So, whaat's your bible reading plan for 2017? I am going to be spending much of the year with my beloved Knox Bible, supplemented by The Message Catholic and NRSV. I don't have any bible reading plans "planned" at this point, that could change I suppose. How about you? Looking forward to any new bibles this year? I will be sure to pass along anything that I find out about future publications. I also hope to do some reviews on commentaries that have not been featured here before.
As I say often, however, make sure to support those publishers who are working to produce quality Catholic Bibles. You can go back and read the various reviews on this blog to known those publishers I am speaking of. Many of these publishers are small and take enormous financial risks when producing quality Catholic Bibles. And of course, by quality I mean bibles with sewn bindings, decent leather covers, and original page lay-outs. So go support them!
May all of you have a blessed New Year!
22 comments:
My main reading Bible this year is my large print RSV-2CE, supplemented by NABRE, MEV and The Jerusalem Bible. Unless using one of my study bibles, I tend to mostly use large print Bibles (11-14).
Michael,
Which ones have you read through?
NRSV would be good. Ever think to try something a bit different? Knox? The Message Catholic?
I have my newly rebound Oxford Large Print NABRE (review will be forthcoming, Timothy), and I'm planning to continue reading out of that as I have the past few weeks. I had four ribbons put in, so I pray a Psalm or two a day, followed by 2-3 chapters from elsewhere in the OT (wherever I left off the day before), then one chapter from Acts-Revelation and one from the Gospels. I don't always get all of that in, and sometimes I do it in two sittings, but it works pretty well for me. I like not having a Bible reading plan tied to the calendar. I always get behind on those and end up getting frustrated.
Secondarily, I just got Bibliotheca, so I hope to also do some reading out of it soon.
I am going to be spending time with the NABRE this year. While it isn't a bible, I am most interested to read John Bergsma and Brant Pitre's "Catholic Intro to the Bible: The Old Testament" that Ignatius Press is putting out this spring.
R
I made my separate peace with the NAB and the NABRE a couple years ago, but have decided to make it my daily reader recently.
I sent myself on a wild goose chase a few months ago to find out what the link between the NAB(s) and the American lectionary were and to find a bible or bibles that I could use as my praying bible that was as similar as possible to what I hear in mass. (Thanks be to God I work near a parish with a 7am mass, and my own parish has a 7:15 daily mass on Saturday, so if I'm not sick or lazy, I can go to mass every day.)
Anyway, my understanding is that the NAB which was current between '86 and '91 is pretty close to the lectionary. (This edition contains the revised new testament, which is pretty close to the lectionary's NT readings and the Old Testament from the original 1970 NAB. A few years later, the psalter would be replaced by '91 psalter, which I am not a fan of. That '91 version was stable for 20 years until the NABRE landed)
In a vacuum, I prefer the NABRE, and I truly want to understand their viewpoint on the Isaiah 7:14, but to be honest I find it above all distracting to have a bible that says Virgin in Matthew and Young Woman in Isaiah. Yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it. And I'm no traditionalist either--I'm a semi-charasmatic 30 year old with a liberal arts degree from an ivy league school.
Summary: I'm willing to put up with some of the bland, junior varsity Jerusalem Bible renderings in the '86 NAB rather than praying with the NABRE. Yes, I know its silly.
But c'mon everybody! Let's get us a unified lectionary/bible/liturgy of the hours.
If this doesn't happen when they release the new bible in 10 years, my 40something year old self will spit in the dirt and mutter, "this is why we can't have nice things."
Until then?
I'll be rocking my '86 NAB until the binding explodes.
Check it out--its better than you think it is.
The NAB/NABRE from '86 to present still has the best translation there is for John's gospel (in my opinion).
Those of you who do the Liturgy of the Hours know how good some of those Old Testament canticles are in the ole 1970 NAB
The NABRE rules, even if I don't use it as my praying bible. It's everything I like about the NRSV, most of the things that I like about the RSV2CE, plus it has a passing familiarity with the English language.
Christ be with you all--happy bible reading!
