AdobeStock_30469296by_Lincoln Rogers
Q. I know I should read the Bible more, but, to be honest, I’m kind of intimidated by it. I’ve tried reading it before, and much of it just confused me. Can you offer any advice?
This is another great (and common) question I often hear from Catholics. In essence, we can boil it down as “How do I read the Bible in a way that I understand?”
Before addressing this question, I want to briefly address a prior question: “Why read the Bible?” There are many good and true answers to that question, but here’s one of my favorites: So I can love God more.
When we read Sacred Scripture, we discover more and more who God is, and the more we know about God, the more we are able to know him in a personal, relational way. In the Bible, we read words God himself inspired others to write, words through which his Word is communicated to us, not merely to inform us, but to form us, to help us mature as his beloved daughters and sons.
For the Bible does not merely relate to us a list of theological facts that we should accept and believe (although it does contain theological truths, which we are called to embrace and live); nor does it merely relate events in the distant past that occurred on the other side of the planet (although it does contain real, historical truths about God and his people).
Even more, it is through Sacred Scripture that God speaks to his people today, and not just as a group, but personally, individually, intimately. When I read Sacred Scripture with a spirit of prayer and peace, I slowly but surely begin to recognize not only what is “on the surface” (the true theology and history that we read), but also what lies in the depths: The still, small voice of God himself speaking to me.
There’s more that could be said about why we should read the Bible, but I want to turn now to the original question: How to read the Bible. And here, I can certainly relate with the question. After all, numerous Catholics have started reading the Bible and got lost in the thickets, so to speak: endless descriptions of rituals and purity laws, detailed censuses of the Israelites, confusing images from the books of Daniel and Revelation and, especially in the Old Testament, a lot of violence!
The challenge here is that we approach the Bible as if it were all written in the way we write history (and biography) today. But that’s oversimplifying things. The fact is, the Bible is more than one book; it is a library, a collection of 73 different books. And just like the libraries we are accustomed to, the library that is the Bible has a whole variety of genres and (at the human level) authors.
So, on the one hand, the Bible is indeed one book, because it is written by God to reveal himself to his people. But on the other hand, it is comprised of 73 different books, which all employ different styles in order to reveal God to his people: history, poetry, biography, letters and so on.
Certainly, we are able to read and mostly understand much of the Bible, especially the more historical and biographical books (like Exodus and the Gospels). But because some of the other books use styles of writing (genres) that aren’t as familiar to us, we can get lost. And even in the historical and biographical books, there are numerous details that are lost on us.
What, then, must we do? Give up? Certainly not!
There are several pieces of good news for us today:
1. The Church has explained the principles for properly understanding the Bible (cf. the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 109-119);
2. Numerous books have been written to explain those principles in ways we can all understand (for example, Dr. Edward Sri’s book “The Bible Compass”);
3. There are numerous resources that explain the nuances of Scripture that often confuse us: commentaries, study Bibles, etc. The “Ignatius Catholic Study Bible” is one such outstanding resource. It is a “one-stop shop” that gives explanations for the vast majority of the Bible. Another such resource is the “Catholic Commentary of Sacred Scripture,” which gives a book-length treatment of each book of the Bible (at least of the New Testament).
Using these and similar resources, everyday Catholics can readily read, understand and profit from Scripture, and I encourage you to do so. It’s worth it!
