How to begin to read the Bible?

  • Thread starter Thread starter tmrbwilson1998
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

tmrbwilson1998

Guest
Hello! I have been trying to really reconnect with my Catholic faith, especially now that I have children who I want to teach our faith. However, I have been realizing that I really do not have the knowledge of Scripture that I wish I did. Here in our very Southern Baptist area where one of the 2 main chain Christian stores claim that the RCC is not a Christian church, there are not many Catholic Bibles! At the other store, they had a couple of options, so I found and purchased the New RSV. I hope that this is a good translation? Also, is there a suggested way to begin reading the Bible? Is it best to begin with Genesis and make my way through, begin with the NT, or just following the Church’s reading lists. Also, is there a good website with daily readings?

Have to share this one - I had called the second chain Christian store in town to inquire as to whether they carried Catholic Bibles. The lady kindly told me they did, so when I made my way over to the store and went to the Bible section, I found SOOO many versions that I had never even heard of, but alas, nothing Catholic. I asked the salesperson and she led me to the opposite side of the store to a small alcove - one side of this small 5x5 area was Catholic (3 shelves, around 2 1/2 ft long), and the other side was all Jewish books and such. I felt like the banished customer, lol!

Thanks in advance - I am a daily lurker of these forums, trying to increase my knowledge and faith, and you all have been a big part of this spiritual growth!

God Bless,
Tina
 
Hi Tina - Welcome to the forums.👋

I invite you to visit my humble web page, linked below. You will find an article there that I have written on this very subject.
 
tmrbwilson,

I would recommend strongly that you NOT start with Genesis and work your way through. There is a lot of good stuff in Genesis, but Leviticus can get awfully boring (especially for a beginner) and there is a lot of very good stuff later on.

My personal recommendation is to have three our four bookmarks in the Bible and work your way along all of them simultaneously. The bookmarks would be at:

(1) One of the Gospels. John is my favorite, but others recommend Luke. Still others start with Matthew and just go straight through John. After finishing one or more Gospels, I would go on to read Acts as well. (Luke also wrote Acts.)

(2) The New Testament Epistles. These are “letters to young churches,” as a commentary on them said once. They have some exploration of Christian doctrine and guidance on how to live a Christian life.

(3) Old Testament “story” books. The Old Testament has a good bit of history in it as well as quasi-historical literature. Genesis, the first part of Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are all history of one form or another (although I daresay I will get an argument about Genesis). Ruth, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Jonah, and the first part of Daniel are good stories; many of them featured prominently in my kids’ bedtime stories for years.

(4) Wisdom literature. Proverbs, Sirach, Wisdom, and Ecclesiastes are all good reading on how to live a good life.

Hope this helps. Enjoy!
  • Liberian
 
Thank you both for your suggestions and assistance - I truly appreciate it! I look forward to learning more for myself and family, as well as to defend our beliefs when presented with nay-sayers hopefully!

Thanks again, and have a great night!
Tina
 
I took a great bible study, my very first. The Great Adventure, a journey through the bible. Bible timeline seminar by Jeff Cavins, Tim Gray and Sarah Christmeyer.Unfortunately one of the biggest stumbling blocks to reading the bible is the Bible itself. Anyone who has sat down to read the whole bible can attest to this. We are used to sitting down and reading a book from the beginning to the end. Events follow each other in a linear fashion and build on each other. But the bible is not like that. It’s seventy-three books are grouped by literary style (by wether they are primarily history, poetry, wisdom or prophecy) This made sense to the Jews who arranged them, but then they already knew the story. the bible is not a history book, it is a loveletter from God(I didn’t write that Jeff Cavins did, aint it a beautiful thought!!!) Our Creator the Lover of our souls. The purpose of the seminar was to help lay down tracks to set your route through the bible and get you prepared for a lifelong journey of discovering God in the Scriptures. First thing
Pray before you start reading.The Bible has Divine Power. So that God and Man may talk togethar. I either read… Canticle of Zachariah Luke 1: 68-79, or Magnificat Luke 1:46-55. If you’d like a list of the fourteen narrative books to begin your journey, I’d be more than happy to oblige. It is the Story inside the Bible and it is quite a page turner!!!
 
