The Bible can be on the one hand life-changing, and on the other hand prone to cause much argument and confusion. During church history some people have advocated that books should be taken out, others that books are missing; there are innumerable different schools of thought as to who wrote particular passages and what they mean. All this aside, most Christians would consider the Bible to be inspired by God and a good place to start when trying to understand God’s story for us, living here in the 21st century.
There are many different ways to approach the Bible. This is not surprising given that the Bible is a whole library of different types of books added by different people of different cultures and backgrounds at different times. The Bible includes as just a selection, poetry, allegory, proverbs, law, made up stories, historical texts, letters and thoughts as to how God might be asking us to live. Some of the books we have a pretty good idea of when they are written and the author was, others we can only guess at. Some of books were written as books, and some are a collection of fragments passed down orally from one person to another, and only finally written down much later on.
What can be said is that whether we approach the bible as a historical text to be deconstructed, a text to be meditated on or stories to fire our imaginations, we often find when we engage with the Bible that God shows up, reveals something of Him to us and changes us.
Here are some places that might help you in the process:
www.biblegateway.com The Bible online, in any number of versions; many versions also available in audio.
Bible Fresh – a website to help people to connect with the bible.
www.sacredspace.ie Everyday suggested prayers and readings, with guidance notes. By the Irish Jesuits.
The website www.pray-as-you-go.org has helpful brief Bible reflections & prompts re what to consider that you can download daily or a week at a time. It’s linked with Sacred Space (Jesuit) and draws on an Ignatian approach to experiencing Scripture as well as understanding it.
Celtic Daily Book of Prayer (published by Collins) A wide selection of prayers, meditations and daily readings taking inspiration from Christians throughout the age, particularly Celtic saints.
Common Prayer – A liturgy for ordinary radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, Enuma Okoro (published by Zondervan) Daily readings and prayers with a contemporary touch.
God of Surprises by Gerard Hughes (published by Darton Longman & Todd) A book to help discover God through the Bible and prayer taking inspiration from Ignatius. The exercises at the end of each chapter are well worth doing.
Read, Think, Pray, Live: A Guide to Reading the Bible in a New Way (Th1nk) by Tony Jones (Paperback – Jul 2003) An easy guide to lectio divina.
The Book of God – by Walter Wangerin, re-telling of the bible story as a novel
New Interpreters Bible Commentary – In fact 12 volumes covering the whole of the bible. Each volume covers a number of books from the bible. It offers a complete commentary on the whole bible, each book of the bible is broken into passages, with two versions of the text of bible first, followed by a detailed commentary and then some practical thoughts.
The Book of Eli - a film with Denzel Washington about the last bible on earth.