When I made the commitment to own my faith some 40 years ago I knew that I needed to pick up a Bible and read it.  As I mentioned in another article, I knew about the Bible but I did not know the Bible.  I began reading it but very soon became confused because of my ignorance of what I was reading.  The Bible I was using was also hard to read with all of the thees and thous and other strange expressions that made no sense to me.  It wasn’t enough just to read the Bible, I needed to understand how it all came together.

For example, did you know that the literal meaning of the word “Bible” is “book?” In fact the Bible is a collection of diverse writings that were selected and placed into the one book in what we call the “canon” of the Bible.  The word canon means “measurement” or “rule.”  There are in fact 73 different writings or “books” in the canon of the Bible, that is if you are reading a Bible from the Greek tradition, also known as the Septuagint (which comes from the traditional number of seventy translators).

The earliest Christians used the Greek version of the Bible since most early Christians were speaking and reading Greek.  The Greek tradition (Septuagint; LXX) has 46 books of the Old Testament (OT) and 27 books in the New Testament (NT). While all Christians agree on the 27 books of the NT, Judaism and Protestant Christians (who went back to the shorter Hebrew tradition following the Reformation considering it more authentic) use the Hebrew translation of the OT which only has 39 books.  The other seven books (Tobit, Judith, 1& 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and Baruch are called “apocryphal” in the Hebrew tradition used by Judaism and Protestants.

Roman Catholics refer to these same seven books as “Deuterocanonical.” “Deutero” means “under” the canon (measurement or rule).  So when we often speak of using a Catholic Bible or Protestant Bible we are mostly indicating what tradition of the Bible is being used.  Apart from the number of books in the various traditions that differentiates between a Catholic and Protestant Bible is the doctrinal commentary found at the bottom of each page, especially in what are indicated as “Study Bibles.”  The interpretation of a passage of Scripture in a Catholic Bible will always be true to the doctrinal teaching of the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

There are several different translations of the Bible out there to choose from and here is a list of the most Common English Translations: NEW AMERICAN BIBLE (NAB) which is the standard American Catholic edition and is the translation used in the Catholic Lectionary (it also has an edition called the Catholic Study Bible; REVISED STANDARD VERSION (RSV) which is based upon a revision of the standard King James Version and is still a literal translation; NEW REVISED STANDAARD VERSION (NRSV) which is a wholly redone translation in line with the RSV but with sensitivity to inclusive language for human beings; NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV) it is not a revision and it is intended to be ecumenical and to appeal to a broad range of English-speaking people;  NEW JERUSALEM BIBLE (NJB) published in 1985 and inspired by French translations of the Bible by Dominican Catholic scholars in Jerusalem.  It is based on the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts.  It is the most poetic translation which lends itself to more prayerful use; NEW KING JAMES VERSION (JKJV) an attempt to update the (KJV) without significantly altering its renderings.