About

After threatening to for years I have finally gotten around to making a firm decision to read the Bible from cover to cover. I bought the HarperCollins Study Bible: Fully Revised and Updated to serve as my primary text. I have the King James Version as well, and will do some cross-checking. Not looking forward to all the begats, and the laws and the poetry really, but I am determined to get through it.

Why? Well, the Bible is probably the most influential book in the West at least, and as such it behoves us to read it. Also, I am curious to get to know the Bible independent of all the doctrine I was fed as a child. What does it actually have to say?

I am not forgetting that any translation of a text necessarily results in an interpretation of it. I don’t read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and ancient Greek; I have to rely on translation. I have done some research to find a Bible translation that is relatively free from bias, and that seems to be the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). And the HarperCollins Study Bible of that version appears to be the best text for my purposes.

An academic told me recently that there is a 2004 Dutch translation that was meant to be secular and literary in tone in the first instance, rather than Christian, and that is considered the best translation out there. Something to look into.

“Notes” as used in the posts refers to the footnotes in the Study Bible.

Abbreviations used:

NRSV – New Revised Standard Version
KJV – King James Version
OT – Old Testament
NT – New Testament
CE – Common Era
BCE – Before the Common Era

My thanks to Art and the Bible for allowing me to use their pictures.