SEMINAR - 1 (Salvation History) Dom Caedmon, OSB Introductory Notes Scope and Limitation of the course You are not aiming at getting a degree or license in Biblical Studies or Theology, therefore, we will not go into detail each single book contained in the Bible. We will simply look and mention them in passing. If there are important key points that interest you, we can talk about it. The notes I will give you summarize important matters and concerns worth discussing for lectures. But doing and having them for lectures would mean attending or being physically present every meeting with no excuse, which would deprive you of your focus and attention meant for your major subjects. Therefore, all you need to do is read the notes I will assign or give, try to understand and retain in your mind things that you think are important and be ready for quiz or recitation. The Bible - What is it? Word of God - as such, it is considered Holy; because it is (sacred scripture or sacred writing), it appears totally and historically accurate, therefore we refuse to question or cast doubt. Book of Truth - used to prove something by some people to their own satisfaction, or at least for some point of view which they hold. The Bible becomes a “proof text” which is actually not, because we can’t just pick out isolated quotations, lines or verses to support a given position or point of view. This is the most common harm or abuse many people commit in relation to the Bible. This is true both to Christians/Catholics or non-Catholics alike. And because the book itself or the Bible can easily be obtained in our present time, anyone or those who call themselves Christians may read the Bible, BUT may not understand it in the same way. This is due partly to the complexities of language. Ex. Even during recitation or essay test, we've all had the experience of saying something in an effort to express a particular idea, only to have our hearers or readers misunderstand us. The complexities are multiplied when we attempt to communicate across barriers of time, culture or language.In reading the Bible, one will come across different human situations, reflections of every emotion, and paints of vivid pictures of all kinds of people ~ good and bad. Hence, it is easy to call or classify it as a great literature. But by doing so, we are limiting the power of the Bible itself where we find answers to great questions in life such as; why are we here? What is the source of created things? Is there a God? If so, what is he like? How ‘ought we live? What will happen to us when we die? (and many other important questions related to our life and existence.) In other words, it is possible to call the Bible a great literature, but incorrect, because there is so much that we can and we need to find. It challenges us to believe and hope, to love and give, to sacrifice and share, to forgive and be forgiven, to grow and trust. In other words, we may appreciate the Bible as a great literature, but will fully comprehend it only when we see it as a means for dialogue with the living God. When you read the le, keep in mind that it a collection of many books. (The word bible comes from the Greek biblia, meaning “books.” And as most of you already knew, there are two divisions of the Bible: the Old Testament, written before the time of Jesus Christ; and the New Testament, written during the one hundred years after Christ's death and resurrection. Most Bibles have a table of contents enumerating the various books in the Old and New Testaments as well as a list of abbreviations commonly used for the books. Each book is divided into chapters and verses. The system in use today was not a part of the original Bible, and breaks for chapters and verses are frequently not synchronized with the meaning of the text. But it does provide a universally accepted method for finding citations from the Bible. Authorship, Inspiration and Human Limitation, Interpretation With advancement in technologies, most of us are aware how events are captured by a television camera, broadcast from a station and received into our homes. In a way, we may not understand so clearly how God sends messages to us or how we receive them. But through our Jewish-Christian tradition, we learn that God communicates with us through the beauty of nature, through events in our lives, through other people, and through the experience of prayer. We learn also that we listen to God by tuning our senses and our intellect, our memory and our will, our imagination and our emotions, to the reality of God's presence, action and communication. In our homes and private rooms, watching quality pictures of our favorite TV news or programs depend on many factors (faulty tuning, defective antenna, sound, weak signals and receptions, etc.) This is also true if we are using computers. Downloading programs, games or movies become slower once wealmost consumed the bandwidth allotted for our use each month. The same thing happens when we use our cell phones, there are areas where signals are weak, worse if the place is a dead spot, and so it takes time to download something or watch programs. Similarly, the quality of the messages and images we receive from God can also be clouded by many factors. Our minds can be blinded by sin. Conflicting messages that deny the