Bible....have you read it?

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To be fair, there are some parts of the Old Testament that would make really terrible reading at Mass. Like the first 4 chapters of Numbers.
 
They leave out important parts, too. They have to or it would make mass incredibly long. The only way to get all the bible is to read it all yourself.
 
True. I just remember sitting through a few readings of some of those passages as a protestant. It was not particularly useful.
 
I’ve read the whole Bible, I think, a couple of times. I’ve read just the New Testament several times. A few books I frequently read, such as the Gospel Of Matthew. And I like to read Peter’s letters quite often because since he was so close to our Lord, I think his letters might be the things he thought were the most important and that he would have learned from Jesus himself.
 
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I agree. There are books of the OT that are incredibly boring geneaologies, lists of rules that in today’s society make no sense (the one about not wearing clothes of linen and wool combined), and a huge amount of repetition. The part in Exodus where God tells Moses exactly how to construct a tent for the Ark and altars for sacrifice and how to make the clothes for the priests, and then the entire huge long description is repeated again when the stuff is actually made. I’m sure there is some cultural reason why the author went through this massive description 2 or 3 times but once would have been enough for me.

Also there are parts of the OT dealing with rape, incest, prostitution, murder etc. that are gross by today’s standards and no one would want to hear them read at Mass. I can’t even imagine reading that to kids or making kids read that. I read this stuff for the first time at about age 13 or 14 and was pretty grossed out and horrified by it being in the Bible.
 
I decided to read it cover to cover once… I have about 100 pages to go…so almost.
 
I’ve been told it makes a lot more sense when you presume these accounts were meant to be recited, and then written down later.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
There are books of the OT that are incredibly boring geneaologies, lists of rules that in today’s society make no sense (the one about not wearing clothes of linen and wool combined), and a huge amount of repetition. The part in Exodus where God tells Moses exactly how to construct a tent for the Ark and altars for sacrifice and how to make the clothes for the priests, and then the entire huge long description is repeated again when the stuff is actually made.
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I find those things to be so exciting the more I ponder them. Right now I’m thinking of the priest’s garments and how they were made with a bell and a pomegranate hanging from the bottom of the garment. As I ponder the pomegranate’s insides–a thick sticky red fruit with tons of seeds clinging to it…more seeds than fruit, really…it reminds me of the blood of Christ and all the ‘seeds’ that would come from that–basically all of God’s children. And then the bells—ringing out the news of the gospel… I think God planned all of this rich symbolism for us to discover, and discovering these things can bring such joy. That’s how it is for me, anyhow. 🙂
 
I can see going through the description once and thinking (or at least some people thinking) about the symbolism. It’s mostly the repeating of it several times that gets incredibly dull. I agree with the comment above that if these descriptions were being verbally recited, probably in a storytelling manner, they would have been pretty powerful. Verbal storytelling can make good use of repetition. When you are reading it off a page, it comes off more like “oh not this all over again”. At least for me it does.
 
Yeah, I was thinking of the ones that names the leaders of each clan, and then repeats what gift they gave (it’s the same for each one). Or discusses which of the kids of the levites was responsible for which part of the temple.
 
And obviously if you were a member of one of those clans, or a descendant of those Levites, you would be wanting to hear your ancestor’s name called off in the list. It might even give you a thrill to think you are descended from that person.
 
The schedule isn’t mine. It is How to Read the Bible Every Day: A Guide for Catholics, compiled by a certain Carmen Rojas and published by Servant Books. Given that I have been using it for almost 2 dozen years, it is safe to say that I recommend it. It contains a 1-year, a 2-year and a 3-year schedule. it also has a supplementary schedule for Lent, Easter and Advent
 
DebCWil said:
I don’t quote chapter and verse when it comes to Scripture.
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Good, neither did the Apostles or Fathers.

The customary Catholic practice is to say “Moses wrote” when quoting the Pentateuch, “the Prophet says” when quoting the OT, “the Psalmist/David says” when quoting Psalms, “Our Lord says” when quoting Jesus’ Words, and “the Apostle says” when quoting the NT.

Read St. Augustine, or St. Thomas, really any great Father, Doctor, Saint or Apostle prior to the 15th century - this is how they all quote from the Scriptures. Even Scripture itself, when the Apostle quotes an OT verse, he doesn’t say “in Joel 2:2 we hear” - no, he will say “as it is written in the book of the Prophet Joel.”

Sometimes they are even more vague: John 19:37 And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.
 
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Spyridon said:
Even Scripture itself, when the Apostle quotes an OT verse, he doesn’t say “in Joel 2:2 we hear” - no, he will say “as it is written in the book of the Prophet Joel.”
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It wasn’t until the 1190s or thereabouts that the books of the Bible were divided up into chapters. That was the work of Stephen Langton, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, when he was still a theologian at the Sorbonne. And another century or two went by before the chapters were divided up into verses.
 
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Precisely, which is why in keeping with the Apostolical spirit of our most Holy Faith, there is no need to remember or quote the Scriptures by exact chapter and verse.

Such is a tradition of man, not of the Apostolic Spirit.

Not that it’s necessarily a bad or wrong tradition - just that anyone who is critical of you for being unable to quote exact chapter and verse is in fact being critical of the Apostlic custom.
 
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I have not read it in its entirety. But I’ve read the same passages over several times.
 
One man, my dad’s best friend and a well know TV evangelist, I’ve known him for half a decade. Have never seen him “stumped” once. He is elderly, sometimes it takes him a few more seconds to recover the passage, but, it is simply part of his memory.

We “modern” people do not use our memory to their full potential.

 
Spyridon said:
Such is a tradition of man, not of the Apostolic Spirit.
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In the early Church, when scrolls were rare and expensive, memorization was the way that Christians preserved and knew and shared the Gospel. Remember, they did not have Amazon to just order a case of Bibles.

Talk to Christians in Russia, where printed Bibles simply did not exist for so many decades during the Communist persecution. Those who had memorized passages of Sacred Scripture were a great gift.
 
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TheLittleLady said:
Talk to Christians in Russia, where printed Bibles simply did not exist for so many decades during the Communist persecution. Those who had memorized passages of Sacred Scripture were a great gift.
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I wasn’t speaking of memorizing Scripture in general, but rather of the Protestant tradition of memorizing and quoting Scripture by chapter and verse.

Many of the great Fathers and Doctors memorized the Bible, but when they quoted it they would say “David saith blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”, they would not say “In Psalm 1:1 it says…”

They would say “the Apostle wrote 'in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God,” they would not say “in John 1:1 we read…”

The former way is the Apostolical tradition - the latter is the manmade Protestant tradition - not that it’s wrong, but rather that the Protestants who criticize Catholics because they don’t quote the Bible by chapter and verse are in fact criticizing the Apostolical custom.

Part of the reason why they quoted like this is because they realized the Scriptures were meant to be read as a cohesive whole, not with verses cherry picked here and there to support a particular manmade doctrine. How many heresies have been born because of cherry picked verses taken out of context of the whole? Even more, the Scriptures are in fact part of Sacred Tradition - the Two are indeed One. Reading Scripture divorced from Tradition will inevitably lead to manifest error.
 
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