The Books Of The Bible
Here is an interesting (new?) Bible that is published by the International Bible Society, called The Books Of The Bible. It is very interesting. What it does is it first takes out all of the chapter and verse titles that you would see in a standard Bible. Then it places the books in Chronological order. I think that it is very interesting because it takes away many distractions that are in the Bible and allows for a better reading, because it reads more like a novel. Some differences in order seen is that the New Testament starts with Luke-Acts, two volumes of the same history, the follows into Paul’s letters. The Old Testament ends in Daniel.
While this may not be the best study tool, it appears to be a better read than a typical Bible. It uses the TNIV translation. It may also make it much easier for a new Christian to read and understand. I encourage everyone to check it out.
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Comments
I think it will help keep us out of any trap that is created by the verse and chapter divisions.
I agree, reading the text in this way aids a person in understanding the whole of scripture. In my opinion, you have to start from the a wholistic understanding of a book before you can start to break it down to it’s elements of understanding, the sentences and clauses. I don’t like the chapter and verse method. I think it creates false (arbitrary) segments of meaning. I’d rather see a paragraph/sentence number method of breaking down scripture. I know you run into problems when you go marking out where sentances begin and end, especially with some of the pauline letters.
So, they begin with Luke and Acts and not Mark? That is odd, given Luke’s use of Mark as a source…. anyway, those are minor points… after all, mathew does open things up right now!
of course you have a larger problem of what chronology you use.
do you use the order of events in the books themselves? in that case, what do you do with Job, which allegedly occurs during Genesis somewhere? or what about the prophets? do you cut them in and out of Samuel-Kings? And what about Chronicles?
or do you do the order in which they’re written? in that case, Paul’s letters come before the gospels. And what about the Pseudo-pauline texts?
this is an interesting idea, but sounds like it has just as many problems as the more ::ahem:: traditional layout.
I know - there is no good way to go about it and everyone will flip out no matter what you do. Plus, there are the issues of dating that I just don’t know the answer to (Matthew/Luke) with certainty. The order of the books is not a bit issue for me - the reading format is. And I LOVE the format. The only thing holding me back is the sheer fact of buying another Bible.
after thinking about this for a bit, I think that the goal is to have a cohesive literary narrative, so I think that arranging the books as they fit best in as a unified (as much as you can) narrative. So, put the gospels first, then letters in order by date and do something similar with the OT
thats how I would do it
My wife got me The Books of the Bible for my birthday after I coveted it, and I have not been disappointed. Verse numbers, chapter headers, section subtitles, and footnotes all bother me as a reader, so I have been very fond of the format. I wrote a post about it a while back when IBS first announced it as well.
Once I saw Thom’s post about the order of the books, I was re-hooked. I really like having each Gospel predicate the books that follow that gospel’s theology in relative chronological order. Two are on their way to my house. An orange one for me to read, and a green one for Meredith.
Dude, if you get it by the family Christmas get-together, bring it. I’d like to see it.
I hope it comes in by the time we make the trek to Versailles. If so I will def bring it.
It seems like a pretty cool format and I am sure taking out the verse divisions helps to prevent one from falling into the literalist trap of elevating artificial units of the text over and above the author’s intended meaning.