existence of God can confuse our hearts, Our senses and intellect, memory and will, imagination and emotions, maybe so burdened down with earthly pursuits and material things, that we find it almost impossible to direct our attention to what is important. The Bible was written long ago over a span of thousand years by people who belonged toa culture far different from ours, and who spoke languages we do not understand. The Bible uses literary forms (types of literature) that vary greatly from ours. Many of the most important words of the Bible (those of Jesus) were spoken in one language (Aramaic), written down in another (Greek) and translated into a third (English) Small wonder then that we have problems discerning the meaning of the Bible. It is the belief of the Catholic Church and many other Christian churches that the Bible also has God as its author. This means that we can expect a degree of reliability available nowhere else. But it adds further complications. You may ask - How can God and human. beings be authors of the same writings? How should such writings be interpreted? In Jewish-Christian history, there have been people who searched for God with such intensity that they saw God's face and heard God’s voice. They were inspired by God. Their experience of God in nature, people, events and prayer may have been similar to the ways in which we encounter God. In some cases, they may have been inspired in scholarly research without realizing that God was working through them. In other words, they may have received God's inspiration in dramatic revelations, as Isaiah did through visions. But whether they were inspired through natural processes or miraculous occurrences, they reported their experiences to others. Eventually, the Jewish or Christian communities to which they belonged recognized their perceptions of God to be authentic, recorded those perceptions, and treasured them as sacred. In time, under God's guidance, the community collected such sacred writings into a book which expressed its beliefs of generations to come. Unlike books written in our present time wherein mostly you will find single authors, it is safe to say that the ancients did not share our contemporary understanding of authorship. For them, the writing was the important thing; who wrote it was secondary. The official position of the Catholic Church is that God inspired the human authors of the Bible to write using their own talents, abilities and styles. God did not just dictate messages to them or use them asa ventriloquist uses a dummy. Therefore, we can best understand any part of the Bible by going back to the time and place of its human author and discover 3what that author intended to express. Bear in mind that the Bible contains a wide range of different types of writing such as: epic, laws, history, poetry, romance, proverbs, prophesies, letters, popular philosophy, official documents, account of scandals, speeches, folktales and legends, songs and hymns, parables, and a lot more. ‘And because the Bible came from inspired authors through a community, the perceptions of God preserved in the Bible differ from non-biblical perceptions. Those in the Bible have special standing because they are recognized by the community, the Church, as inspired by God. By now, it should be obvious to you that the Bible must be interpreted in the right away. There are those who say that we can discern the meaning of the Bible from the words alone. But the passage of thousand of years and the fact that the Bible was written in other languages for people of different cultures mean that the study and interpretation are necessary if we want to gain a proper understanding of the Bible. The more we can “transport” ourselves back into their time and culture, the more likely we are to understand what the authors were trying to say. In the Bible are visions of God handed on to us by Abraham, by Moses, by the Jewish community. In the Bible are visions given to us by Luke, by Paul, by the Christian community. Through the books of the Bible, our ideas of God are clarified and our ability to speak with God is improved. The Bible puts us in touch with God in a unique and powerful way. The History Behind the Bible - “B.C.” ‘The development of the Bible occurred in human history. Anyone wanting to become familiar with the Bible should be acquainted with the history of the Jewish and Christian communities that gave birth to the Bible. In the following readings, you will find a brief survey of main events in order to provide you with basic framework to get acquainted and further understand this course. ‘The survey begins with Abram, a native of Ur, an ancient city north of the Persian Gulf, In about 1900 B.C. Abram’s family migrated to Haran, a city near the present-day Turkish-Syrian border. (Keep in mind that many dates related to Old Testament history are approximate). In Haran, Abram received a call from God to move to Canaan (the territory known at various times as the Promised Land, Israel, Judah, Judea, Palestine, and the Holy Land). God made a covenant with Abram, changing his name to Abraham and promising that he and his wife, Sarah (changed from Sarai), would have a son, the first in a long line of descendants. That son, Isaac, became the father of Jacob, who had twelve sons. In about 41720 B.C Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt, where their descendants, the Hebrews, eventually became slaves. ‘About 1250 B.C. a Hebrew named Moses heard God telling him to guide his people to freedom in the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. Moses led the Hebrews (also known as Israelites and later as Jews) in a daring escape. At Mt. Sinai he received a new sign of God's covenant in the Ten Commandments, then shepherded the Israelites as they wandered in the desert for forty years. Moses died before entering the Promised Land, and his lieutenant, Joshua, led the people into Canaan. A period of conquest followed, with the twelve tribes (divisions of the Hebrew people named after the twelve sons of Jacob) setting in various parts of Canaan. They fought with the land’s inhabitants (Philistines and others) through a long frontier period called the time of the Judges. About 1020 B.C. Saul, a charismatic leader, began to bring the tribes together and was named king. He eventually went insane and was killed in battle. He was replaced by a young soldier named David. Beginning about 1000 B.C, David united the tribes, set up Jerusalem as the center of his government, and made Israel a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East. In 961 B.C. his son Solomon, succeeded him as king and built a magnificent Temple in Jerusalem. But in his later years, Solomon fell into the worship of false gods and alienated his people with heavy taxes and forced labor. His son, Rehoboam, continued these policies, and in 922 B.C. a civil war split the people into two kingdoms - Israel in the north with Samaria as its capital; and Judah in the south with its capital in Jerusalem (some scholars give the date as 927 B.C. or 931 B.C.) Both kingdoms were plagued with poor leadership and by the people's infidelity toward God. In 721 B.C. Israel was attacked by Assyria (part of modern Iraq); its leading citizens were slaughtered or dragged into exile. Other captives from foreign lands were brought into Israel by the Assyrians; they intermarried with Israelites who had been left behind, forming the people known as the Samaritans. In S87 B.C. Judah was conquered by Babylon (also part of modern Iraq). Jerusalem was sacked, its wall destroyed, and its Temple demolished. The survivors were taken into exile in Babylon. A few decades later, Cyrus, king of Persia, defeated Babylon. He allowed the Israelites to return home in 539 B.C. Those who went back found Jerusalem a heap of ruins. Harassed on every side by enemies, they finished building a new Temple about 515 B.C. and rebuilding the city walls in 445 B.C. But their hopes of regaining the glory of Kind David's time were doomed to disappointment. A soldier and conqueror named Alexander the Great took command of their government in 332 B.C. After his death, Egypt and Syria vied for control of the Jewish nation, and in 167 B.C. the Syrians launched a terrible persecution of the Jews. They were resisted by a family of warriors, the Maccabees, who succeeded in gaining independence in s142 B.C. This lasted until 63 B.C. when the Romans conquered Jerusalem and made Palestine (Idumea, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee) a vassal state. In 37 B.C. Herod the Great was set up by the Romans as king; both a despot and a tireless builder, he ruled until 4 B.C. ‘About two years before the end of his reign, Jesus Christ was born. The History Behind the Bible — “A.D.” Jesus was raised in the town of Nazareth, about 60 miles north of Jerusalem. He learned the trade of his foster father, Joseph, a carpenter. At about the age of thirty, Jesus began to preach a message that stirred the hearts of many Israelites: The kingdom of God was being established on earth and the hopes of believers would be fulfilled through Jesus. He demonstrated remarkable powers by working miracles of healing. He gathered a band of twelve apostles as special assistants. Many who heard his teaching and saw his miracles hoped that Jesus would be the new King David, a messiah (savior) who would overthrow the Romans and make their country a world power once again. Jesus refused to endorse such hopes, for his kingdom was not of this world. Nevertheless, Jesus’ popularity caused alarm among the Sadducees and Herodians, the ruling classes among the Jewish people. Collaborators with the Romans, they were afraid that the large crowds surrounding Jesus might be incited to revolt. Another important class in Palestine, the Pharisees were infuriated when Jesus criticized their insistence that people could be saved only by observing the thousands of detailed rules they handed down. Eventually, the Sadduccees, Herodians, and Pharisees plotted against Jesus. With the cooperation of Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles, Jesus was arrested, subjected to an unfair trial before the Jewish high court, the Sanhedrin, and was sentenced to death. Because the Jewish leaders did not want blamed for Jesus’ death, and because they wanted him to undergo the humiliation of Roman crucifixion, they had him condemned to death by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. He was crucified on a Friday afternoon between two criminals ata p lace called Golgotha, outside the walls of Jerusalem. He died after hours of agony, and a Roman soldier thrust a spear into his side to guarantee the fact of his death. Jesus was buried and his tomb sealed by a huge stone. Soldiers were posted to guard the spot, and his enemies felt that they were rid of him forever. But on the following Sunday morning, the tomb was found open and empty. No one knew what to make of it until Jesus appeared to his followers risen and glorious, no longer limited by time and space. For a period of forty days, Jesus appeared to his apostles and others. He reminded them of how he foretold his death and Resurrection as God's way of overcoming death and of bringing eternal life to all. He told his followers to preach the Good News of this salvation to the world, taught them that they were to be the sign of hiscontinuing presence on earth, and then ascended into heaven. Ten days later, the followers of Jesus were touched by the power of God's Spirit. Led by Peter, the first among the apostles, they began to preach to huge crowds that the risen Jesus was the messiah hoped for by the Jewish people. They invited their hearers to put their faith in Christ and to be joined to Christ by Baptism. The number of believers grow into thousands, but opposition from Jewish leaders grew also. In A.D. 36, six years after Christ's Resurrection, a persecution broke out, led by a Pharisee named Saul. He oversaw the execution of a Church leader, Stephen, and threw many believers into prison. Then came a dramatic and unexpected development. Saul had a vision of the risen Christ and began to proclaim Jesus as the messiah. Other believers, forced out of Jerusalem by persecution, began to preach the Good News of Jesus to Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). In spite of further persecutions, Christians continued to preach, grow in number, and care for one another. Gradually, they moved away from their Jewish ties because of the persecutions and because so many Jews refused to accept Jesus as the messiah. Christianity soon spread throughout the civilized world, Saul, now known as Paul, and other missionaries preached Christ in Asia Minor, Europe, Africa, and Asia, their task made easy by Roman roads and Roman peace. But then Rome became a foe. The Emperor Nero started a persecution against Christians in the mid-sixties and, according to tradition, martyred both Peter and Paul in Rome. By every logic, the mighty Roman Empire should have crushed Christianity, but persecution only spurred further growth. Rome played a major part in another important development. After the death of Herod Agrippa in A.D. 44, rebels in Judea known as Zealots pressed for a holy war against Romans. In A.D. 66 the unrest exploded into a full blown revolt. In A.D. 70 the Romans besieged Jerusalem, slaughtered its inhabitants, and reduced the city to ruins. The Temple was no more, and Christianity was separated even further from its Jewish roots. Christians soon developed a sense of their own identity as a Church. Patterns of Church structure were established. Local churches were led by bishops and assisted by priests and deacons. Those who succeeded Peter as Bishop of Rome were seen to possess the same authority Peter had received from Jesus; they were first among bishops as Peter had been first among the apostles. Periodic persecutions by Roman authorities continued, but the Church flourished. By the year A.D. 100 there were 300,000 to 500,000 believers. In A.D. 313 when Christians numbered several million, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued the decree of Milan, granting religious tolerance to the Church. Christianity had become a catholic (universal) Church as Christ has intended.The books of the Old and New Testament [Aside from different ideas and opinions mentioned about what the Bible is all about, it is important to keep in mind that it is actually a collection of many books (bible from Greek word biblia, meaning “books"), divided into two major divisions as mentioned earlier: Old Testament, written before the time of Jesus, and the New Testament, written during the one hundred years after Christ’s death and Resurrection. Each of the books is divided into chapters and verses. The system we use today was not part of the original Bible. The breaks for chapters and verses are frequently not synchronized with the meaning of the text, but it does provide a universally accepted method for finding citations and easy reference. For a complete list of books in the Bible, please refer to your book, Catechism for Filipino Catholics, page xxii. You may check and use also your own bible in case you have a personal copy, but make sure it is a Catholic Edition. You will know why in the next pages. The formation of books in the Old Testament The Jewish people see Abraham as their father in faith and Moses as the leader who brought them from slavery into freedom. We might assume, given the importance of ‘Abraham and Moses, that the sacred book of the Jewish people (the Old Testament) would date back to these great leaders. The descendants of Abraham and Moses certainly passed down stories about these heroes as well as their teachings from generation to generation. They also related traditions about their background and religious beliefs in song and narratives, poetry and parables, legends and laws. But these stories, traditions and beliefs did not reach their present form until later. There are many theories about how these happened, One theory (modified and refined over the years) holds that the Old Testament developed from different sources. A first set of traditions during the reigns of David and Solomon. These traditions, including some of the best known and most loved stories of the Bible, used “Yahweh’ as the name for God, and so are called Yahwist. After the civil war of 922 B.C, another set of traditions, which used “Elohim” as the name for God is called Elohist, was put into writing in the northern kingdom. When the northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 B.C, the Elohist documents were taken south where they were merged with the Yahwist tradition. About this time, laws of north and south were codified in a document now known as the Deuteronomist (“second laws”) tradition. After the southern kingdom fell to the Babylonians, leaders of the Israelites began to focus more closely on the spiritual meaning of their identity as God’s people. They put into writing a fourth set of documents known as the Priestly tradition. Finally, an editor or group ofeditors blended together the four traditions to form the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) - dearly loved by the Jews as their Torah or Law. During the long period of the formulation of the Pentateuch, other books of the Bible were being written. The Deuteronomist tradition produced Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings, which put a theological interpretation on the events of Israelite history from the Exodus through the fall of Jerusalem. Great preachers and spiritual leaders, known as the prophets, urged the people of Israel and Judah to be faithful to God’s covenant (I will be your God and you will be my people- Gen. 17-7). Their sermons and many of the details of their lives were recorded in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. With the building of the Temple came the temple worship. For centuries, songs used in this worship were collected with other religious and instructional poetry, then arranged several centuries before Christ into the Book of Psalms (Psalter). From the tenth to the fifth centuries before Christ, other kinds of writing evolved: collections of wise sayings like Proverbs, stories like Ruth designed to teach religious lessons, and reflections on the problems of life like Job. In the fourth century before Christ, efforts to see God's providence in the events of history found expressions in the writings of the Chronicler (1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah). As Israel found itself under attack by Greece, Egypt and Syria, great writers composed stories like Tobit, Judith and Esther, teaching the virtues of fidelity, devotion, courage and trust in God. The trials endured by the Israelites during such hard times caused wise teachers to examine the meaning of life in books like Ecclesiastes (“vanity of vanities, all things are vanity’; “there is a time for everything”) and Sirach (“always be ready to listen but take time in answering’; “kindness to a father will not be forgotten”). ‘The Syrian persecution and Maccabean revolt became the focus of 1 & 2 Maccabees, written about 100 B.C. A special kind of literature called apocalypse developed during the Syrian persecution. Using visions, numerical codes and symbols, the authors of such literature, represented by the Book of Daniel (especially chapters 7-12) tried to encourage the oppressed to persevere. Finally, about the middle of the first century before Christ, a Jew who was familiar with Greek thinking and Hebrew traditions wrote the Wisdom of Solomon to proclaim God's presence in the world, the immortality of the human soul and God's Final Judgment rewarding the just and punishing the wicked. When were these books formed into a collection we know as the Old Testament? By the time of the return from exile, there were compilations of sacred writings that were proclaimed to the people on special occasions. For example, the Book of Nehemiah, describes how Ezra, the priest-scribe, read to the people of Jerusalem the book of the law 9of Moses, most likely a portion of the Pentateuch (Neh. 8). Also by this time, there were apparently two collections of sacred books in common use. One, in Hebrew, came to be known as the Palestinian. The other, in Greek, was called Septuagint (from the Greek word seventy, following a tradition that it came from seventy translators) or Alexandrian (from the city in Egypt where it originated). This version included some books written in Greek and Aramaic (spoken language of the Jews before and during the time of Christ) as well as. those translated from Hebrew, and so, was larger than the Palestinian collection. The Palestinian and Alexandrian (Septuagint) collections were honored by different Jewish communities, but since Greek was then the common language of the Mediterranean world, the Alexandrian collection became more widespread. Neither of these collections reached its definitive form until after the time of Christ. The Alexandrian collection was accepted by Christians as their Old Testament. The Palestinian collection was set by a group of Jewish scholars about A.D 100, partially in reaction to the Christian use of the Alexandrian collection. The