Reading the Bible

Deacon Lee Hunt

 

1. Get a Bible with footnotes

"After this, in the visions of the night, I saw the fourth beast, different from all the others, terrifying, horrible, and of extraordinary strength; it had great iron teeth with which it devoured and crushed, and what was left it trampled with its feet." (Dan. 7:7).

 

This verse is from The Book of Daniel and was part of the daily Mass reading on Nov. 28.

 

How are we to understand a reading such as this? We need a Catholic Bible with footnotes.

 

The most helpful Bible is The New American Bible (NAB). All daily and Sunday readings in the United States are taken from NAB. This is the same Bible that is used to teach Old Testament and New Testament courses in our archdiocesan Pastoral Ministry Program.

 

Footnotes in the Bible take the scripture writings from centuries ago and put them in terms we can understand today. As an example, the NAB footnote for the above verse says, "Alexander’s empire was different from all the others in that it was Western rather than Oriental in inspiration." It’s necessary to read more of Daniel to get the overall idea.

 

You can find out more about Daniel from the publisher’s introduction to the book. For example, The Book of Daniel is apocalyptic literature, which was popular from about 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. This type of literature used symbolic numbers, colors, and the like to mask the message from the powers, who were persecuting the Jews of the author’s time. The author is unknown—Daniel is the hero in the book.

 

The Book of Revelation was written to hide the author’s message from the Romans who were persecuting the Christians around 90 A.D. Footnotes for this book are absolutely needed. Literal translations lead to serious misunderstandings.