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: 

Everlasting Father,

All time belongs to you, and all the ages. In signs, in songs, in words of promise, you reassured your chosen ones, “I am with you; fear not.” You taught them through the prophets to trust that your saving deeds were not limited to the past.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled “all that was written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

The Church has found him everywhere in these same holy books.

Help me to find Jesus in my reading today, to listen to him, and to follow him with all my heart.

Amen.

Today's chapters are Daniel 13-14 and Hosea 1.

We close the Book of Daniel with two stories that are not found in the shorter versions of the book; both of them illustrate Daniel's brilliance and uprightness before God.

With Hosea, we begin reading the "minor prophets." Hosea, in particular, is called to represent God as a husband who remains faithful to an impossibly promiscuous wife. With Hosea we are brought north, and we go back in time quite a bit, to the days before the fall of Samaria and the utter collapse of the northern kingdom. When God uses the term "Ephraim," for the people, he is speaking in an especially tender way to the people of the north.

Start reading Daniel here and Hosea here.

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 John Bergsma and Brant Pitre. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts, and how each book of the Bible has been understood by the Church Fathers and used in Liturgy.