Biblical Top 10s

Our Sunday Visitor had an article on “Taking a tour of biblical Top 10s." Following is an outline. Thought you would find it interesting. See the full article here.

Tip for fruitful Scripture reading:
10. Bible reading is for Catholics
9. Prayer is the beginning and the end.
8. Get the whole story.
7. The Bible isn’t a book.
6. Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t.
5. The sum is greater than the parts.
4. The Old relates to the New.
3. You do not read alone.
2. What is God saying to me?
1. Reading isn’t enough.

Top 10 Cities:
10. Ephesus
9. Capernaum
8. Athens
7. Emmaus
6. Antioch
5. Damascus
4. Nazareth
3. Bethlehem
2. Rome
1. Jerusalem

Top 10 Biblical Mountains:
Mountains of Arara
9. Mount Hermon
8. Moriah
7. Mount Nebo
6. Mount Tabor
5. Mount Gerizim
4. Mount Carmel
3. Mount of Olives
2. Mount Sinai
1. Mount Zion

Top 10 Love Stories:
10. Tobiah and Sarah
9. The woman of worth and Her (unnamed) Husband
8. Hosea and Gomer
7. Abraham and Sarah
6. Moses and Zipporah
5. Zechariah and Elizabeth
4. Jacob and Rachel
3. The bride and groom in the Song of Songs
2. Joseph and Mary
1. God and his people.

Top ten sayings:
10. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be open to you."
9. "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;/lesson be the name of the Lord!"
8. "So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
7. "God saw that it was good."
6. "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men."
5. "May it be done to me according to your word."
4. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever."
3. “I am the way and the truth and the life."
2. "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is your God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength."
1. "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you."

Ten Biblical people, places or fax you should know:
10. People or places are often called by different names.
9. No single copy of the original Bible exists.
8. The Bible does not predict the end of the world.
7. "God helps those who help themselves" is not a biblical verse.
6. Several women were early supporters of Jesus and the early Christians.
5. Not all Pharisees were against Jesus.
4. The number of Magi visited Jesus is never specified.
3. The Bible is the most translated book in history.
2. The books of the Bible are not in chronological order.
1. The Bible is salvation history.

Jerusalem = Heaven

Canterbury Tales has an interesting post entitled "14 Biblical Names for Jerusalem (and How to Read the Psalms like a Catholic)"

Excerpt:

Saint Paul identifies the communion of saints in Heaven as "Jerusalem" and as our mother: “But that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother” (Galatians 4:26, D-R).

This is another reason why Catholics refer to the Church as the New Jerusalem and as Holy Mother Church. When Catholic priests, monks, and nuns chant the 150 Psalms of David, they often mentally apply the meaning of "Heaven" or "Church" to those passages that refer to "Jerusalem." Saint Paul's use of allegory in Galatians serves as an interpretive key to reading the Old Testament in a spiritual way.

Read the rest here.

Pope Benedict on the Bible

Pope Benedict has written an apostolic exhortation on the Bible, Verbum Domini. An overview of the document can be found here.

The text of the document in plain text or MS Word can be found here.

H/T Opinionated Catholic

The Psalms

From Fr. McBride's Guide to the Bible by Alfred McBride, P.Praem

 

The Psalms Are Songs of Faith

 

Psalms 1-150
Sing to the Lord a new song.

Psalm 96:1

For some reason, we don't ordinarily picture a soldier writing Church poetry. But that is exactly what the warrior King David did. He did not write all of the 150 psalms, but so great was his influence on the composition of psalms, that the book of Psalms has borne his name as the author ever since. The psalms are prayers, but people today sometimes find it hard to really think of them that way. Here are some considerations that might be helpful in understanding the psalms.

He Who Sings Prays Twice

St. Augustine says that he who sings prays twice. It is too bad that most people regard the psalms as a text to be read silently. The psalms are the "songs" of faith: war chants, victory songs, enthronement anthems, hymns about nature. In the shadow of the temple, fraternities of musicians gathered to compose melodies for the psalms.

There has been a revival in psalm singing, prompted by the work of Father Joseph Gelineau and Father Lucien Deiss, French priest-musicians and many other composers. The popularity of the guitar has an impact on the singing of psalms, not just because David used a stringed instrument, but because it suits the vigorous rhythm of the words and the excitement of the situation.

Israelite Poetry

The poetry of the Israelites is somewhat different from our ordinary idea of what poetry should be. There is no rhyme nor fixed rhythm in the sense we would normally expect. It's true that the free verse movement has given us a broad idea of what poetry can be. Israelite poetry might be summed up in the saying: never say anything once that you can say twice, and better still three times. The rhythm of the psalms is a rhythm of ideas. The psalms rhyme thoughts. In the following examples see how the second line parallels the idea of the first:

 

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us.

Psalm 67:1

Thy solemn procession are seen, O God
the processions of my God, my Kind, into the sanctuary.

Psalm 68:24

How long, O Lord? Wilt thou be angry forever?
Will thy jealous wrath burn like fire?

Psalm 79:5

The rhythm of the poetry of the psalms is a rhythm (and rhyming) of ideas. An idea is stated and then repeated with different shades of meaning. It is the balanced drumming of a declaration that arises from the heart of one who has known the miracle of God and now speaks out of the ecstasy of response. Some psalms are the result of the experience of miracle and ecstasy. By miracle we mean the appearance of a mighty act of God, such as the Red Sea victory; by ecstasy we refer to the joyous, human faith-experience of God's work. Other psalms reflect the quiet presence of God experienced by a solitary shepherd, a religious experience when applied to God as the shepherd who protects us from harm even when we are in the valley of the shadow of death.

 

The Psalms Celebrate Events as Mighty Acts of God

It is true that we in the Western world love to reason, but this love need not exclude poetic experience. The psalms in deed revel in such vivid images as: mountains that dance, seas that howl like animals, clouds that ride in the sky as noble horsemen of God, and lightening that writes like a pencil God's presence into the hollows of the earth. When we can admit that these descriptions are real and not just fanciful ways of talking about God, we can accept the message of the psalms.

It was characteristic of the Israelites to find the presence of God in nature and history. It was the unique privilege of the Israelites to see and know that God was really doing something in this world. It has, after all, always been his world, but it takes a long time for many to admit it.

We owe a tribute to Israel for being perceptive enough to know that the events of nature and history are not just simple happenings, but the very acts of God. In the psalms we see that the Israelites had the original insight into God's presence in the movement of history. Put in another way, it was the Israelites who were really the first ones to see the divine purpose in history. As they saw the unfolding of historical events, they came to understand their history as salvation history. They learned to attribute these events to the presence of God.

 

H/T The Happy Catholic