One year ago the International Bible Society published the first editon of The Books of the Bible, a TNIV Bible that had been re-organized in a literary and canonical way and with a text void of verse numbers, comments, sidebars, fun facts, and study notes.  It is literally, the books of the Bible...that's it.

The first edition made its way onto my birthday wish list, and ever since then it has been my primary Bible for reading.  I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you on TBotB's first birthday.  The questions come from an informal questionarre I was sent by IBS staff to help them put together supplemental material for TBotB.

Hopefully, IBS will come out with a hardcover edition soon with extra wide margins and space to journal...just for me?

What new experiences have you had reading the Scriptures with The Books of The Bible?

When I read using The Books of the Bible I am able to read "complete thoughts" and understand how the passage works together as a whole.  Puncuation is incredibly important to any written work, and so it is with the Bible.  Unfortunately, for so long verses acted as foreign punctuation that compartimentalized and fragmented passages into ill-conceived snippets and phrases.  Now, as I read with TBotB, I don't read the Bible as a laundry list of presuppositions but instead as literature, as a narrative.

More importantly, I have been able to more fully experience the different genres of the Bible like I never had before.  The Psalms, devoid of verse markings, headings, and notations, are presented as the lyrics that they are.  The multi-genre books, such as some of Paul's epistles with songs and doxologies, are also clearly defined and presented as the voice of the work intended.

I think that TBotB works very well with lectio divina at an individual level and corporate reading at a small group/congregational level.

I remember being astonished the first time I learned that the early church read whole epistles at church services.  I wondered at how far we had changed, to go from reading whole books or passages to reading three or four verses then hearing a man or woman, and not God, speak the rest of the time.  Maybe one of the reasons the early church heard from God in services more often is because they actually heard God's Word and not the words of a pastor.

At the level of preaching, I think the TBotB will guide the pastor to preach more thematically and with a narrative theology as opposed to a close reading/exegesis of verses.  It is far harder to preach narrowly when one is presented with whole paragraphs of material instead of just one or two verses to focus on (and thus distort).

As to lectio divina, it is a rewarding experience for me to read a passage over and over, meditate on it, pray on it, pray through it, and contemplate it thorughout the day.  It was harder for me to do lectio divina with a Bible other than TBotB because of all the clutter on the pages.  Like a Quaker going to meeting, I am greeted by a silence on the page as I read, a silence that helps me hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit.