Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'm reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

I praise you, my God, with all people.
May they thank and adore you!
You have written your greatness in creation,
your Law in consciences,
your eternal promises in the Bible.
You are eternally faithful and always lovable!
As I read Sacred Scripture today, open my mind to hear your voice and understand your loving message.
Amen.

Today's three chapters are Genesis 19-21.

Start reading here.

While we are still at the beginning of our year of reading together, it can be helpful to remember that, despite appearances, the Bible is not a book. It is a library, a collection of writings set down over the course of centuries but with some of the material referring back to the late Stone Age. (This may help you put in context some of the cultural practices that can seem either mystifying or simply horrifying to us.)

The Bible features different kinds of documentation and an enormous variety of styles: narrative, fable, poetry, court records, history, sermons, rubrics, letters, romance, code words... Some of the passages are warnings, others inspiration, encouragement, information, words of adoration addressed to God himself. Obviously Temple rubrics and census records cannot be interpreted in the same key as the passionate verses of the Song of Songs! It is just as mistaken to look to the Bible for scientific information, or to expect every narrative to reflect a strictly historic event according to laconic modern standards. 

Perhaps the real key to understanding the Bible is to realize that, taken as a whole, it is an invitation to communion with God. Each event, prayer, story, or prophecy in the Bible is one aspect or one facet of that invitation; the Gospel is the light that allows us to see and read the invitation in its completeness, and Jesus is the one through whom we can accept it and enter the feast.

 

If you are looking for a solid but approachable companion to the Bible, I can wholeheartedly recommend A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by Brant Pitre and John Bergsma. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts.