Living the Word: Catholic Women's Bible - with promotional discount

"Women's Bible" usually makes me roll my eyes — they're not my cup of tea. I've never been very "girlie" and my experience with the "women's" label has resulted in a lot of emotional, sentimental interpretations accompanied by a lot of pictures of flowers. That's not how I roll.

However, this women's Bible is something special. It is solid and realistically written — not sappy — and just looking at the samples gave me a few moments of stopping to think about different perspectives than I usually come across for scripture. The few contributors' names I recognizes are really good Biblical scholars — as well as being women.

It was too expensive for them to send the entire book but I asked for the Book of Genesis as a pdf so I could properly look at the extras. I liked what I saw. There is an emphasis on lectio divina (divine reading) throughout.  Readers are given several ways to begin prayerful scripture reading. There are a few essays explaining how to do it as well as several well interesting reading plans and a scriptural rosary guideline. Also, each essay has an interesting point or question for meditation. For example, the essay on Sarah in Genesis turns a major plot point of her laughing at God into a question for the reader: "When was the last time God made you laugh?" (Answer — all the time.) It's a great way to start that  conversation with God.

A variety of essays both focus on women of the Bible in prayer and their lives while other series cover topics like the sacraments, Catholic practices and life with God. Most of these  feature ideas for further reading, both inside and outside the Bible. The scripture itself doesn't have many notes, except for cross-referencing with the Catechism and occasional points of clarification about context to make the text more understandable. Each biblical book has a specially written, theologically sound introduction.

I especially liked the fact that there are women highlighted who I've never seen anyone focus on. For example Lot's wife is examined as an example of spiritual sloth and then contrasted with Martha and Jesus' parable of the talents. Potiphar's wife, who tries to seduce Joseph when he's a slave in Egypt, leads to a discussion of  virtues and vices. Then her story is contrasted with Susanna from the Book of Daniel. These are discussions that are pertinent to our times and also lead the reader to think more deeply about scripture as a whole. All of it opens the door to conversation with God.

This Bible is practically perfect although I do wish they'd have included brief bios of the quoted saints in the back. Also the script used for quotes is very pretty but also occasionally extremely hard to read. These are very minor points but perhaps a second edition will pick up these elements.

The art throughout is nice, the colors are pleasing, the paper is not wafer-thin as in some Bibles, and the format leaves generous margins for note taking. There are flowers but I liked the art so ... it worked for me.

You may recall that I said at the beginning of this review that I roll my eyes at "Women's Bibles." Not this time. 

Reader, I bought one.

Go forth and do likewise.

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LIVINGWORD23: $59.95 + Free shipping on the women's Bible. Exp. 2.28.23.

The New Jerusalem Bible: Saints Devotional Edition edited by Bert Ghezzi

Featuring two hundred readings selected by Bert Ghezzi, this special edition of The New Jerusalem Bible will enhance readers’ understanding and appreciation of both the biblical texts and the lives of the saints. For example, the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden is followed by an excerpt from the writings of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, which brings new meaning to an already familiar tale. Interspersed throughout the text is a twenty-part lesson on studying, praying, and living the Scriptures, which contains longer selections from the saints’ writings addressing these specific issues. The Bible also includes a list of themes for easy reference, as well as a calendar of saints and a list of patron saints.

 Since I recently praised Bert Ghezzi's Voices of the Saints book, I'll add this for anyone interested in the saints. 200 excerpts from 90 different saints' writings and teachings are appropriately distributed through the Bible, 100 for the Old Testament and 100 for the New. There are also 20 excerpts where saints speak about scripture itself.

This is inspirational way to read scripture, especially since editor Bert Ghezzi features many saints who I wasn't familiar with. When I was familiar with a saint, such as Augustine, the excerpt frequently is one I've never seen before.  Ghezzi was digging deep to be sure he had writing that adds real depth and insights that we might not otherwise get. The thoughtful reader will find much for meditation here.

I'd also not come across the New Jerusalem Bible translation before which I am enjoying.

When the Bible was chanted by the heralds of God

Who thinks, as he thumbs the closely printed pages, of the time when these words and sentences were not fixed in cold print but chanted or intoned to audiences by the voices of the heralds of God? ...

To understand properly how the bible arose, we must forget the habits we have acquired as modern men and members of a paper civilization. Reading and writing have become such automatic operations that it is difficult for us to realize that some societies have been able to manage almost entirely without them. Our memory has become bloodless and barren, and our faculties of improvisation have more to do with mere words and rhetoric than with poetry and prophecy. In ancient Israel, right up to the time of Christ, it was very different. The ability to speak with fluency, art, and a gift for aphorism was the mark of those who today would be "writers." The trained memory was a superb tool. "A good disciple," said the Jewish scribes, "is like a well-made cistern; he does not let a single drop of his master's teaching escape."

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

Digging into the roots of our faith

I just figured out that I'm partway into a pilgrimage in seeing just how far back the roots of our faith reach into Jewish tradition, history, and overall context. (Hint: it goes all the way back to the beginning and all the way to the top).

Its so exciting! And you know what that means. I've got to share the good stuff with you.

As we know I've lately been digging into the Psalms (and beginning tomorrow, some of canticles too!) with the help of the Church Fathers and other commentaries. 

That and the strong recommendation from The Burrowshire Podcast led me to dabbling in the Liturgy of the Hours which, in turn, led me to Saint John Paul II's and Pope Benedict's excellent homilies on the psalms and canticles. 

Topping off my deep immersion in Jewish and Old Testament context was Rabbi Sacks' essays Genesis: The Book of Beginnings. I'm now about halfway through his essays on Exodus which are similarly eye opening in connecting Catholicism to Jewish context.

Suffice it to say, I recently realized that God had positioned me for a deep, deep dive into connecting the Old Testament with Jesus. It is so fascinating to see how far back (like all the way to the beginning) that Jesus' priesthood stretches, how much deeper the liturgical readings are linked than the obvious connections we can see, and to feel it all come together.

Recently it all came together in a perfect storm of resources from author John Bergsma.

First, my daughter Rose alerted me to a Pints with Aquinas podcast episode where John Bergsma talks about the Biblical basis for the priesthood of Jesus. This had some stunning connections which make so much sense once someone has pointed them out. Bergsma recently wrote Jesus and the Old Testament Roots of the Priesthood which went straight onto my wish list after seeing the sample and hearing that podcast episode.

I am not surprised at considering that Bergsma's collaboration with Brant Pitre (another excellent author who shows "Jewish roots" connections) on A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament is a simply wonderful scholarly overview of contemporary understanding of the language, literature, history, and culture of the ancient Hebrews. This was a big investment for me but well worth the money. I love it.

But Bergsma's been busier than I realized. Looking around on Amazon for the priesthood book I also came across two other treasures.

I approached the first discovery warily. I've got devotionals the follow the daily and Sunday Mass readings. This would have to offer something different and I felt as if most devotionals tended to fall into the same few general categories. 

However, The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year B delighted me by focusing on the readings from a deep connection to scripture that wasn't held down to the excerpts that the liturgy uses. Bergsma's background as a Biblical scholar comes to the fore in identifying unifying motifs and intriguing connections that you don't see a lot of the time. I splurged on it as my book to buy this month and it is truly wonderful for anyone who loves Bible study and the Sunday Mass liturgy.

Bergsma's connection with the Ave Catholic Notetaking Bible is simply in writing the introduction (as far as I can tell). But I'm grateful to have this Bible called to my attention. Rose got her own copy so I've been able to see it up close and it is on my wish list now.

Here's why.

I've used the same Catholic study Bible (1980) since I converted. It's got the accumulated notes of 20 years from Bible studies, commentaries, and anywhere else that I found something I was afraid I'd forget. I like having all these notes in one place, but I hate having nowhere to write. And as you can see, some of these pages are full!

The pictures and reviews of that notetaking Bible make me itch to begin transcribing everything into a place with enough room.

What else exactly did God want?

Faithfulness, obedience; but what else exactly did God want? Slowly, gropingly as it were, Abraham's descendants sought the answer, through episodes rich in symbols. Isaac's marriage signified that the clan of Terah was to remain pure and not mix its blood with any other; Jacob, "wrestling with an angel" for a whole night by the River Jabbok, was obliged to come to grips with his human condition and choose between the flesh and the spirit, personal interest and his vocation.

Soon the whole people was confronted by this problem. In Egypt, where famine led them and Joseph settled them, Abraham's descendants perhaps thought that, surrounded by idols with animals' faces, they would easily be able to preserve their faith. The answer they received was persecution, suffering, and anguish. Obeying God is not easy. But the seal put on His people by the Lord genuinely protected it.

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

Abraham and the ineffable call

The revelation began formally on the day when a nomadic Semite in the neighborhood of Ur of the Chaldees heard an ineffable call and obeyed the supernatural command. What call? The call of the one God, the true God, of God. He whom the human spirit discovers, but can know only darkly, selected Abraham, son of Terah, as the messenger of his Word and ordered him to break with the errors and abominations of polytheism. We are confronted here with an essentially mystical and inexplicable fact, as mysterious in its essence and as tangible in its results as the mission of Joan of Arc, perhaps for France. How, why, in a world soaked in idolatry, did a small Bedouin clan, led by its chief, opt for the truth? The answer is obviously to be found in the will of God, already at work.

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

The most exhilarating aspect of the Bible

Very often the Bible compares God to a potter modeling human clay: "As clay in the hand of the potter," says Jeremiah, "so are men in the hand of God." Scripture is thus the story of this progressive refinement, of this patient work by the Creator on His creature to bring him to greater perfection. And just as a potter does not transform the lump of clay that he is modeling into a vase with skillful curves instantaneously, so God reveals Himself at work throughout the Bible and seems to enjoy displaying His alterations, His momentary defeats, His regrets, and His fresh starts.

This is perhaps the most exhilarating aspect of the Bible; it gives a constant sense of progress. "The historian receives an extraordinary impression from the Bible," writes Fr. de Lubac. "The contrast between the humbleness of Israel's beginnings and the power of the — explosives would be a better term — it bears within itself; the concrete and at first somewhat veiled form taken by its highest beliefs; then the majestic progress, the confident if mysterious march toward something vast and unforeseeable; nowhere else do we find anything even remotely resembling all this."

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

The Hebrew People and God's Special Protection

As human author of the Bible, the Hebrew people asserts that it is in receipt of spiritual assistance, inspiration; as an actor in biblical events, it declares that it enjoys God's special protection, the Covenant. To what extent does a historical view of the facts corroborate these two assertions?

From the purely literary point of view, there is a problem that is insoluble if we rule out divine intervention: how was this people without arts, philosophy, and any particular natural endowments able to produce this incomparable masterpiece, while people infinitely more advanced intellectually have left books full of gross moral and religious errors?

Fom the strictly historical point of view, how was this tiny people — in the time of Solomon's splendor, it never exceeded a million souls — able to exert such widespread influence? Persecuted, tortured, reduced in the dark days of the captivity "by the waters of Babylon" to fewer than a hundred thousand exiles, how was it able to survive right up to the present day, while mighty empires all around it have left us only ruins, inscriptions, and mummies? And why did the long trial that was its destiny lead it step by step, from suffering to suffering, ever upward toward revelation?

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

The action of God in history and time

The lesson repeated over and over again in the books of the Bible — unlike the one suggested by Greco-Roman paganism — is that man, in the events of history, is not the plaything of a blind fate but in the hands of a Power, a Principle, a personal God on whom all depends and who wishes to lead him to his true goal.

This is what gives the Bible its very special meaning and what was already known by its inspired authors, who, in all they wrote, had but one purpose: to bring home to men the action of God in the world and in the dimension of time. To reproach them with lack of the famous modern "objectivity" is pointless. For them, history is written at God's dictation as part of His designs: the moral writings seek to elevate man to the likeness of God; poetry in its various forms exalts the glory of the Most High and furnishes believers iwth the means of associating themselves with His work through prayer; and the midrashim bring home the infallibility of His actions.

What give the historical study of the Bible its whole import and puts the Bible as a history book in a class by itself is that this slice of events cut out of time and space reveals the divine action; in fact, it is the divine action, directed toward revelation. An indissoluble union of human realities — some of them a painful, even a lamentable sight — and transcendent and divine realities; that is the very substance of the Bible; that is what constitutes its greatness, but also its difficulty.

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

The most remarkable record a people ever left

So the Bible is in the first place a history. It is the record of a people, in fact the most remarkable record a people has ever left, for future generations, of all it did, suffered, believed, thought, and hoped. It is the record of a family, Abraham's, kept for about two thousand years, the record of a family that from the Patriarch to Jesus can be followed in its human destiny as well as in its providential mission. That is what gives unity to the Bible and all its heterogeneous parts.

Henri Daniel-Rops, What is the Bible?

Well, Well, We've Got Two Extra Chapters of Daniel in the Bible

Peter Paul Rubens. Daniel in the Lions' Den.

"We" meaning Catholics. I knew there were books the Protestants didn't include such as Tobit (and what a shame that is ... it is fantastic and a favorite of mine). However, this morning, having forgotten to pick up my Magnificat for the daily Mass readings and having already set my timer (to be sure I put in some quantity as well as quality time with God) ... I just did a Bible flip and wound up at chapter 14 of Daniel. Really great and I found it quite absorbing. Specifically I was at verse 13 and I will paraphrase the story (read it here). The king shows Daniel a living dragon, says it is a god and tells him to worship it. Daniel disposes of the dragon quite elegantly, the mob protests his getting rid of a god (as well as another one from earlier in the chapter) and the king responds by tossing Daniel in a den of hungry lions. They leave him in there for 7 days and I was most impressed by the level of detail. For instance, God sends an angel to the prophet Habukkuk to bring Daniel something to eat. When Habukkuk tells the angel that he doesn't have any idea where either Babylon or the den are, the angel seizes him by the crown of his head and whisks him by his hair off to feed Daniel. I just loved that. Picking up my brand new Archaeological Study Bible (which has an adamant "yay Protestant Biblical books choice!" cheering section of the introduction) I was curious to see what they might have for entries on those pages. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The Book of Daniel didn't end at all as I expected with the story of Susannah in chapter 13 and Daniel exposing various false gods in chapter 14. The Protestant Bible only goes to chapter 12. And here is why.

The Hebrew and Aramaic sections of the Book of Daniel thus far dealt with, are the only ones found in the Hebrew Bible and recognized by Protestants as sacred and canonical. But besides those sections, the Vulgate, the Greek translations of Daniel (Septuagint and Theodotion) together with other ancient and modern versions, contain three important portions, which are deuterocanonical. These are:

• the Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Children, usual}y inserted in the third chapter between the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth verses;
• the history of Susanna, found as ch. xiii, at the end of the book;
• the history of the destruction of Bel and the dragon, terminating the book as ch. xiv.

The first of these fragments (Dan., iii, 24-90) consists of a prayer in which Azarias, standing in the midst of the furnace, asks that God may deliver him and his companions, Ananias and Misael, and put their enemies to shame (verses 24-45); a brief notice of the fact that the Angel of the Lord saved the Three Children from all harm, whereas the flame consumed the Chaldeans above the furnace (46-50); and a doxology (52-56) leading on to the hymn familiarly known as the "Benedicite" (57-90). The second fragment (ch. xiii) tells the history of Susanna. ... The last deuterocanonical part of Daniel (ch. xiv) contains the narrative of the destruction of Bel and the dragon. ... The Greek is, indeed the oldest form under which these deutero-canonical parts of the Book of Daniel have come down to us; but this is no decisive proof that they were composed in that language. In fact, the greater probability is in favour of a Hebrew original no longer extant. It is plain that the view which regards these three fragments as not originally written in Greek makes it easier to suppose that they were from the beginning integrant parts of the book. Yet, it does not settle the question of their date and authorship. It is readily granted by conservative scholars (Vigouroux, Gilly, etc.) that the last two are probably from a different and later author than the rest of the book. On the other hand, it is maintained by nearly all Catholic writers, that the Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Children cannot be dissociated from the preceding and the following context in Dan., iii, and that therefore they should be referred to the time of Daniel, if not to that Prophet himself. In reality, there are well nigh insuperable difficulties to such an early date for Dan., iii, 24-90, so that this fragment also, like the other two, should most likely be ascribed to some unknown Jewish author who lived long after the Exile. Lastly, although the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel seem to contain anachronisms, they should not be treated -- as was done by St Jerome -- as mere fables. More sober scholarship will readily admit that they embody oral or written traditions not altogether devoid of historical value. But, whatever may be thought concerning these literary or historical questions, there cannot be the least doubt that in decreeing the sacred and canonical character of these fragments the Council of Trent proclaimed the ancient and morally unanimous belief of the Church of God.

No matter which Bible you use, do go read chapters 13 and 14 of Daniel. I found them both to be ripping stories and (most important of all) to have some good food for thought. As a side note, I checked the Archaeological Study Bible out of the library for several weeks before adding it to my Christmas wish list. All the notes, articles, and commentary are about such things as historical/cultural notes, archaeological discoveries, artifacts, and more. If you go to their site they have sample pdfs to examine. I use it in conjunction with my The Catholic Study Bible or, in the case of my current reading of Romans, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible.

The Embarrassing Problem About Proverbs

I never thought of Proverbs as challenging our concepts of what it means to be "advanced," especially in our society. However, it makes sense. Those who are most bored by "truisms" are those who often are trying to cut corners somehow. Of course, I might be a bit biased on this subject because I absolutely love old sayings and Proverbs is chock full of them.

Let us begin with the embarrassing problem about this book (Proverbs). Almost always, the more intelligent, clever, and original you are, the more bored you are by Proverbs. It tells you nothing you didn't know before. It is a book of platitudes, of old, well-worn truisms. It is, simply, dull.

Yes, that is how the most "advanced" minds see Proverbs. And our nation, our civilization, and our world are today threatened with destruction precisely because of the ideas of those "advanced" minds, because we have departed from the old platitudes. If there is anything out civilization needs in order to survive the threat of moral and spiritual and perhaps physical destruction, it is to return to these "safe," "dull" platitudes. For they are true. They are a road map to life, and we are lost in the woods. ...

Like the Psalms, Proverbs is not meant to be read straight through as if it were a narrative. The book is a toolbench, a library: it is meant to be sampled, browsed through, picked at. It is a collection, assembled bit by bit and meant to be disassembled and used bit by bit. In our age of short attention spans, impatience, and only tiny slices of leisure time, it is an ideal book to dip into for a minute over your morning cup of coffee -- much more useful than the morning paper. As Henry David Thoreau, who despised newspapers, used to say, "Read not the Times; read the eternities." These are the eternities.

You Can Understand the Bible
A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible
by Peter Kreeft

The Bible and "Sacred History"

Kreeft here makes an important distinction that often is overlooked in these very concrete days in which we live.

The Bible is "sacred history." That does not mean anything less realistic than secular history, as some modern theologians imply--as if "Bible stories" belonged to the category of myths or fairy tales. Rather, "sacred history" means history from a double point of view, the divine as well as the human. It has two natures. Like Jesus, the Bible is the Word of God in the words of man. Its human nature is not suppressed but fulfilled by its divine nature.

The history of God's chosen nation is full of divinely revealed secrets about national life and death, about the secret of survival and salvation socially as well as individually. No book of social, political, or historical science has ever shown more clearly how nations rise and fall, succeed and fail, by using or refusing their lifeline to God, the source of all life, this-worldly as well as other-worldly and social as well as individual. For Israel's history is the key to the world's. Israel is not God's exception but God's rule, God's paradigm case.

You Can Understand the Bible
A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible
by Peter Kreeft

Three Basic Explanations for Evil

This is all fascinating but especially the definition of "knowledge" at the end. Don't miss that even if you don't usually read excerpts. It puts a whole new spin on original sin.

There are only three basic explanations for evil. It is to be blamed either on God above us, nature below us, or us. Genesis 3 rejects the two convenient excuses that either God or evolution made us this way. The message of Genesis 3 is that the buck stops here. The finger that points blame is curved one hundred and eighty degrees.

Jews, who have and believe this Scripture just as Christians do, say they do not believe in "original sin" because they think of that doctrine as Calvinism, as a denial of the goodness of God's creation even when defaced by sin. But Genesis 3 does not teach Calvinistic "total depravity" (except in the sense that we are totally unable to save ourselves without divine grace, which is also taught in Orthodox Judaism). Rather, the forbidden fruit was "the knowledge of good and evil," not pure evil. There's still a little good in the worst of us, but also a little bad in the best of us.

By the way, the word knowledge here means "experience." God wanted to keep us from the knowledge of good-and-evil that comes from experiencing and tasting it (thus the image of eating fruit), not from the knowledge that understands it. The same word is used in Genesis 4 for sexual intercourse: Adam "knew" Eve, and the result was not a book but a baby.

You Can Understand the Bible
A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible
by Peter Kreeft

The God Who Creates Out of Nothing

Genesis begins not just with the beginning of something, but with the beginning of everything. Its first verse uses a word for which there is no equivalent in any other ancient language. The word is bara'. It means not just to make but to create, not just to re-form something new out of something old, but to create something wholly new that was simply not there before. Only God can create, for creation in the literal sense (out of nothing) requires infinite power, since there is an infinite gap between nothing and something. Startling as it may seem, no other people every had creation stories in the true sense of the word, only formation stories. The Jewish notion of creation is a radically distinctive notion in the history of human thought. When Jewish theologians like Philo and later Christian theologians (who learned it from the Jews) told the Greeks about it, they were often ridiculed.

Yet the consequences of this notion of creation are incomparable. They include radically new notions (1) of God, (2) of nature, and (3) of human beings and human life.

