Catholics: When did you last read the Bible?

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Brothers & Sisters:

I’m sorry that I didn’t realize that the Poll was Multi-Choice, or I would have said:

Daily - Gone back to that habbid recently

Own personal Bible (NIV, My Daily Catholic Bible (RSV-CE), NRSV (Absolutely Wretched))

Carry Bible to Church Weekly (NIV - It’s a pocket Edition)

Own Several Kinds of Bibles - When I was growing up, my father had a library of English Translations of the Bible along with Greek New and Old Testaments. He willed them to my stepmother shortly after the time I started my “20 year Walk-about”, after some 5 years of church skipping.

I must have really disappointed him for him to respond by doing that.

As I am now “Poly-Disabled”, I have to be content with the list above and what I’m able to read on the WEB - I believe I have some 20+ versions bookmarked Including the StudyLight Geek NT/OT Hebrew OT. I thank God for those who’ve taken their time to post these versions of the Bible to the WEB.

I’m a Convert then Revert, although I tend to say that with the effort God spent on me, that I’m really a “Rescue”, Praise be to Jesus Christ!

And, I recommitted myself to personal daily Bible Reading because I really needed to read the Bible more for myself and not just when I responded to posts.

Your Brother in Christ, Michael
 
I own: RSV-CE, Jerusalem Bible, NIV Study Bible, King James

I read most from RSV-CE and the Jerusalem Bible and occasionally the NIV. The NIV has a really nice concordance in the back which I find most helpful.

I’m a convert, in the Church for a little over a year. While on the road to conversion I read the whole NT up until the Psalms in the OT. Lately I haven’t been reading as much but am trying to get back into it with more of a structured morning and evening prayer routine.

Blessings!

-Q
 
Quatsch said:
I own: RSV-CE, Jerusalem Bible, NIV Study Bible, King James

I read most from RSV-CE and the Jerusalem Bible and occasionally the NIV. The NIV has a really nice concordance in the back which I find most helpful.

I’m a convert, in the Church for a little over a year. While on the road to conversion I read the whole NT up until the Psalms in the OT. Lately I haven’t been reading as much but am trying to get back into it with more of a structured morning and evening prayer routine.

Blessings!

-Q
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Q:

Nice selection and balance, and I’ve found that it’s hard to beat the NIV for readability. One thing I don’t think a lot of the brothers here think about is that versions such as the KJV, NIV can also be useful when talking about the Catholic Faith with Protestants, esp. when you can show that the text supports the faith when they didn’t expect it to.

Have you thought about trying the Office of Readings - Available at Universalis?

universalis.com/cgi-bin/display/-600/USA/today.htm

The Universalis uses the Jerusalem Bible for the Scripture Readings so you might enjoy it. and, It’s available Online, so you can do the Office before you post on Catholic Answers.

The daily readings from the My Daily Catholic Bible (RSV-CE) take about 20-30 minutes to reas and reread. The book is structured so that one using it daily will read the entire Bible in one year.

Your Brother in Christ, Michael
 
I’m a convert and I have a New American Catholic Bible that a church gave to me during a retreat, and a KJV cause I was raised to only use that Bible:P

I’m saving up to get a Douy Rheims.

In my experiance, Catholics know much more of their bible then any Protestants do.
 
lak611 said:
My Strong’s is a huge book not an online version.
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Protestant or not, Strong’s is to my mind the single most important tool in my Scripture library. I especially like it because it IS to the KJV: a definite plus when doing apologetics with Protestants. That Hebrew/Greek number system is indispensable.
 
I own 3 NAB in various sizes. I also have a Douay-Rehims, an RSV-CE and a Catholic Living Bible (one year bible). The living bible has the deuterocanonicals abridged and placed at the end of the book! ( I was young and naive when I bought it.) The RSV-CE is the Navarre Bible and includes the New Vulgate with it. I believe the most important feature of any Bible is its commentary. The Navarre has the RSV-CE commentary with additional exegesis by the church fathers, documents of the Magisterium, writings of Saints and also of Blessed Josemaria Escriva the founder of Navarre University. You can’t go wrong with this Bible. In addition there are multiple essays interspersed thoughtout the New Testament.
I would like to own a JW bible for apologetic purposes and the various Mormon books, and the Quran for similar purposes. I also have several Bible commentaries, and the Catechism. Over the last few years I have been using an electronic Bible. I have Harmony medias Illustrated Catholic Bible. It contains the RSV and the NAB. When you do a literature search it comes up with citations in both translations. I love it. Sometimes I love typing in a search on just one word to see what comes up. I once searched for the word “womb” and was gratified to see the multiple passages that supported the pro-life position. Computerized Bibles are a must. Oh, by the way, I try to read several pages every night before I go to bed at the minimum.
Saludos, CubaLibre
 
runandsew said:
Golden Hemorrhoids 1 Samuel chapters 5 and 6

I do love the stories of the Old Testament, I can’t believe that Sampson was so gullible.
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Odd translation. I read that reference, then I cross-referenced that with my Good News Bible: Catholic Study Edition. This one says golden tumors. Does that translation make more sense?

