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Christian BooksSee also: Reasons to Become a Christian, Jesus, Christ.net.au (external link). This is a new page as of 23 August 2017, which will improve over time. This page shows some Christian Books which have helped and inspired me. I've been a Christian for about 10 years. This web page is new as of late August 2017 and will be updated and expanded. I'll also improve the book reviews and add more links to a bigger variety of booksellers. I've still got a lot more books on my shelves to add, and much more I could write about them... Which will happen gradually as I get the time to do it (like everything else on this website). What's On This Page?The Bible The BibleThe most obvious and important Christian book is of course the Bible. I'll be doing a whole web page about the Bible soon (like in the next month or two). Especially if you're new to reading the Bible, the first thing to know is that you don't have to start at the first page and then read all the way through to the end. In fact that's one of the worst ways to begin. I tried to do that when I was nine years old and got up to halfway through Exodus, the second book. And that was enough for me for a long time. The Bible is divided into two parts, the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT). The Bible is also divided into much smaller sections called books, which have names like Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Proverbs, Matthew, John, Revelation, etc. They are called books because in the ancient world, each would have been written on a separate document. It wasn't until the year 325 C.E. that all the books of the Bible were bound together into one single large book. This itself is a good reason why you don't need to feel like you're missing out if you don't read the entire Bible from front to back. Because the Bible isn't really just one book, it's a collection of many different ancient books translated into English. When you go to visit a library (even a small one), you probably don't get concerned if you don't start reading with the first book on the first shelf, and then read through all the books, in the order they store them on the shelves, finishing with the last book. You don't really need to do that with the Bible either. Each book is divided into chapters and each chapter into verses. The chapters and verses have numbers, which were not part of the original manuscripts but added around 1200-1600 A.D. The numbering makes it much easier to refer to specific parts of the Bible.
The Old and New TestamentThe Old Testament is about three times as long as the New Testament, i.e. the New Testament is about 1/4 of the whole Bible in length. The Old Testament begins with the creation story in the book of Genesis, and ends about 400 years before Jesus was born. The Old Testament is also used by Judaism, the religion of the Jewish race. The New Testament begins around the time Jesus was born, and contains all the words and stories of Jesus, the stories of the early Christian church, and other Christian documents. Therefore the New Testament is entirely Christian. The Old Testament is Jewish, rather than Christian, and there is much ongoing debate about to what extent Christians are supposed to follow it. At one extreme, some people say that Jesus came to replace the old system of law that was given by Moses, and Christians can ignore most of the rules of the OT. At the other extreme, some people say that Christians should still follow the entire Old Testament law, which includes some quite specific things like not eating pork or shellfish. There is support from the Bible for both of these views, for example: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Jesus speaking in Matthew 5:17, New International Version (NIV). By "Law", Jesus is talking about the Law of Moses, which is given in the first five books of the Old Testament, especially the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. "Prophets" usually refers specifically to the last 17 books of the Old Testament: Isaiah to Malachi. This first five books in this series (Isaiah to Daniel) are called the Major Prophets and the last twelve books (Hosea to Malachi) are called the Minor Prophets. However it's likely that by "the Law and the Prophets", here Jesus just means the entire Old Testament. The opposite view (that Christians don't have to obey the Old Testament) is supported by Acts 15: Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles [non-Jews] must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” The apostles and elders met to consider this question... Acts 15:5-6, NIV. “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.” Acts 15:19-20, NIV. Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers. With them they sent the following letter: The apostles and elders, your brothers, Acts 15:22-29, NIV. So perhaps we can say that Christians are supposed to obey the New Testament completely, and also to obey the Old Testament but only in a limited and less strict fashion. There is also a third collection of books, which Catholics call the deuterocanonical books, and Protestants call the apocrypha. Most of these books fall into the time period between the Old and New Testaments. They are included as part of the Old Testament in most Catholic Bibles and not included in most Protestant Bibles.
