Looking for religious information, especially Christian

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I found Holy Bible RCUVSS（APP）. Is there any other authoritative introduction? I like unique insights.
It would be better if it is an app.

https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity

What exactly are you trying to find out?

I don’t know of any app. I like books by Bart Ehrman for the New Testament.

How to Read the Bible by James Kugel is helpful as far as the Old Testament is concerned.

Bart Ehrman is an atheist. Are you wanting info from that perspective or from the perspective of actual believers? I didn't mean any disrespect to atheists BTW.

Bart Ehrman is a well-respected, academic, Bible scholar. He’s a good source of information no matter what one’s goals are.

Seconded It's in plain English as far as it's possible to be, and seems fairly nonpartisan and unlikely to try to pull the wool over the reader's eyes, whereas most of the partisan stuff ("hard" atheism or any religion) carries a definite risk of containing stuff that has an axe to grind and seeks to persuade, i.e. not really pure information at all. But it depends what the OP wants of course.

The Bible itself is the worst starting place to understand Christianity because, as many non Westerners from Asia have discovered, it "doesnt have any religion in it". The Old Testament is the mythically enhanced imagined history of the ancient Hebrew people. And the New Testament the equally mythically enhanced story of Christ and his later disciples. Even western Jews and Christians need either clergy or secular teachers of literature to connect the dots enough to get the theology buried in it.

That Wiki article does look like a good primer just to get the sponge of your brain wet enough to absorb more. Just what mainstream Christianity is, as it exists in most sects. Its basic tenets. Not biased...either for, against any particular sect, nor anti nor pro nor anti the whole body Christianity itself.

I am sure there are basic "secular Sunday school" type books that can give you a similar rundown on the basics without pushing the beliefs on you. Sorry that I cant name any.

Then later if it interests you you could go into more scholarly detail.

Go to specific websites of particular sects, and learn the particular sect beliefs. At a Catholic site it will list the long list of "heresies". And that list will include "Protestantism". Needless to say...a Protestant site will disagree.

There is a current author lady named Elaine Pagels who does great stuff on the early history of Christianity.

Bart Erhman is similar though, a bit more contraversial because he is openly atheist. But he does does great over view of the gospels and how they often dont exactly agree on details of the events.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible

My wife and daughter like this one:

https://catholicapps.com/the-bible-in-a-year-podcast/

Orthodox Christianity: Now, now, you're both equally heretics.

excellent! Basically, this is what I'm looking for when posting.

The atheist perspective is easy to understand, but the actual believers perspective is what interests me more. I believe they have a different way of understanding the world, and I want to re-understand the world from different perspective so that I can come to a more objective point of view.
If you have any information from actual believers, I would be very grateful.

Here seems to be some interesting religious information that actual believers receive on a daily basis.

https://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/

I don't really know what an app is but I hope that link is what you are looking for.

Most Christians in the UK keep to the King James translation but it uses older writing which may be difficult for some to understand. This version is the New King James which is similar to the old one but it uses modern English words.

In another thread, which I lost somewhere on this site, I mentioned that China became Christian. This was in the first few hundred years after Christ was on the earth and (E.g. about 100-400 A.D.) which is how your written characters had been designed with references to the Bible. (I am going by what Korean missionaries have told me as Korea was late to receive Christianity, and did so mostly just over 100 years ago when someone came from Wales, UK to Korea with a lot of Bibles. They killed him but then started reading the Bibles and the whole country accepted Christianity as their religion. (Later Korea was split so not sure what they do in the north, but I have met a Christian who escaped from the north. I didn't ask if she knew about Christianity from South Korea or if she knew about it before when she was in the North).
The reason how Christianity came to China so early was due to the Silk Road. Israel was the central trading point where since 2000 years before Christ and onwards, that China was exchanging slaves from the African slave traders for silk and other goods. (Why very early Chinese pottery can be found in the African Gold Coastal areas, and why countries in that area had been so rich).
The trade routes (Where all sorts of things were traded) went as far East as China and went as far West as Tarshish (Britain).
Some things to remember when listening to the notes by some Bible translations that their experts have said is that these experts often get things very wrong. So wrong that I am surprised how they included them and expected people to believe them! Examples are for Laviathan and Behemoth that they say they were hippopotamus and crocodiles. It is really obvious if one reads the Bible descriptions that they are nothing like the hippopotamus and the crocodile! To me, they actually describe dinosaurs amazingly accurately. Also many other "Footnotes" are not always correct.
The so called "Expert translators" were attempting to bring in an evolutionary approach into the Word of God which is why they often make so many mistakes. Why many UK Christians tend to keep to the King James bibles instead of reading other versions. Some are not that bad, but some translations we avoid.

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 23 Dec 2023, 6:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Got it, NKJ, a modern language update of the original King James Version, and I also saw multiple versions

What I don't know is which versions are translated into your language. (Manderin?) Some may be translated into English first and others may be translated directly from the original texts (Hebrew and Greek). The priority is to get the Bible with less translations from one language to another because one can lose certain things in the translation. Example is that in English, we have far more words but in Hebrew and Greek they use less words but they haven't than one meaning depending on how they are used. Mistakes can me made when they pick wrong meanings...


An interesting translation is between Welsh Bibles and English Bibles. My Dad was brought up speaking both Welsh and English. We were brought up speaking English. He couldn't read or write in Welsh as Welsh was always a spoken language while English was written and spoken, even the languages that English came from were in both written and spoken forms, but Welsh was always spoken until a few hundred years ago when they started writing it. (Only younger generations such as my generation would know how to write it though my mind doesn't like languages!)
But to us the translation is Holy Spirit while to Welsh the translation is Clean Spirit.

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 23 Dec 2023, 7:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Understand, the importance of translation. Thank you for your help. I will try to find a translation of the corresponding version from a Hong Kong or Taiwan website with similar languages.

When I read the Bible, I used the Good News translation. There are some inaccuracies, but it is simple English, easy to read and entertaining.

By the way, there are also Coptic Christians, Assyrian Orthodox, Maronite Christians, Ethiopian Christians, and others that go way back.