Last week I did something I haven’t done in years—I bought two new Bibles!  So far, I think I like them both quite a bit.

The first one, and the one getting all the press, is the new Mosaic Bible.  I’ve been calling this my new liberal artsy fartsy Bible, though the translation is the solidly evangelical TLIV.  The front several pages preceding the actual biblical text are devoted to the Christian liturgical year.  Each week has a theme—this week it’s “wilderness”—listing a lectionary-lite sampling of biblical passages from throughout the Bible, some killer contemporary and historical artwork, and meditations and essay excerpts from all centuries and continents.  I used to love the challenge of putting together a good “prayers of the people” based on the conversation between the week’s lectionary texts, so it’s nice to listen into that weekly conversation again, which can be pretty contentious at times.  It’s a beautiful Bible, no bones about it. I’m going to be blogging my way through each week’s readings, but more about that in a sec.

The second Bible is The Books of the Bible, a chapterless, verseless presentation of the TNIV translation. It’s aim is to focus on the actual literary units the Bible was written in—books, not chapters or verses.  It’s been a different experience reading Genesis with no chapter numbers to make me feel like I’m reading a lot or a little, or to make me wonder what the point of this chapter is versus that chapter.  The are still textual notes about this or that translation issue, but they’ve been moved to end notes so that footnotes won’t make it feel more like a term paper than like literature.  Some books, like Luke-Acts and Samuel-Kings, have been recombined to reflect the original literary unit they were writte in, and in the New Testament the books are grouped by tradition, such as Mark and the Peters or all of the Johns. The format and presentation are so easy and accessible that if I were teaching a year-long intro to the Bible as literature, I would use this edition. If you’ve never read much of the Bible, I recommend starting with this one. Plus it comes in blaze orange, so it’s ready for deer season!

Now as to blogging the Christian year…  You can read a first take at what I have in mind over at a side blog I never quite got going. My question for you is this: Would you rather read me struggle with the Christian year over there or over here?  And one other question: Anybody interested in reading along with me?