Trelow, thanks so much for the CMN link - I look forward to checking that out, and appreciate it very much!

maryj, I love the quote about the Bible not being a history book - what a wonderful thought about this gift from our Father! I would love to hear more about the 14 narrative books, too. Thanks for making me think of this process a bit differently!

God Bless!
Tina
 
My super low tech story.

Matthew. You already know all the stories, its really fun to “discover” them in the bible for yourself.

Then Luke & Acts in a row, to dig deeper.

Then the Mass method as suggested by others. Read at least the whole chapters before, during, and after the readings at church. Also read the whole psalm (or a several if they are short).
 
Trelow said:
I like the format that the Coming Home Network has in their pamphlet.

chnetwork.org/

Most excellent.
Click to expand...
Marcus Grodi also has a site, Deep in Scripture, that has some wonderful talks on Bible Scripture. Each MP3 file is about a 50 minute talk with Marcus and a guest on usually one line (yes, one line!!!) of the Bible.

Also, Jeff Cavins and Scott Hahn have a free 13 file series of MP3’s that seem to follow Jeff’s Great Adventure Study. It’s based on Scott’s book, Our Father’s Plan.
 
I would like to add, look for a Catholic book store in your area. My area has 2 Catholic book stores. Ask your priest, he’ll know where they are.
 
:bible1: :bible1: I do recommend the NRSV. It is a word-for-word translation, not a paraphrase, even though the language is easy to read. I actually did read the Bible all the way through, from Genesis to Revelation, in the KJV (a Protestant translation) and came back to the Catholic Church after having fallen away for about 6 years. I wouldn’t recommend that path, however. I happen to be an excellent reader. I had a paper picked as the best in my class in my college English (that is British, not American English) class. For most people, I recommend a modern translation of the Bible, such as the NRSV, NAB, or New Jerusalem Bible. I you feel so inclined and wish to dig deeper into the Scriptures, you can always pick up a Douay-Rheims, King James, Revised Standard Version, or New American Standard Version later. The “thees, thys, and thines” are not as important as understanding what the Word says. I happen to like Shakespeare, so I like the Douay-Rheims and King James Bibles, but most people probably do not. Ultimately, the best Bible translation is the one that you will actually read. If the Bible sits on your coffee table, it is of no use, but if you read it, it is a treasure! Good luck and God Bless. :bible1:
 
I just bought a book on how to read the Bible in 1,2 or 3 years. Well, I plan to start using it beginning of next year. If you want, I can scan it. For the time being, I am reading the Gospel, as I think it’s something that every Christian must know.
 
You can listen to “Our Fathers Plan” on EWTN radio archive. It is thirteen sessions each about 55 minutes,it takes a while to get through it, but a great overview of the Bible.
The hosts were Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavins.
It combines Scott Hahns -Salvation History, and Jeff Cavins - Great adventure thru the Bible.
Jeff skims over the Bible, while Scott digs deep into the theology of the Bible.
I really enjoy a book by Peter Kreeft - “You can understand the Bible.”
Where else can you find the four Gospels compared to the Star trek characters.
 
One thing that has helped me is reading *about *the Bible --read books that explain the social/historical setting of the Bible and the background/audience of different books of the bible. That helps tremendously in understanding what is being said *in *the Bible. Study Bibles with explanatory notes are helpful. Dr. Peter Kreeft and Antonio Fuentes both have books on how to read the Bible (there are others out there as well, but I can’t remember the titles. Check the Catholic Answers website or Ignatius Press).
 
