Thursday, July 21, 2011

"Your Reading Canon" Results

I am back from a short family vacation, so let's take a look at the results from the "Your Reading Canon" post from last week. A number of these books, not surprisingly, proved to be the most popular:

Old Testament
1) Psalms (the most popular)
2) Genesis
3) Tobit
4a) Exodus
4b) Sirach

New Testament
1) John
2) Romans
3) Luke
4a) Matthew
4b) Mark
5a) Acts
5b) James
6a) Hebrews
6b) 1 Peter
at

5 comments:

  1. LlanbedrJuly 21, 2011 at 12:59 PM

    Tobit in at number 3 - that's incredibly interesting. I'd always assumed that my love of/interest in Tobit was somewhat unusual. I'm delighted to see how wrong my assumption was!

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  2. TimothyJuly 21, 2011 at 1:11 PM

    Llanbedr,

    Tobit is a great book! My wife and I also picked our first reading during our Wedding Mass from Tobit. There is gold in them Deuterocanonicals!

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  3. ChrysostomJuly 23, 2011 at 1:18 AM

    My female friends (almost all of them) love Tobit.

    My reading canon, in order of the books I most enjoy, would look something like:

    OT:

    Wisdom of Solomon
    Ecclesiasticus/Sirach
    Genesis
    The Maccabees (esp. 4 even though it's not canon)
    Psalms
    Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes
    Tobit
    Judith
    Proverbs

    NT:

    Luke
    John
    Matthew
    Romans
    Hebrews
    James
    1 John

    In no particular order, although I tried to order from favourite - least favourite, it's not a "closed canon".

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  4. ChrysostomJuly 23, 2011 at 1:30 AM

    I forgot Acts as well. I also like Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Daniel for the prophecies and attempts to interpret them, but it's something you have to be in the mood for - it's more study and less devotional reading.

    I believe Isaac Newton was a massive fan of Ezekiel. Sketches of his of Ezekiel's Temple still survive.

    I don't believe pseudepigraphic works count, but for the OT, I would have to add
    1 Enoch
    Leptogenesis

    ...and a few others from the pseudepigrapha, and for the NT I would have to add:

    Shepherd
    Epistle of Barnabas

    For books that have a "Biblical" style, even though I read Aquinas, etc. (works of exegesis and theology) more than the Bible itself, but I probably read the New Testament in its entirety (excluding Mark), plus the Didache, Shepherd, etc. once every two or three weeks, and the Old Testament two or three times a year, including 20 or so pseudepigrapha (3/4 Maccabees, 1-3 Enoch, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, 2-5 Baruch, Leptogenesis, 2-4 Esdras, 4-6 Ezra, Psalms of Solomon).

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  5. AnonymousJuly 23, 2011 at 11:21 AM

    Everyone seems to skip Mark when they read the Gospels, but when I was little I always read it because it was the shortest.

    In the words of my mother "Mark, the Readers Digest Gospel."

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