23 April, 2010

The Bible in 66 verses

Sarah Wilson at Lutheran Forum had an idea whose greatness cannot be summarized in a few words: pick one verse from each book of the Bible as its representative. (h/t)

I don't agree with all the representatives, but that's to be expected, I think: any such list is inherently subjective. As at least one commenter points out, we Catholics will naturally pick the correct verse will sometimes choose a verse with a different emphasis. In fact, different Lutherans, different Catholics, different Episcopalians, etc. will likely choose different verses, although most would have to turn to those books for the first time in their lives. Who knows, if you tried enough people you'd likely get nearly the entire Bible before long.

I think I'll take a stab at it over the next few weeks, but in a slightly different way.

  1. Due to time constraints, I'll do it piecemeal: choices from each of a few books here one day, choices from each of a few other books on other days.
  2. In many cases, I might cheat, and break her rule about only one verse. But I'll try not to do so.
  3. Since I pray the Psalms on occasion (not as often as I'd like) I am very uncomfortable with picking only one verse from the entire collection of Psalms. There are certain natural groups in the Psalms, and I'll try to limit myself to one verse from each group.
As a follow up, I'd suggest picking one sentence (or short passage) from each of the Doctors of the Church that adequately represents his or her insight. Alas, I haven't read all the Doctors of the Church, and probably never will, although that was once a goal of mine. So such a list would have to be partial, of necessity.

Update: Due to a CSS error, a joke I put in might have seemed like a serious remark, and offensive to non-Catholics. That should be corrected now—sorry; I really didn't mean any offense.

1 comment:

Clemens said...

Episcopalians never take offense at poking fun, teasing, or outright insults.