How to Begin Reading the BibleTo begin reading the Bible I recommend starting with the New Testament. You can just flick through the pages and browse-read different parts that catch your eye. If you have enough commitment, I recommend reading the whole Book of Mark, from front to back. You don't have to read it all at once. It's got 16 chapters so if you read two chapters a day, you'd finish the book on the same day of the following week. There are several reasons why Mark is a good book to read first, which I'll list more fully sometime later. One reason that you won't see in many other places is that the book of Mark (in many translations) mentions the word "wilderness" four times on the first page. Which is obviously a good way to begin reading the Bible from the perspective of a wilderness survival website. Some other translations use the word "desert" instead of wilderness, presumably because in that part of the Middle East, the wilderness largely was a desert. Next perhaps the Book of John. Matthew and Luke contain many stories that are also in Mark, plus a lot of additional ones. You could read all or parts of the book of Acts. You could also browse from Psalms and Proverbs in the Old Testament. The Book of Romans describes the basics of the Christian faith perhaps more than any other book. The last book, Revelation, is cool but uses a lot of poetic language which is hard to understand. You can read the Bible online in many places, such as Bible Gateway, and also download Bible apps for mobile devices. Nearly all the free apps either have ads and/or don't actually contain the Bible itself — but are really only a specialised browser that connects to an online server which actually stores the Bible. This means you can only read while you have an active internet connection. The apps which actually have the Bible text included in the app are usually called "offline Bibles". Bible TranslationsThere are many different English translations of the Bible, which can be confusing at first. English Bible translations are made from old documents written in ancient languages (Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). Sometimes the original ancient language was translated into another ancient language, for example the very first translation of the Hebrew Bible was into Greek. This is known as the Septuagint (LXX), and was used by the early Christian church. Roughly, you could group the Bible translations into three categories: 1. Very old style translations, by far the most popular of these today is the King James Version; 2. Modern translations; and 3. Paraphrases. Where the word "paraphrase" is used for a version of the Bible which has had the text changed significantly more than the non-paraphrase versions (which are usually just called translations). Some well known versions in each of these categories are:
The more literal translations are harder to read but more accurate (assuming you know the ancient meanings of the words used, which are often different to modern meanings). The less literal translations are easier to read and easier to understand, but have been changed more than the literal translations, so you're relying on the translators to accurately convey the meaning from ancient language to modern language. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum is a good compromise for most people. The most popular translation used in Protestant churches in Australia is the NIV, with the KJV second. The most popular Catholic translations are (I think) the RSV and the NRSV. The translations I read the most are the NIV, KJV, and The Message; I also have the NRSV with the deuterocanonical books though I'd like to get an RSV since I think I'd prefer the more traditional version to the NRSV.
Majority vs. Minority TextThere is also the debate concerning the Majority Text (a.k.a. the Byzantine text-type) versus the Minority Text (a.k.a. the Alexandrian text-type). The majority text refers to the Manuscripts of the Byzantine family, which represent the vast majority of the 5700 manuscripts that have currently been found and collated. Supporters of the Majority Text say that this means these manuscripts are more accurate, because there are so many of them. The minority text refers to older manuscripts, which are believed by their supporters to be more accurate because they are older (and therefore presumably more original) and because of certain other literary details. According to Wikipedia, "the Alexandrian text-type is witnessed by around 30 surviving manuscripts", which is a lot less than 5700. However the difference between these two types is not huge. Wikipedia says "All extant manuscripts of all text-types are at least 85% identical and most of the variations are not translatable into English, such as word order or spelling". Most translations used today are based on the Minority Text. The KJV and the NKJV are based on the Majority Text. People With Two Names in the BibleWhen I started reading the Bible, something I found pretty confusing is that so many people have two names. Some examples are: In the Old Testament, Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel. In the New Testament, Simon becomes Cephas (also written as Peter or Simon Peter), Saul becomes Paul, and there is "John whose other name was Mark" (from Acts 12:12 and 12:25) who is often called John Mark and is the traditional author of the Gospel (Book) of Mark. There's probably a lot more examples that I can't think of right now. After a while you get used to this. Here is a quiz based on this. Which Bible Translation to Read First?For Protestants I would go with the NIV just because it's the most popular (so the most likely you will hear used in church services) and also it's in the middle between translated literally and heavily modified. Alternatively, starting with a paraphrase can also be good, as these are even easier to read — which usually means you will both read more, and get more out of it. You could try looking at the Message Bible and see if you like it or not. Some people may wish to start with the KJV though this is a harder path, as the old-style language is much less clear in meaning than modern english when you're not used to reading it. Again you can have a look and see what you like the best. The New King James Version is another good choice, especially if you want a Bible based on the Majority Text but don't want the difficulty of the old style language in the KJV. Some people have already read parts of the Bible a long time ago, perhaps as a child, and didn't get anything that positive out of it. Perhaps it was forced on them even. In this case, changing to a different style of translation can be a very good way to re-experience the Bible as if it was fresh and new to them. To sum all this up in one sentence, the best Bible translation is the one you're going to read the most. Study BiblesIf you're the kind of person that likes to have more information available, rather than less; or you like to have things explained in detail, you could begin reading the Bible with a study bible. These contain the text of the Bible and then, usually lower down on the page, notes which are written by someone else that explain some of the verses. The New International Version (NIV) BibleThe NIV comes in three variations, the original 1970s version, the 1984 version and the 2011 version. The differences are quite minor from what I understand.
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