

The whole of the inspiration of our civilization springs from the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the Prophets. To read the Bible for these fundamentals is a necessity of American life.
- Herbert Hoover
But...

To get to know the Unknown Book you and you alone have to take the time to read it.
Too often prejudice against the book is won by some heralded name and intellect.
But the question remains and holds court in a demanding stance, have your read the book?
It takes 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the Bible at pulpit rate.
It takes 52 hours and 20 minutes to read the Old Testament.
It takes 18 hours and 20 minutes to read the New Testament.
In the Old Testament th Psalms take the longest to read: 4 hours and 28 minutes.
In the New Testament the Gospel of Luke takes 2 hours and 43 minutes to read.
-Eleanor Doan.

 
The Common trap...

How many times have I heard from someone or known a person who picked it up to read.
And, they started at the lists in Chronicles! Or Leviticus!!