What is Reddit's opinion of The Catholic Study Bible?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Genesis isn't a science book. Genesis seeks to answer questions like: Who created the world? Is the world God? Whose fault is it that sin and suffering exist? What is God's response to sin and suffering? What does it look like to be obedient to God's call and accept a blessing? Can God work out His purpose even as humans freely choose to do wrong?

I'd recommend a good study Bible as a start, like this one.

Do you have a good study bible? I recommend this one.

Adam and Eve didn’t exist. The bad fruit is folklore. Jesus died to save us from our sin and the bring eternal life.

I do believe in the Bible, but truth and literalness aren’t the same thing.

If you wish to argue that would should be a fundamentalist inerrancy holding person to be Christian, then we will be at a disagreement not only with me, but many within Christianity itself.

If you want to study more about how that all works, might I suggest Catholic Study Bible. While I’m not Catholic, their study Bible does a great job at explaining the Documentary Hypothesis and how to read the Bible in a way different than you seem to expect.

I suspect that today you will learn that it was Georges Lemaître who first postulated the Big Bang theory. Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic priest. I’d like to say he was Jesuit, but not everyone is perfect.

There are many Christians who accept science when it comes to it comes to the explanation of the creation and development of the physical universe. And like them, I believe the universe is some 14 billion years old.

If you have an image that all Christians believe the universe was created on 23 Oct 4004 BC because of Ussher’s flawed dating system, then that is an image in need of some extensive rework.

And while you’re at it, I would highly recommend the Catholic Study Bible Personal Study Edition (ISBN 978-0190267230), available from Amazon or other bookstores. The CSB has some great notes and an introduction to the Documentary Hypothesis and for putting Genesis 1–11 in its historical context as being the mythological stories of the ancient Israelites.

>I’ve since found NRSV-CI bad by catholic’s

I don't entirely follow this sentence, but the differences between the different varieties of NRSVs are going to be very minimal. The most likely difference is that your edition is missing some books, not that there's anything wrong with the translation as you're reading it.

Just because the Church officially approves some versions doesn't mean that we thereby condemn other versions, especially not other versions within the same translation family.

NABRE is an officially Catholic translation (and very good!) as is the Jerusalem Bible. The NRSV, RSV, and ESV have officially approved Catholic versions. But that doesn't mean that other versions are somehow bad. I'd avoid the NIV, as that is an evangelical translation with some definite anti-Catholic bias, and (if you're just getting started on bible reading) avoid ones that are more paraphrases than translations, like The Message.

Of the Catholic(-approved) translations, the "odd man out" is the Jerusalem, which prioritizes beautiful prose over precise correspondance to the Greek or Hebrew source text. The others are all pretty literal.

If you're looking for a study bible, I think this is the best one out there.

Skeptical about the historicity of the story, yes. I think it's a beautiful and profound theological reflection on God's response to human evil. Ignoring evil is not an option God ever contemplates. God always responds. God promises his response will not be destructive. Looking back on the story from the position of the Church, we also see a wonderful parallel to the image of Church as ship, sojourning in a dangerous world, awaiting better times that will come.

Various elements of the text (how did so many animals fit in one ship?) and the lack of historical / scientific evidence for a mass extinction (the only people I've seen claim such evidence have fundamentalism approaches to scripture that lead them to think they have to be able to find such evidence; a position I reject theologically).

For further reading, I'd direct you to the introductory articles and comments in the Catholic Study Bible.

I think your best bet is just to get a good study bible and read. I'm not familiar with the Bible you mention, so I can't comment on how good it is. I usually the Catholic Study Bible to people. One option would be to look at the readings coming up next Sunday, start with those, and then start reading around whichever one interests you most.

I’m going to be that guy and say a good study bible

These are all solid books. A couple of supplements. First, I'd recommend a getting a good study bible, like this one.

If you want to go further, the scripture classes offered through STEP are good.

Bold of you to assume we'd have something ready by Tuesday!

Seriously, I doubt if any of us are going to share homilies ahead of the weekend. If you want some background on the readings, you could either look out for published homily helps (like these), or just get a good Catholic study bible (like this one).

It’s hard to say because different there’s even a split in different academic interpretations amongst the faiths as well.

I’m a bit partial to the Catholic study bibles because Catholicism has such a rich academic tradition. I actually own this Bible and I am honestly floored by the number of resources within it, it’s giant and each book of the Bible has at least 2 “introductions” and “reading guides” as separate sections, not including the massive (overbearing to be honest) number of footnotes. Here is that Bible, put out by Oxford University Press:

The Catholic Study Bible https://www.amazon.com/dp/0190267232/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Z5XMD6M8ZT560ZCVWV8F

Word on Fire institute also puts out beautiful, highly academic and extremely well-done sections of the Bible. They have the gospels and acts as separate books (they haven’t gone further but eventually will):

Word on Fire Bible: The Gospels Leather Bound https://www.amazon.com/dp/1943243530/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_BA155ZWG1RF57R959KEN

Also recommend the “Bible in a Year” podcast by Fr. Mike Schmidt as a good supplementary podcast:

https://ascensionpress.com/pages/biy-registration

Also, I wouldn’t recommend going from Genesis to Revelation, depending on what you’re hoping to get out of it I honestly think the New Testament is a framing device for the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a very difficult collection of books in a very odd way and is much more difficult to understand.

Firstly, get a good study bible, like this one, to guide you. Then, it might be easiest to start with a gospel. One way to structure your reading is to use the lectionary to help guide you. The Sunday lectionary works through Mark this year, so maybe start with that. We're currently working through Ephesians for the second reading (though, depending on how long you spend with Mark, we may have switched to James or even Hebrews). The Sunday lectionary jumps around the Old Testament, but the daily Mass lectionary is currently working through the beginnings of the Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges).

One route is reading scripture, in which we discover who God really is. A good study bible may help.

Well, the text of the NABRE is available for free online. As for a physical bible, do you not think that's worth paying for? Your reading would be much richer with a good study bible anyway. I recommend this one.

A good first step would be to get the Catholic Study Bible.

Is that better than this?

Perhaps I have a different view than most. I'm a RCC convert from secular/agnostic when I was 18. So I had to come to the Faith from nothing to essentially an adult understanding.

I wouldn't start with the current Catechism of the Catholic Church or even the summary, because it tends to be very wordy without a whole lot of substance at times. If you can stomach/interpret through some of the "dated parts" the Baltimore Catechisms are a great simple question and answer format for learning the bare bones of the Faith. In fact they are arranged in a sequentially more "fleshed out" fashion.

The Bible is a great place for information, but until you get used to hacking though the language etc. I would suggest reading it with a guide or a Study Bible. As much as it pains me to say the New American Bible, although a disgusting and ugly translation is relatively clear and easy to read (when compared with the Douay or KJV). Don't forget to use summaries online or even just the Wikipedia pages for various books.

A place that is pre-vatican II oriented but a great source of information is www.fisheaters.com I still find their basics page to be a source of information.

Finally if you're more of a mobile app person the ipieta (iOS and android) is basically an entire Catholic library in app form.

I hope these help.