Unfortunately, Samson might have been entirely infatuated with the Samaritan woman. In such a case, the way he behaved is no surprise. He was human, after all.
 
seremina said:
Odd translation. I read that reference, then I cross-referenced that with my Good News Bible: Catholic Study Edition. This one says golden tumors. Does that translation make more sense?

The Douay-Rheims Version calls them “emerods.” It actually does mean hemorrhoids as the primary definition, but could also mean tumors or boils.

Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Emerods \Em"erods, Emeroids \Em"eroids, n. pl. [OF.
emmeroides. See Hemorrhoids.]
Hemorrhoids; piles; tumors; boils. [R.] --Deut. xxviii. 27.
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I’m sorry to rock the boat here. I was born and raised Catholic. I consider myself a good Catholic woman. I go to church, my four children are Catholic…they even have attended Catholic school. I do own many bibles, KJV and New Catholic to name a few but honestly, I don’t usually read them. In fact, I’ve never read the entire bible–or even one entire book in the bible. Neither have my children and the Catholic schools they’ve attended never suggested they read it either. We would get New Testaments at Christmas from certain teachers as gifts, but that was it. One thing I have done is downloaded the rosary on to my ipod… 🙂 I really don’t know any other Catholic people (all of my friends are Catholic) who actually really read the bible, except my elderly father. I was amazed when I saw all of you do read the bible. I feel happy for you, bad for me, I marked that I really need to try to read the bible more…and that sure is the truth! Thank you for letting me post and join.
 
Ariburu;

Welcome!! The Bible can seem intimidating at first, until you start to find your way around it.

If you like the Rosary, you will love the Gospel of Luke. 🙂

Another good place to start is by reading the Gospel of Mark, which is the shortest of the four Gospels, and also the most “story telling” in style.

I also like flipping through the Psalms; they are very beautiful.

One time I sat down and read the entire Book of Genesis in one sitting, and I was able to make some exciting connections between the stories that I hadn’t ever made, just hearing each of them, one at a time. There are some parts of Genesis that are actually quite funny, but you don’t catch the humour of it if you’re just reading little bits of it at a time.

If you like soap operas, you’ll really enjoy the Book of Judges, which is just one emotional roller coaster after another - this one, I recommend taking a piece at a time, to start with - if you had ever thought that the characters in the Bible were like paper cut-out Saints? You will be forever enlightened after reading the Book of Judges. Some of them were complete scoundrels.

But my favourite stories are the stories about King David, in I Samuel, and the stories of Elijah and Elisha, in II Samuel.
 
Thank you for posting to me. I am gong through a lot right now and I really feel very lost. I will print your post to me out and I promise I will try to start reading the bible. Thank you. Please know that your response to me was so appreciated. 👍
 
auriburu said:
Thank you for posting to me. I am gong through a lot right now and I really feel very lost. I will print your post to me out and I promise I will try to start reading the bible. Thank you. Please know that your response to me was so appreciated. 👍
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You are most welcome!! 🙂

I get lost sometimes, too - it’s so nice to have the Church, isn’t it?
 
auriburu said:
I’m sorry to rock the boat here. I was born and raised Catholic. I consider myself a good Catholic woman. I go to church, my four children are Catholic…they even have attended Catholic school. I do own many bibles, KJV and New Catholic to name a few but honestly, I don’t usually read them. In fact, I’ve never read the entire bible–or even one entire book in the bible. Neither have my children and the Catholic schools they’ve attended never suggested they read it either. We would get New Testaments at Christmas from certain teachers as gifts, but that was it. One thing I have done is downloaded the rosary on to my ipod… 🙂 I really don’t know any other Catholic people (all of my friends are Catholic) who actually really read the bible, except my elderly father. I was amazed when I saw all of you do read the bible. I feel happy for you, bad for me, I marked that I really need to try to read the bible more…and that sure is the truth! Thank you for letting me post and join.
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[SIGN]Hey welcome![/SIGN]

No one starts out all that great… I have learned to deeply love reading the Bible, but it wasn’t always so. (Read my story here)

One thing that often surprises people is that the Church has attached a plenary indulgence to reading the Bible and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need an infusion of grace like that. 🙂

If you are not in the habit of reading the Bible, pick the translation that you understand the best and make a concerted effort to read it for just a half an hour or so.