formation of books in the New Testament and the Christian Bible After Christ's resurrection, missionaries spread the Good News of Jesus by preaching. Eventually, Christians felt a need to preserve their heritage in writing Collections of the sayings of Jesus, liturgical prayers, and profession of faith began to appear. In AD. 51 or 52, Paul started to write letters to the cities he had evangelized. These letters were preserved and shared. Soon, they were recognized as having a special authority. By ‘AD. 65 or 70, the Gospel of Mark was written, other gospels and writings followed. Some were accepted by the Church as inspired by God, while others were rejected. By A.D. 125 (at the latest) all twenty-seven books of our New Testament were written. By A.D. 250 or so, they were compiled into a list (canon) and were generally recognized as inspired. During these years, the sacred books of the Jewish people were evaluated by Christians. Since the entire New Testament was written in Greek for Greek-speaking Christians of Jewish and gentile origin, New Testament writers used the Alexandrian (Septuagint) version of the Old Testament. They usually quoted the Old Testament from the ‘Alexandrian version and frequently referred to the books found only in this version. Church councils (or gatherings of Church leaders) at Rome in A.D. 382, in Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 gave lists of the books of the Christian Bible based on the Alexandrian version. The early Church accepted the Bible as Catholics accept it today (twenty-seven New Testament books and forty-six Old Testament books; CCC 120). ‘There was little dissent until the sixteenth century, when Martin Luther and other protestant rejected the Alexandrian (Christian) list in favor of the Palestinian (Jewish) list. Luther also questioned the inspiration of four New Testament books: Hebrews, James, Jude 10and Revelation; however, his followers maintained the traditional list, and it soon prevailed. In 1546 the Council of Trent defined the Alexandrian as the official list of Old Testament books for Catholics and reaffirmed the traditional list of New Testament books. As a result, while Catholics and Protestants today share the same New Testament of twenty-seven books, the Catholic Old Testament contains seven more books than the Protestant: Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (sometimes called Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch (plus additions to Esther and Daniel). These are placed in some Protestant Bibles as the Apocrypha (hidden books), and at times called “deuterocanonical” books (second canon or list). The languages used in writing the books of the Bible are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. With the cooperation of different biblical scholars of all faiths, modern English translations are in substantial agreement with one another and accurately relay the ideas and feelings conveyed in the original languages. To the extent that they do, God, the divine Author of the Bible, speaks to us through the human authors of the Bible. With so many versions and editions of Bible available at present, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other, which one is more fitting to be taken for study and reflection, or which one is purely Catholic. Two important words that indicate that a particular Bible or book is Catholic: Nihil Obstat (Latin for "nothing hinders" or "nothing stands in the way") is a declaration of no objection to an initiative or an appointment. Apart from this general sense, the phrase is used more particularly to mean an “attestation by a church censor that a book contains nothing damaging to faith or morals". Another word to look for is Imprimatur which means, “let it be printed.” Technically, this is the bishop's official declaration that the book is free from doctrinal error and has been approved for publication by a censor. Keep in mind that theimprimaturis an official permission pertaining to works written by a member of the Church or community, and not by the official teaching Church, such as a Church council, synod, bishop, etc. An author can seek the imprimatur from his own bishop or from the bishop of the diocese where the work will be published for the use of the faithful. (Code of Canon Law, #826, 827.1) 1BIBLIOGRAPHY Catechism of the Catholic Church Code of Canon Law Collegeville Bible Commentary. Collegville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1989. Gilbert, Christopher. A Complete Introduction to the Bible. Mahwah, NJ. Paulist Press, 2009. Jesus and His Times. Pleasantville, NY. Reader's Digest, 1987. Jesus Christ, Word of the Father. Theological-Historical Commission for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997. Keller, Werner. The Bible as History. Second Revised Edition. New York: Bantam Books, 1983. Kodell, Jerome, 0.S.B. The Catholic Bible Study Handbook. Ann Arbor, MI. Servant Books, 1985. McKenzie, John, SJ. Dictionary of the Bible. Bruce, 1965. New Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition. Computer version. Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994. New Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition. Nashville, TN: Catholic Bible Press, 1993. Rogerson, |.W. Introduction to the Bible. USA. Penguin Publishing Group, 2000.