Time for a new kind of Bible Study
As someone who hates to talk about his “feelings”…sign me up!
Thanks to Lhory for sending me this one 
Tag: Bible Study
Why Catholics aren’t afraid of power cuts…
A few weeks ago we had a power cut which took out a large chunk of California and Arizona for about 24 hours. Our parish’s Bible study that night continued as normal.
Powercuts are God’s way of telling us that we should be lighting more candles 
Lectionary Resources
A few people have recently asked me where I get the material for my “Lectionary Notes” posts. Here’s the process I go through each week:
1. After we conclude our Bible Study in the JP2 Group, we all go to the church next door for adoration. In the presence of the Blessed Sacrament I read the Lectionary Scriptures for the following week and spend a little bit of time praying through them.
2. When I next have some time, I read through the texts again using my NIV Study Bible.
Regarding Bible translations, translators have to make a choice between translating from the original language word-for-word (“formal equivalence”) or providing a looser translation but which attempts to better convey the thought expressed by the original writer (“dynamic equivalence”). This essentially results in a trade-off between readability and fidelity to the original words of the text. I quite like the NIV in that it falls somewhere between formal and dynamic equivalence, but with a leaning more towards dynamic equivalence.
The NIV is not a Catholic Bible and unfortunately therefore is missing the books of Wisdom, Sirach etc. Some of the study notes also have a non-Catholic skew, but on the whole it has excellent cross-references and always at least offers an interesting point of view.
3. The next book I reach for is my Ignatius New Testament Study Bible. I can’t say how much I love this book. It’s the RSV translation, which follows the “formal equivalence” approach. I would not-so-humbly suggest that it is a far superior translation to the NAB which is used in the Lectionary. Ignatius Press have produced a superb resource here, with excellent notes, maps and word studies. Every Christian should own a copy – it’s a bargain at $16. I will wait here while you click on the link and go and order a copy from Amazon. Seriously, I’ll wait…Done? Okay, let’s continue!
Bible Study Notes: The Epistle of James
Those eagle-eyed among you might have noticed a new menu item appear at the top of this blog yesterday. The “Notes” menu is now going to be the place where I put the notes I make for Bible study sessions.
As you’ll hopefully see, my notes for the Epistle of James are already uploaded. I spent last night typing them up from my recent journey through that letter.
Over the coming weeks I’ll tidy them up a bit and hopefully make them a little more intelligible since, when I wrote them, I wasn’t expecting anyone else to see them and so they’re rather terse and inconsistent in format.