I Counted the number of Bibles in my Home

[J Bryson]

I have (I think) 11 bibles, and then a bible that contains eight versions of the New Testament side by side. Most of my bibles are different translations.

I also have a Koran, the Book of Mormon, and probably 40 books on different religions from Buddhism to New Age (whever that is). I have several concordances and bible dictionaries.

I also have the complete works of Shakespeare, most of CS Lewis' writings, most of GK Chesterton's as well, lots of M Scott Peck, Kahlil Gibran, Peter Yancey, everything Bruce Feiler has ever written, some Carlin, Bill Bryson, Sohlzenitzen, tons of history books and biographies, including bios on JFK, Jefferson, most of Hitler's top henchmen, Stalin, etc.

I spend probably $80 a month on books. I'm running out of room!

I most heartily approve of your obsession.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So you are saved by stealing, ie breaking one of the basic tenants of their religion, if someone, having stolen the bible from the hotel, read it had a change of heart and brought it back I would say maybe it worked, but so far no one has.

Every Gideon Bible I've ever seen has come with a note inside the front cover saying that the reader is free to take it with them and keep it... a fact that the Abimelech Society takes full advantage of.

The Association was founded in Canada 29 years ago by a couple of Freethinkers who, in a hotel room, found the only reading material to be a Gideon Bible, and were angered by this overt propaganda by the Christians and decided to do something about it. There are now adherents in many countries around the world, and thousands of Bibles and New Testaments have been withdrawn from circulation, confiscated, destroyed, or put to some useful purpose.

The Abimelechs named themselves after the ******* son of Gideon and his followers who, in the story related in ninth Chapter of the Book of Judges, were inspired to usurp the work of the Judge Gideon and his associates, who had wrought havoc upon the many peoples whose religious beliefs differed from their own conviction that Yahweh was the Only True God.

 

[ChristineES]

I also have a book called "The Other Bible". It includes Gnostic texts- including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Bartholomew, infancy Gospels, several "creation" stories- including some gnostic ones, it even has the Book of Enoch in it. And there is a lot more. I find it very, very interesting.

 

[ChristineES]

Oh, and a friend of mine (who is LDS) gave me a book of Mormon.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Zero. With the number of books I buy every year, bookshelf space is far too valuable to litter it with books I'm not going to read.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Oh, and a friend of mine (who is LDS) gave me a book of Mormon.

Same with me - a friend here, in fact. (BTW, Katzpur - I'm still getting through it... slowly, but I'm getting through it)

I've also got a Qur'an, a collection of the Upanishads, a full Bible (CEV - a gift), a little Gideon Bible (just New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs - the Gideons handed them out in my public school... something that really bothers me in retrospect). Plus, my wife has two copies of the Bible herself: one is the "Good News for Modern Man" version, the other one I can't remember.

I also have a guide to home beermaking called The Brewmaster's Bible.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Zero. With the number of books I buy every year, bookshelf space is far too valuable to litter it with books I'm not going to read.

Heh... if I was worried about stuff like that, I wouldn't still have a copy of the 1995 building code.

 

[tumbleweed41]

I also have a guide to home beermaking called The Brewmaster's Bible.

You a homebrewer Penguin? So am I!

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You a homebrewer Penguin? So am I!

I am indeed!

But I brew much less than I should these days.

 

[Nepenthe]

With storage space at a minimum these days I sold about half of my books last year before our relocation and I got rid of several bible editions, some concordances, Qur'ans, etc., but only those texts that were already available online and/or I had the software. I just downloaded the Anchor Bible dictionary of which I'd sold my volumes last year...
I worked at bookstores from the mid-90s to 2002 so my book collection is kind of, well, cumbersome. Everywhere we've lived we needed an extra bedroom for a study/library.

 

[Gentoo]

Hehe I'm bet I have more Sister ^_^

Probably, books are too expensive for me right now... though my wish list is pretty lengthy

 

[Azakel]

Probably, books are too expensive for me right now... though my wish list is pretty lengthy

I bet, books are on the expensive side for me to right now. A lot of my book I got back when I had a good paying job.

 

[Zardoz]

I bet, books are on the expensive side for me to right now. A lot of my book I got back when I had a good paying job.

Ya, that helps. I got most of my books before the wife & kids came along, doubt I'd buy that many now.

 

[rojse]

With storage space at a minimum these days I sold about half of my books last year before our relocation...

Half of how many books?

