How I’m Reading the Bible (A Literary & Historical Approach) | Bucket List Book Adventure
How I’m Reading the Bible (A Literary & Historical Approach) | Bucket List Book Adventure
Bucket List Books #58 & 59 – The Old and New Testament: An Introduction to the Reading Project
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Bucket List Book Adventure
Book numbers 58 and 59 of the Bucket List Book Adventure are, without question, the most complex entries I have undertaken: the Old and New Testaments.
Not because they are difficult to obtain, nor even because they are difficult to read, though at times they are both, but because they are not a single work in the way most books are. The Bible is not a novel, nor a unified narrative written by a single author. It is, instead, a library: a collection of texts written across centuries, preserved by communities, translated across languages, and ultimately gathered into what we now call Scripture.
Before beginning a review of its individual books, it is necessary to explain how I will approach this work and which version of that library I will be reading.
For this project, I will be working from the Catholic Old Testament, rooted in the Septuagint, the Greek collection of scriptures widely used in the ancient world, alongside the New Testament as received in the Christian tradition.
This choice is not arbitrary. The earliest Christians, including the authors of the New Testament, most often encountered scripture in Greek rather than Hebrew. As a result, the Septuagint represents not only a translation, but the textual tradition through which Christianity first understood the Old Testament.
It is worth noting that the Catholic Old Testament and the Septuagint are not perfectly identical. The Septuagint exists as a body of manuscripts with some variation, while the Catholic canon represents a defined, later-formalized collection drawn from that tradition. For the purposes of this project, however, the distinction serves more to clarify than to divide: I am following the canon that most closely reflects early Christian usage.
One of the first questions that arises when approaching Scripture historically is a simple one: why do different traditions contain different books?
The answer is not a single decision, but the result of history.
The earliest layer of what Christians call the Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible, written primarily in Hebrew and preserved within the Jewish tradition. However, by the centuries immediately preceding the time of Christ, many Jewish communities, particularly those living outside of Israel, were using Greek as their primary language. In response, the scriptures were translated into Greek as the Septuagint.
This Greek collection included several additional texts that were widely read and valued within those communities.
After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jewish religious leadership gradually formalized a canon centered on Hebrew texts. Meanwhile, the early Christian Church, already using the Septuagint, continued to preserve and read the broader collection.
Centuries later, during the Reformation, Protestant traditions aligned their Old Testament more closely with the Hebrew canon, while the Catholic Church retained the longer collection it had long received and used.
The result is not one Bible, but several closely related traditions, each reflecting the history of the community that preserved it. These essays will not attempt to resolve theological debates, nor to argue for one canon over another.
Instead, I will approach each book as both history and literature.
That said, I am a practicing Catholic, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that perspective does not exist. Any theological observations will naturally be shaped by that tradition, though they will not be the primary focus of these reviews. I will be using Reading the Old Testament by Lawrence Boadt and An Introduction to the New Testament for Catholics by Joseph F Kelly as guides.
This is not a work of apologetics and will not be a debate. It is also not an attempt to reduce Scripture to mere text.
It is an effort to read carefully, to understand context, and to engage with one of the most influential collections of writings in human history with both respect and clarity.
The Bible has been studied, argued over, translated, and lived with for thousands of years. It has shaped civilizations, inspired faith, and, at times, divided communities.
The least it deserves is to be read with attention.
From here, I will begin at the beginning, with Genesis, and move forward, one book at a time.
Not as doctrine to be proven, nor as argument to be won, but as a library to be explored.
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