After spending a little over 4 years on the Old Testament, it will be fun to study the New Testament. I learned a lot about the Hebrew Scriptures. I am now able to better understand the Jewish background of Jesus. All my life I have tried to understand the Christian message of Jesus. As an emeritus professor of religious studies, I began my retirement Bible project at the age of 74 in 2013. Now in 2018, at age 78, I going to dive into the Greek New Testament aided by reading the Bible in French, La Sainte Bible: traduite en francais sous la direction du L’Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem, the 1961 edition of the Jerusalem Bible that I first studied in 1962. As a guide to help me with this translation, I will use the New Revised Standard Version of the New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: An Ecumenical Study Bible Completely Revised and Enlarged, the 1994 edition. I will also use Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine by Eberhard and Erwin Nestle and Kurt Aland, the 1960 edition, that I used over fifty years ago. To be more precise, the 1904 Nestle Greek edition is now on line as found at Bible Hub. To help understand the Greek New Testament text, I will use The Jewish Annotated New Testament of the New Revised Standard Version, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, 2011. As a further aid, I will use the Bible Concordance, Synopsis Quattuor Evavgeliorum, Locis parallelis evangeliorum apocyrphorum et pratrum adhibitis edidit Kurt Aland, the 1964 edition. Finally, I will use that invaluable online web site of the Bible Hub. http://biblehub.com/.
New Revised Standard Version
The Christian Old Testament
Interesting enough, there is a dispute about the books of the Hebrew Bible among various Christians. The English Christian Protestant Reform Bible used the Hebrew Bible texts for its translation of the King James English translation of the Bible. Later 20th century translations, especially the New Revised Standard Version also used these texts. However, the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Bible relied on the inspired Greek Septuagint, the 2nd century BCE version of the Hebrew inspired Bible. This was best represented by the 4th century CE Latin translation of the Vulgate by Jerome. Various translations during the 20th century, especially the Bible of Jerusalem, have used the structure of the Vulgate.
My Bible Project
All Christians begin their theological reflection with a reference to the Bible. All my life I have tried to understand the Christian message. As an emeritus professor of religious studies, I begin my retirement Bible project at the age of 74 in 2013, by reading the bible in French, La Sainte Bible: traduite en francais sous la direction du L’Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem, the 1961 edition of the Jerusalem Bible that I first studied in 1962. As a guide to help me with this translation I will use the New Revised Standard Version of the New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: An Ecumenical Study Bible Completely Revised and Enlarged, the 1994 edition.
For the New Testament I will also use Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine by Eberhard and Erwin Nestle and Kurt Aland, the 1960 edition that I used fifty years ago. To help with the Greek New Testament text, I will use The Jewish Annotated New Testament of the New Revised Standard Version, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, 2011, along with the two editions mentioned in the first paragraph. As a further aid I will use the on-line Bible Concordance http://biblesuite.com/h/hezron.htm.
Although the original texts had no chapters or verses, I will use the common chapter and verse format found in the Jerusalem Bible, along with the various titles and subtitles in the chapters of this edition. By reading in a language that is not my mother tongue, I hope to gain a greater comprehension of the texts beyond the common understanding. I will then write a short summary and commentary about each paragraph or section that I am reading, using the French and English versions, along with the various footnotes that these editions of the Bible have provided.
I am going to go through the Bible, book by book, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, paraphrasing and citing each section of Bible. This is not a task that will be accomplished in a year or two, or maybe ever at all. However, I set out on this adventure with a basic understanding of the Bible, as an old man who has spent some time reading and thinking about these writings. Now, I want to do it in a comprehensive sharing way.
Eugene Finnegan Bible Project 