In Jeff Cavin’s “The Great Adventure, a journey through the bible”
He says to first read the Bible in chronological order. You can do that by reading the following 14 books which keep the story line going:
  1. Genesis
  2. Exodus
  3. Numbers
  4. Joshua
  5. Judges
  6. 1 Samuel
  7. 2 Samuel
  8. 1 Kings
  9. 2 Kings
  10. Ezra
  11. Nehemiah
  12. 1 Maccabees
  13. Luke
  14. Acts
By reading 4 chapters a day, you can read through these 14 books in 94 days, and get a good overview of salvation history.

Also the “Our Fathers Plan” audio program that I mentioned on my earlier post, gives the scriptural basis for many of the Churches teachings, like Peter as pope, the Eucharist, Baptism, Mary as Queen Mother, scripture alone, faith alone. Again I really want to recommend that series found on EWTN radio archives (IT IS A FREE DOWNLOAD) ( and if you have akram audio converter, you can convert the real audio format to Mp3 or wave formats and put them onto CD’s to listen away from the computer). Some people have a hard time listening to Scott, because he covers so much, so fast. After listening to it many times,each time learining something new, the Bible finally makes sense to me,
 
runandsew said:
In Jeff Cavin’s “The Great Adventure, a journey through the bible”
He says to first read the Bible in chronological order. You can do that by reading the following 14 books which keep the story line going:
  1. Genesis
  2. Exodus
  3. Numbers
  4. Joshua
  5. Judges
  6. 1 Samuel
  7. 2 Samuel
  8. 1 Kings
  9. 2 Kings
  10. Ezra
  11. Nehemiah
  12. 1 Maccabees
  13. Luke
  14. Acts
By reading 4 chapters a day, you can read through these 14 books in 94 days, and get a good overview of salvation history.
,
Click to expand...
I’m trying to read the Bible using the books you selected, I rather enjoyed Genesis, and Exodus was pretty good too. I’m now on Numbers and I’ll be honest I can’t read more than two or three paragraphs of names without falling asleep. Is the remainder of the O.T. this borring?
 
Saint_Michael said:
I’m trying to read the Bible using the books you selected, I rather enjoyed Genesis, and Exodus was pretty good too. I’m now on Numbers and I’ll be honest I can’t read more than two or three paragraphs of names without falling asleep. Is the remainder of the O.T. this borring?
Click to expand...
Actually Numbers is the only one of those that are boring. But even Numbers pales in comparison to Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You’ll need a pot of extra-strong coffee to get you through those. But you will have a better understanding when you read them, so it may be a little more interesting.

Good Luck!!!
 
NotWorthy said:
Actually Numbers is the only one of those that are boring. But even Numbers pales in comparison to Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You’ll need a pot of extra-strong coffee to get you through those. But you will have a better understanding when you read them, so it may be a little more interesting.

Good Luck!!!
Click to expand...
Leviticus, YUCK, it is the rules of the priests.:sleep: I skipped it. But numbers I found to be interesting. It’s during the time of the desert wanderings of the tribes, a lot of pertinent stuff in there. Keep going, you coming up on Conquest time!!!
 
Saint_Michael said:
I’m trying to read the Bible using the books you selected, I rather enjoyed Genesis, and Exodus was pretty good too. I’m now on Numbers and I’ll be honest I can’t read more than two or three paragraphs of names without falling asleep. Is the remainder of the O.T. this borring?
Click to expand...
Keep going! Boring books in the Bible are the ones that show your determination to know God a little more! Every time you pick your head up from dozing off, you can be sure, the Angels are rejoicing in your love for Him! 🙂

Family stories are not always alway fun, some parts are exciting, others disappointing, and others, plain boring. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s our family story. Now I have someone who is fighting the heavy eye-lids with me! Peace be with you! May this journey be an exciting one!
 
When I first started reading the Bible I started from the OT and was either sleeping within 15 minutes or not understanding much or not taking it seriously.

Only after a while, can you really start to understand it and discover it’s fullness. Always start at the NT for beginner.

OT is best read with a catholic commentary on the chapters
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top