I just bought a new bible. Not that I need it. Like most clergy cum seminarians I have about a dozen of them, including my “first bible” given to me upon entering fourth grade. I have my ordination bible, a couple of study bibles (including one dog-eared, marked up, annotated, and ratty-edged study bible my wife had re-bound in thick leather after it started falling apart). I have some de rigueur foreign language bibles, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, including two of my dad’s Spanish bibles and one Portuguese. And the collection is rounded out by a nice balance of older (KJV) and modern translations (GNB, NEB, NREV, NCEV, NASV, NIV, etc.). Any paraphrased bibles I had I’ve given away or gotten rid of long ago, finding those less than satisfying and some actually irksome in their attempts are relevance and winsomeness.
(Click on the image for the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible website)
My new Bible is the The Pennyroyal Caxton Bible This is not a volume to read in bed as it’s as big as a pulpit Bible. If you doze off in bed while holding this book over your head you’ll as likely wake up with a concussion as not wake up at all. The highlight of this beautiful work is the engraved illustrations of Barry Moser. But another delight is in the sheer pleasure of reading the elegance of the King James Version.
I have a Roman Catholic Bible which contains more books than the Bible most Protestants use. But while the Roman Catholic Bible is larger than most Protestant versions, it is not the largest. The largest bible used by Christians is that of the Ethiopic Church. It contains the Old Testament Apocrypha and books such as Jubilees, 1 Enoch, Joseph Ben Gurion’s medieval history of the Jews and other nations, Ethiopic Clement, and the Ethiopic Book of the Covenant. And you thought memorizing the names of the usual 66 books was tough!
Reportedly the Bible remains the best-selling book in the United States, and yet just as likely, the least read (a fact that made me confident enough to include a basic Bible literacy quiz in my latest book.). That’s tragic and does not bode well for our culture or society. For those engaged in the work of religious education biblical illiteracy remains one of the biggest issue to address. I think there’s a correlation with biblical illiteracy and spiritual maturity— you can’t have one without the other. The biblical narratives are the building blocks to understanding matters of faith and the raw material out of which we work at making religious meaning in our lives. Stephen Prothero’s latest book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn’t is only the latest voice to remind us of the importance of biblical literacy. Recommended.
