Most Bible-y people's idea of Bible is from not reading any of it; and instead from either being spattered by weird single-sentence huffing in now-unintelligible King James English, or by hearing "Bible stories"— Namely, the stories that proper people consider proper to read— as opposed to the totally batshit ones. The other day, I opened a Bible at random, just to xerox its layout, for my Museum Of Book Layouts To Steal Someday, and came across a pretty damn weird bit.
Since all of the existing translations seem to suffer from "problems of voice as well as expression" (to lapse into Freshman Comp-ese), I shall perform my own translation:
All the believers were a group that thought and felt the same. There was no private property, only communal property, shared, and nobody was needy.
(The Apostles continued with the big job of wonderfully telling everyone about how Jesus was executed but came back to life and appeared and disappeared.)
Occasionally, people in the group who owned land or houses, would go sell it, and hand the money over to the Apostles, who passed it back around. For example, there was a Cypriot Levite named Yosef (nickname: "Barnabas", "The Convincer"), and he sold a field he owned and handed the money over to the Apostles.
But once, a man named Ananias and his wife Saffira, also sold a piece of property.
With his wife knowing all about it, Ananias kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and gave it to the Apostles.
Then Petros said, "Ananias, how can it be that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and kept back some of that money? You got it, you had it, and you could do whatever you wanted, so why didn't you give it all to us? This isn't even lying to men, it's lying to God!!"
Ananias heard this and dropped dead on the spot.
Everyone was terrified.
Some young guys came and disposed of the body.
About three hours later, his wife Saffira came in, but didn't know what had happened.
Petros: "So, what you gave us, that's all you got from selling the land?"
Saffira: "Yes, all of it".
Petros: "How could you be an accomplice in offending the Spirit of the Lord?!? Turn around- see those guys at the door? They just buried your husband AND YOU'RE NEXT!"
She dropped dead on the spot.
Some young guys came and disposed of the body- they put it next to where they buried her husband!
Everyone was terrified, and when the story got out, even more people were terrified.
END OF FUN BIBLE STORY.
Bible coordinates: Praxeis (Acts) 4.32 to 5.11 by NIV numbering.