 

[rojse]

For everyone that is a bibliophile like myself, I cannot recommend LibraryThing enough. It lets you tag and catalog your books online (even split them into multiple groups if you wish to), rate your books, write reviews, read other people's reviews. The most interesting thing, though, is to see what the entirety of LibraryThing thinks, as you can look at the most popular books, authors, tags, and so forth. It will even tell you what the entirety of LT thinks of each book according to the average of all the ratings of each book.

 

[Smoke]

It would take me days to find them all, but without working too hard at, I found the following Christian Bibles by walking around the house:

1) New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha
2) Third Millenium Bible (a gift)
3) Teacher's Testament - American Standard Version (my grandmother's, with copious notes written in the margins)
4) Heilige Schrift (Luther translation) (my grandmother's Bible when she was a child)
5) Douai-Rheims Version
6) New American Bible
7) New American Standard Bible (the one I used in high school)
8) The New Testament from 26 Translations
9) The New Testament in Four Translations (KJV, NASB, Williams, and Beck)
10) Revised Standard Version (my first Bible, a gift from my great-grandmother)
11) King James Version
12) New International Version
13) The Pentateuch (Tyndale translation)
14) Good News for Modern Man (my great-grandmother's)
15) Die Bibel (Luther translation) (my great-great-grandfather's)
16) Die Bibel (Luther translation) (my great-grandmother's)
17) New Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition)
18) Jerusalem Bible
19) New Jerusalem Bible
20) Santa Biblia (Reina-Valera translation)
21) The Septuagint with translation by Brenton
22) Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine
23) Stephanus 1550 with King James Version
24) The Psalter According to the Seventy
25) Psalterion (Greek liturgical edition)
26) King James Version (bought it because I liked the binding)
27) The Complete Gospels
28) Psalter in the Authorized Version (fancy edition that belonged to a much-loved friend, now dead)
29) American Standard Version (my grandmother's)

There are others in boxes, in the back rows of bookshelves (we have books two deep on some shelves), and in the garage -- including a Russian Synodal translation, a Greek New Testament with parallel commentary in Modern Greek, the translation by Monsignor Knox, a New World Translation, and a fair number of Gideon New Testaments that were given to me at school or by relatives.

I also have several collections of non-canonical Christian and/or Gnostic scriptures, a Jewish Tanakh, a Qur'an, two translations of the Bhagavad Gita, two translations of the Dhammapada, six or seven translations of the Dao De Jing, two copies of the Book of Mormon, Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, Mooney's History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, the Analects of Confucius, a number of books of Norse, Greek, and Irish mythology, a book of Reform Jewish responsa, an edition of the canons of the Orthodox Church, and a fairly decent collection of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant prayer books, missals, and service books in English, Greek, Slavonic, Latin, and German.

 

[Smoke]

Heh... if I was worried about stuff like that, I wouldn't still have a copy of the 1995 building code.

I try very hard not to accumulate any more books than I have to, but I'm tormented by the certainty that if I ever get rid of The Stockman's Handbook I'll regret it some day when I need to know how many acres of soybeans I should plant to support 100 head of hogs, and if I let go The Succession to the Imperial Throne of Russia l'll suddenly feel a burning need to re-examine Maria Vladimirovna's claim to the throne in light of morganatic and unequal marriages. And of course my 1963 Sheboygan City Directory is absolutely indispensable.

 

[monta]

An awful lot of book hoarders out there, the best thing is when a friend wants to borrow one or five, their off your hands and if you need them you know where to find them, although I still remember that my uncle has a copy of Enemy Mine /Another Orphan which I lent him in 1991, everytime I see him, I'm like oh me yeah I'm fine (in the back of my mind I am thinking where's my book) and my sister dog ears I had a lovely antique King Jame's bible which had handwritten notes from the family that owned it, going back 120 years, but I gave it to a friend of mine when he was 'Born Again' , I loved that book but only as a curiousity so I don't regret handing it over.

 

[Kathryn]

Holey-moley Katherine! Eighty bucks?
You do know if you wait a year a paperback usually comes out?

Yeah but to me there's just no substitute for the feel of a hardback book in my hands.

I admit it - I'm an addict. But hey, some people smoke, some people eat a lot of junkfood - I read!

 

[rojse]

Yeah but to me there's just no substitute for the feel of a hardback book in my hands.

I admit it - I'm an addict. But hey, some people smoke, some people eat a lot of junkfood - I read!

I prefer hardcovers to paperbacks, myself - they are so much more sturdy and durable. Oh, and the pages don't get dog-eared so easily.