Bible Study - About the Bible

When we start studying the Bible, most of us make some common mistakes, at least I do. We would choose our first Bible based on the limited knowledge that we have about the Bible and about the different translations. Then we would think of the Bible as if it is "just like another book". And in general, we would start from the Book of Genesis, and with our best will, we plan to go through the whole Bible. I personally stopped after the book of Numbers. Others may go a little further, however, most of us would stop due to too many things we could not understand.
Does the above scenario sound familiar to you ?

We make the above mistakes because we often forget to ask the crucial questions related to the origin of the Bible. Did the Bible fall from heaven leather-bound in English? If not, then how did the Bible come to be? The Bible is a selection of 73 sacred texts, divinely inspired. Who decided that those 73 texts, among many others, would be part of what we call the Bible today? Since printing techniques did not exist until the fifteenth century, how was the Bible passed down to us for over 1400 years? There are a lot more questions that we should ask ourselves about the Bible before we actually start reading it.

To answer the above questions and many others about the Bible, I would like to propose the following books to add to your reading list:

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1. The first book, Where we got the Bible, is the story of the Bible. It answers all the questions we raised earlier, and many others. You will be greatly surprised to know about all the effort that the Church had deployed and continues to do so to protect the Bible in order to pass it down from generation to generation. You'll learn how the Holy Spirit gave us the Bible through Jesus Christ's Church. Short, pleasant and very informative book.

2. Vatican Council II, contains documents of the Second Vatican Councils. The document of interest regarding Bible Study is the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation - Dei Verbum, the Word of God. This document explains how God revealed Himself to us, and why the written Word of God must not be read without regard to Sacred Tradition and to the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church.

3. The third item in the above list is not a book but a video DVD by Father John Corapi, SOLT. In this video, Father Corapi explains Dei Verbum in his usual humoristic and easy-to-understand way. You'll learn how Catholic Christians should approach the Sacred Scripture as the Church reads them, or run the risk of misinterpreting the inspired Word of God. Six one-hour lectures full of pieces of advice before you start reading the Word of God.