Features

Oftentimes the Bible becomes a book too bulky and we even find some of its narratives uninteresting.

This Concise Bible presents:

a COLLECTION of the most IMPORTANT MOMENTS 
of the Bible, with SHORT INTRODUCTION and NOTES
     for better understanding and easy reading.

 

What we call “The Bible” is a complete library, gathering 74 books, with all imaginable style: poetry, fiction, novels, laws, history, moral treatises, theological reflections …. a bit of everything. These books were written in the course of many centuries. The oldest fragment possibly dates from 1800 before Christ. The most recent book is from 95 – 100 after Christ.

In a book with so many different topics, its “truth” depends also in its genre. What is the truth of poetry? What is the truth of a novel? All these genres are present in the Bible: every passage has to be understood in its own genre.

 

We are used to reading the Bible as Word of God, and rightly so. But this does not mean that every sentence is a definitive and untouchable Word. We know how Jesus himself completed and even changed the Old Testament. Therefore, each text has its “own truth,” frequently provisional, as a discovery that is better than the previous one but worse that the future. That is how we can understand things of the Old Testament that today appear wrong: these are steps in the long ladder that bring us to the summit: Jesus. And sometimes the steps are way far from the summit.

 

 

To select the text of the different books of the Bible
for the compilation of this CONCISE BIBLE,

we have CHOSEN PASSAGES from some books,
paying attention to particular chapters,
and within the chapters, and within the chapters
to some concrete verses
(the small number preceding the sentence).

THE PURPOSE

It is not our purpose to hide anything, since the Christian Community Bible upon which selection is based, can be consulted at any time. The purpose is to summarize or, rather, adapt a book, the Bible that is extremely long and that many people, children, youth, women and men, do not dare to read because it is too long.

We have kept the paragraphs of the chosen texts with their own numbering in chapters and verses, giving the impression that some text is lacking. That is not so. Through the continuous reading of the text the reader still finds its complete meaning and it is perfectly well adjusted to the intention that has guided us in the preparation of this CONCISE BIBLE.