Since you have never read any one book all the way through, I recommend that you start with either James or a Gospel like John. James is short (5 chapters) but powerful hand hard hitting. It deeply affected me when I first read it.

John is only 21 chapters but is also very intense and a very good place to begin to get to better know Our Lord as well as many aspects of our most holy faith.

Don’t get all guilt ridden if you miss a day because God really does love you and will feed you so that you become hungry for more.

Most people don’t realize that they can read the whole Bible in a year if they simply read 3 chapters a day. Just don’t go from Genesis straight through as that is pretty intense and can get you bogged down.

What I did was read an OT book and then a NT book. It will mean that you’ll actually reread parts of the NT but that’s okay because it is good for you. 🙂

It might even be possible to open a Bible study thread here in the Sacred Scripture forum and maybe everyone read the same book and talk over what leaps out at us.

Maybe I’ll start it when I finish this post. (It’ll freak out some non-Catholics who think we don’t read and study the Bible. :rolleyes: 😃 )

One thing I do recommend is that you make sure that whatever bible you use is definitely a Catholic Bible so that you don’t get one lacking books or that has some of the non-Catholic footnotes, because those interpretations can really mess your head up.

If you have any questions feel free to post them or PM me with them and I’ll be glad to talk with you about them.

We’re all just sinners saved by the grace and mercy of God. As Bishop Sheen said of himself, “I am treasure in clay.”
Pax tecum,
 
jmcrae said:
One time I sat down and read the entire Book of Genesis in one sitting, and I was able to make some exciting connections between the stories that I hadn’t ever made, just hearing each of them, one at a time. There are some parts of Genesis that are actually quite funny, but you don’t catch the humour of it if you’re just reading little bits of it at a time.
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Acts of the Apostles is funny too, at times. I like the story of the young man who fell asleep during Paul’s sermon, fell out the window and died. Paul raised him from the dead. It must have been a boring homily for that to happen!😃
 
Good News Bible, NRSV, and the Catholic One Year Bible (the Catholic Living Bible arranged to read in 1 yr.)
I am just starting to read my Bible, to help me find my way in Christ. Plan to check out a couple more that I can read more easily (I hope to find one that I fall in love with!)
 
I consider myself a good Catholic woman. I go to church, my four children are Catholic…I own many bibles, but I don’t usually read them.
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My dear auriburu.

If you go to mass, you read the bible every week.🙂

Not only the bible but both Old Testament, Book of Psalms and New Testament. 🙂

The Mass IS the Bible.🙂

Please do not apologise because you have ‘never read the entire bible’. There is really no logical reason for so doing.

I read the bible often. I have read complete gospels but I have never read an entire book in one reading. There has not been an occasion for so doing. The bible is the Church’s hand-book. It is not intended to be read in its entirety. 👍
 
I consider myself a good Catholic woman. I go to church, my four children are Catholic…I own many bibles, but I don’t usually read them.
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My dear auriburu.

If you go to mass, you read the bible every week. 🙂

Not only the bible but both Old Testament, Book of Psalms and New Testament.

The Mass IS the Bible. It is a love story between the Creator and His created 🙂

Please do not apologise because you have ‘never read the entire bible’. There is really no logical reason for so doing. 🙂

I read the bible often. I have read complete gospels but I have never read an entire book in one reading. There has not been an occasion for so doing. The bible is the Church’s hand-book. It is not intended to be read in its entirety.

Far better to read a short paragraph or even a sentence and meditate on its meaning. 🙂

Meditating on the readings from the Mass is an excellent way of reading the bible 🙂
 
Read it today. Read every day.

I use RSV mostly for study.

For poetry KJV
For grittiness Message
For literal accuracy NASB
For historical interest D-R
For something with adequate back up study helps NIV
Others are for special reasons
NET, NEB, REB, Amphlified, Good News, NKJV, NRSV Phillips NAB NJB JB Living NLT

I like KJV best. It speaks to me as that’s the one whose verses I remember well enough to use a concordance.
 
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