Quick Background and Selecting a Bible

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For the next year, you are going to embark on a journey through one of the greatest pieces of literature ever created ... the Holy Bible.

The Bible is Holy because I believe it is wholly divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit to storytellers, heads of families, around campfires, and other means that evolved as humans evolved in its technology of writing and preserving writings. It is edited and compiled from many documents that have always been important to a faith and believing community that through 6,000 years preserved these stories as the Word of God. As the language, scholarship, and theology of the faith community have changed as lead by God, so has the shape of this thing called the Bible.

At significant points in God's history, the faith community has come together to decide what documents should be brought together as the primary sources for the story of God. The first gathering of the part of the Bible known as the Hebrew Bible happened when the language of Hebrew became a written language estimated to be around the 6th century B.C./BCE.

At the appropriate time, Jesus the Christ was born human, preached, healed, taught, performed miracles, got the religious establishment mad, was executed, died, and rose from the dead. Jesus was with his followers after that resurrection for a period of time and then ascended into heaven to live with God as God forever.

Between 55 A.D./CE and 140 A.D./CE the people of God who believed in Jesus wrote then gathered letters, songs, liturgies, and gospels (good news) about the sayings, words, and works of Jesus primarily in Greek. In 300s A.D./CE, the Roman Empire gathered Church leaders to form a New Testament for use of the faith community combined with the Hebrew Bible as a canon of faith. Other communities in the Church have gathered other documents written between the testaments into a work called the Apocrypha. The status of this work is different as the differing Christian faith communities.

As the Holy Bible came together in Hebrew and Greek, then Latin was used until around the 1500 A.D./CE. As the faith community want to read the Bible in their common language, the Bible was translated into common languages. Today the whole Bible has been translated into over 650 languages and the New Testament has been translated into over 1500 languages. Amazon has over 27,000 different Bibles that it sells. With that one has a lot of choices in selection.

Personally, my selection of modern English Bibles includes:

• A Study Bible called The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 4th edition, Oxford Press, (c) 2010 A.D. ISBN 978-0195289602
• Holy Bible -The God's Word Translation, Baker Books, (c) 2010 A.D. ISBN 978-081013607
• The New American Revised Edition, United State Conference of Catholic Bishops, (c) 2015 A.D. ISBN 978-1601374868

I find I need to be grounded in several versions depending on my walk of faith. The Oxford provides me with a grounded study Bible with notes, charts, and vast scholarship. God's Word is based on modern 21st Century English usage and makes for an easy read but no notes and I use it devotionally. The New American is a nice blending of both devotion and study meant to be a home resource for Catholic families with a traditional read feel to it.

If I were to start reading the Bible, I would find an English translation written in the last 15 years and settle in for the ride. Do not be surprised if you are working/reading a couple of versions.