"But c'mon everybody! Let's get us a unified lectionary/bible/liturgy of the hours."
Strictly speaking, this is impossible. Canon law requires that certain changes be made to the Biblical text before it is entered into the lectionary.
For example, there are long passages in the gospels, especially in Matthew, where Jesus is speaking a long speech, and Matthew goes several chapters without ever directly mentioning the name of Jesus. If you are reading the gospel by itself, in context, there's no confusion who the speaker is, but when reading out loud in the liturgy, out of context, it would not be at all clear who was speaking. So, a little explanatory note is added to the lectionary 'and then Jesus said....' or something of the sort. Likewise, there are passages in the gospels where it says simply 'and then Jesus said....' read out of context, it is not clear who Jesus is speaking to, so in the lectionary, this is changed to 'and then Jesus said to Nicodemus...' or whoever was being addressed in that passage.
Similar small changes are made in the epistles and in the Old Testament. When read in the liturgy, every reading from Paul's epistles begins 'brothers and sisters....' but these words are not in the epistle itself because obviously, Paul was not going to address his audience as 'brothers and sisters' 75 times within a single epistle.
It is my understanding that similar changes are made in the Liturgy of the Hours.
So it impossible for the readings to all be exactly the same in the Bible, the lectionary and the liturgy of the hours because thousands of small changes have to be made to the text of the Bible to make them comprehensible when being read out of context.
I purchased a used version of the NRSR, in the form of the Oxford Annotated Bible. I hope to read the Old Testament in detail, since that is the part of the Bible that I am almost completely unfamiliar with.
As a deacon my daily reading plan is pretty much set by the lectionary and its particular translation of the Scriptures. I always refer to one or two other translations, chief of which is the NLT (still DYING to get my hands on the New Catholic edition). I use it in the the Life Application Study Bible edition as an aid for preparing homilies as I find the notes very good and helpful. HOWEVER one has to have a good handle on Catholic theology for some of these notes and adapt them. I also use the "Opening the Scriptures" series of Gospel commentaries from OSV as well as those of the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture from Baker.
I've created two reading plans that I will be using this year.
The first plan reads through the entire Catholic canon of the Bible; I will be using a Cambridge Reference NRSV with Apocrypha for this throughout the year. The plan has the following features:
- Each day, 2-4 chapters from the OT, 1 psalm, and 2-4 chapters from the NT
- No reading scheduled for Sundays, no reading scheduled on Christmas day
- OT is read thru once during the year, psalms twice (no psalm scheduled last 12 days of the year), and NT three times.
- On the two days when Psalm 118 (119), it is the only text read (nothing else from OT or NT)
- Psalms in the plan are listed by the numbering system that acknowledges difference in numbering, for example the previously mentioned Psalm 118 (119), for those who want to use a Catholic Bible that does not number Psalms like Protestant Bibles.
- This plan is set up in a public Google Calendar that anyone can subscribe to within their own Google Calendar, or use this URL as the subscription URL to use in Calendar apps that can handle ICAL subscriptions (MS Outlook and Apple Calendar (both OS X and iOS) are known to work).
- Subscription URL is http://tinyurl.com/2017BibleReadingPlan
I also want to read thru the 5-volume edition of Bibliotheca this year. The entire set can be read in 365 days at just 8 pages per day, but I am already finding the layout has been leading me to read much much more than that in a single sitting each day. I created another public Google Calendar specifically for Bibliotheca because it would have to be based on page number rather than chapters. This way, I can see each day how far I should be so that I can finish in a year.
- If anyone cares to use it, the subscription URL for that is http://tinyurl.com/Bibliotheca5
- Because I made this plan for several friends who also want to read thru their copies in 2017, there's a Facebook group to help share info about the plan and allow people to have any discussions about it that they want. That groups is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReadingBibliotheca/
When I am not reading the Catholic NRSV or Bibliotheca with Apocrypha this year, I will be using the NIV because that is what my current church uses. They don't follow any lectionary at all (non-denom), so it's just to follow along.
Continuing daily Office of Readings using the expanded two-year cycle of readings for a deeper dive into the Scriptural texts.
Using the NABRE (Catholic Study Bible 3rd Edition), where we're working through Colossians this week.
Biblical Catholic--yes, yes, of course the incipits and the extra bretherens and what not wouldn't make any sense in the biblical text.
My main thing is: If there is a change to the NAB text important enough to be made for public proclamation in the liturgy, there are many of us who would like to read it in the greater context of the particular book of the bible.
They could call it a liturgical bible or something. There are a glut of student bibles on the market. I think there is definitely an appetite for this kind of thing. I think Cardinal Weurl said something about it a couple years ago: an intention for a bible that could be used for liturgy and home. Something Mary Sperry later said seemed to contradict the Cardinal's hope, but I think that the Cardinal, though out of touch in the day to day, could very well get his way in the end. If he lives long enough, of course.
Happy New Year!
First of all, I will need prayers that I can get through reading the Bible every day in the first place. =D
For my daily [holistic] Bible reading at home, I will be spending 2017 with my notes-filled ST PAULS Philippines NRSV-CE, supplemented by my NABRE.
For lectio divina, if I do get to do it often, I will use my Catholic Gift Bible NRSV-CE.
For on-the-go reading or reference, or when out of town, my trusty NRSV with Apocrypha Go-Anywhere Thinline Compact is always in my bag.
I came across this reading plan for both 2015 and 2016; since I wasn't able to stick to it, I'll do so this year: http://catholicbibleinayear.org/daily-scripture-reading-schedule/
I've been wavering on which translation to read through next. The study edition of the Jerusalem Bible is what I grabbed last night, so that's what I'm going with. There isn't really a reading plan, other than to try to do it each day. It might take more than a year, especially with all the introductions and footnotes. I've only read bits of it here and there, so I'm looking forward to this.
Ed-
I highly recommend using the two-year cycle of readings for the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours.
http://www.catholicbiblesblog.com/2015/09/guest-post-resource-for-praying-sacred.html
Currently working through Colossians.
-Chris
Chris,
Thanks for the recommendation, but I'll probably stick with my lack of a plan. It works better for me this way. Your comment does make me want to pray the Hours more though!
I keep going back and forth between the NABRE and JB translations. The JB is nice, but it's HUGE! Not an easy book to grab and read in my favorite chair. It's definitely more of a reference than a daily go-to Bible. The Oxford Large Print NABRE is just too nice not to be used. Maybe it's time to narrow down the collection to the NABRE.
Yeah the Oxford Catholic Study Bible is my go-to Bible until they finally finish the next NAB New Testament revisions.
I'm planning on reading my Douay Rheims Confraternity New Testament along with my NRSV Go-Anywhere Compact Thinline Bible. I love the Reading plan that's built into my New Testament - thanks to this blog who helped me to decide on buying it in the 1st place!
I am going to the ICSB and the NABRE.
My bible reading plan, which was to read the Old Testament from the beginning, has been altered by my other reading. I've been reading 19th century novels, and there are loads of quotes and references to the Bible, mostly the Old Testament. So, it will not be a completely organized approach but a random romp based on what my current book is quoting. I am reading 'Jane Eyre' and there are loads of quotes. As I assume many people know Charlotte Bronte was a daughter of a clergyman. Quite a change from someone like Charles Dickens who rarely quotes scripture at all. Or Melville who sometimes presents an altered version.
I am reading "It is Paul Who Writes" by Ronald Cox (and Ronald Knox). Fr Cox uses Knox translation to go through all of St Paul's letters in the New Testament, puts them in (most probable) order as they were written, and pairs the letters with explanation, references, and information about how Paul's instructions fit into the pan-Mediterranean culture of the day. The book is a treasure trove of contextual information and parallels with the Gospel, and the translation of Pauline epistles by Msgr Knox is unmatched literary masterpiece.
My plan is simple. The daily Mass readings. Nothing too ambitious. To help me stick to it I revamped my blog and began writing daily reflections to go with them. That's helped me to stay focused on reading and praying over them.
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