Friday, April 30, 2010

Reading through the Bible.

Which versions of the Bible have you read?

Over the past 5 years, I have enjoyed reading through the TNIV [twice, which includes "The Books of the Bible: a presentation of Today's New International Version"], the Zondervan NIV Archaeological Study Bible, the New Living Translation [2nd edition], The ESV Reformation Study Bible, The Good News Bible, Australian edition [which is so far the one with the most typos], the New Jerusalem Bible [I began reading the study notes, but they were so liberal, I quit the notes] and the ESV Study Bible [completed yesterday].

Today I've commenced reading through the Contemporary English Version, Australian edition.

This usually takes me about 5 months, but the last one was a massive undertaking, due to all the articles, introductions and notes. I began reading the ESVSB on 3rd Jan 09, and was going quite slowly for a while.

It is a great blessing to be able to read through and get an overview fairly quickly. You can do this by reading a psalm a day, anotehr 4 chapters of the Old Testament and 2 chapters of the New Testament, to keep things proportional.

This all started when a man in our church brought us a guide to reading through the New Testament in 91 days, which was intended to get folk reading through the New Testament before Christmas.

Only a few people took up the offer, but I got hooked!

Do you think it is too much to expect the average Christian to read through the Bible? Not many people of my acquaintance seem to do it. We read the Bible, but we read the same passages over and over. We read soem of the New Testament, some of the Psalms and not much of the rest of the Old Testament.

Do you think God should have got J K Rowling to write the text to make it an easier read?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello David,

I came across your blog and found it interesting. You have lots of stuff related to the Bible.

Currently, I am blogging the entire Bible, for the sake of my fellow Christians, and may refer your site to pick up few pearls.

Thank you,
Jacob Cherian
http://jacobcherians.blogspot.com/