Sometime in the next two weeks, I’m going to start riding my bike to work again. That gives me two hours a day to listen to music or a book. I would love to listen to The Book by ripping some MP3s and putting them on my old yet servicable HP Jornada. About ten years ago, I got the Gospels of Matthew and Luke on tape, and listened to them over and over again until I knew them from the inside out.
I would love to do that with the Pentateuch, but although our library has three different versions of the Old Testament, I cannot abide any of them. On one version, the reader is good, but the translation is “contemporary” and I just can’t get past the leaden, politically-correct language. The other two have decent texts, but the voices aren’t ones that I want to hear for hours on end. The Zondervan Old Testament has a musical soundtrack (yes!) complete with sound effects (so when in Genesis it refers to birds, you hear them tweeting in the background.) It sounds like an introductory segment for a video game.
Can anyone recommend a non-annoying, non-PC recording of the Old Testament, or at least the first five books? I’d be willing to part with up to $40 to get one. Thanks for the help!
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I have to admit that the tweeting birds top leaden translations. I have no better alternatives to offer – I haven’t heard a good one. My grandmother, during about a 6 month period when she was having trouble with her eyes, used to listen to a KJV read by a particularly INSPIRING female voice punctuated with swelling organ music.
Michael, what we’re getting at, I think, is that we want a reading, not a performance.
I have a nice set of the Psalms (KJV) read aloud on cassette tapes. Will check later to see who did them.