THE BIBLE IN MY PERSONAL LIFE

The BIBLE was and is one of the important books in my life and remains a source of certain inspiration and reference to this day. I encountered the Bible first through Bible stories mostly from a book my late cousin, Becky, had on the farm when we all lived in Cornish and that book had many 'classical' pictures of Biblical scenes,probably by Italian artists,etc. The stories of King David appealed to me as did a few others, like the Great Flood,etc. People also talked more about the Bible than is done nowadays and most were far more familiar with it than is easy to describe for many reasons. I started reading the actual Bible when i was around six or seven. My Welch Uncle by marriage, who was also a Mason and a Shriner, had a 'Masonic Bible' which to me did not seem any different than any other Bible except that it had the Masonic Emblem on the title page if I recall correctly. TWO BOOKS interested me more than the others: GENESIS & REVELATIONS and for a while I was expounding the 'end of the world', the 'end of the earth' and a lot of the things contained in the last book in the CANON. This led to discussion with classmates at that age and since we all went to the same Sunday School, seemed not out of the ordinary. Since that early time, I have examined many things concerning the Bible, even taking a course in college entitled,THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE which many fundamentalists find fault with, disagree with, and consider somewhat nefarious or secular,etc. I will attempt to discuss certain things about the BIBLE as well as my experiences among 'Christian' of all sizes, shapes, doctrines, and practices. Part of my family was Protestant(father's side) and Catholic(on my mother's side). Consequently, I never really accepted either side of things as the ultimate truth or correct religion,etc. and have even tried to adopt a 'scientific',sometimes 'agnostic','atheistic' & materialistic' attitude or position or argument. In fact, I have had many interesting discussions with various religious advocates, ministers, believers,etc. and have questioned them wholeheartedly, sometimes to the point of keeping them off balance and so forth. More aon this another time.