You Can Understand the Bible
A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible
by Peter Kreeft

This is right in line with what our priest spoke about in his Easter homily. He pointed out that the very fact that makes the resurrection so true is that the gospels repeatedly report that the apostles themselves didn't believe in it until Jesus showed up in person. Like any sensible person, they knew that in and of itself coming back from the dead is an unbelievable fact. The only thing that would make anyone go around proclaiming something so obviously ludicrous is if it is real.

So God has been doing the inexplicable since the very beginning. As always, Jesus showed us God up close and personal ... by doing the inexplicable in his resurrection.

The God of the Old Testament

The Old Testament story distinguishes Judaism (and Christianity) from all other religions of the world in two main ways. First, we find here a religion based on historical facts, not just abstract ideas and ideals or mystical experiences. Second, the God of the Old Testament differs from the gods of other religions in at least four important ways:

1. Only a few individuals in the ancient world, like Socrates in Greece and Ahkenaton in Egypt, rose above their society's polytheism (belief in many gods) to monotheism (belief in one God) like the Jews.
   


2. Only the Jews had the knowledge of a God who created the entire universe out of nothing.
   


3. Other peoples separated religion and morality. Only the God of the Bible was perfectly good, righteous, and holy as well as the Giver of the moral law, demanding moral goodness in all men.


4. These differences are accounted for by a fourth one: although other peoples sometimes arrived at profound truths about God by their imagination (myth), their reason (philosophy), and their experience (mysticism), they mixed these truths with falsehoods because they did not have a word from God Himself. Other religions tell of man's search for God; the Bible tells of God's search for man. Other religions tell timeless truths about God; the Bible tells of God's deeds in time, in history.
   

You Can Understand the Bible
A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible
by Peter Kreeft

Ten Tips for Reading the Bible Profitably

1. At first, forget commentaries and books that try to tell you what the Bible means. Read the Bible itself. Get it "straight from the horse's mouth." Data first. The Bible is the most interesting book ever written, but some of the books about it are among the dullest.


2. Read repeatedly. You can never exhaust the riches in this deep mine. The greatest saints, sages, theologians, and philosophers have not exhausted its gold; you won't either.


3. First read through a book quickly, to get an overall idea; then go back and reread more slowly and carefully. Don't rush. Forget time. Relish. Ponder. Meditate. Think. Question. Sink slowly into the spiritual sea and swim in it. Soul-surf its waves.
   


4. Try to read without prejudice. Let the author speak to you. Don't impose your ideas on the book. Listen first before you talk back.


5. Once you have listened, do talk back. Dialogue with the Author as if He were standing right in front of you -- because He is. Ask Him questions and go to His Book to see how He answers. God is a good teacher, and a good teacher wants his students to ask questions.


6. Don't confuse understanding with evaluating. That is, don't confuse interpretation with critique. First understand, then evaluate. This sounds simple, but it is harder to do than you probably think. For instance, many readers interpret the Bible's miracle stories as myths because they don't believe in miracles. But that is simply bad interpretation. Whether or not miracles really happened, the first question is what was the author trying to say. Was he telling a parable, fable or myth? Or was he telling a story that he claimed really happened? Whether you agree with him or not is the second question, not the first. Keep first things first. Don't say "I don't believe Jesus literally rose from the dead, therefore I interpret the Resurrection as a myth." The Gospel writers did not mean to write myth but fact. If the Resurrection didn't happen, it is not a myth. It is a lie. And if it did happen, it is not a myth. It is a fact.


7. Keep in mind these four questions, then, and ask them in this order: First, what does the passage say? That is the data. Second, what does it mean? What did the author mean? That is the interpretation. Third, is it true? That is the question of belief. Fourth, so what? What difference does it make to me, to my life now? That is the question of application.


8. Look for "the big picture," the main point. Don't lose the forest for the trees. Don't get hung up on a few specific points or passages. Interpret each passage in its context, including the context of the whole Bible.


9. After you have read a passage, go back and analyze it. Outline it. Define it. Get it clear. Don't be satisfied with a nice, vague feeling. Find the thought, and the structures of the thought.


10. Be honest -- in reading any book, but especially this one, because of its total claims on you. There is only one honest reason for believing the Bible: because it is true, not because it is helpful, or beautiful, or comforting, or challenging, or useful, or even good. It it's not true, no honest person should believe it, even if it were all those other things. And if it is, every honest person should, even if it weren't [all those other things]. Seek the truth and you will find it. That's a promise (see Mt. 7:7).
    

You Can Understand the Bible
A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible
by Peter Kreeft

This is good for me to consider especially since I have a tendency to read the commentaries over reading the actual Bible itself. *for shame!*