So I finally gave in and bought a one-year bible. It’s been a dream of mine since college to read the bible in its entirety, and not just the passages they dole out ritualistically in church readings or the ones that get attention on the History channel with those fanatical doom and gloom evangelical and conspiracy theory pundits. The theatre lit professor who was teaching my class on Samuel Beckett, the playwright, lambasted the whole class for our humongous bible illiteracy. Beckett, like most scholars of his time, knew the bible inside and out and used biblical references throughout his work. I can still hear Ellen Mease screaming “And you all missed 90% of them,” and then going into a tirade of the inadequacy of the American educational system. “How are you supposed to read great literature and understand what the authors were trying to say if you don’t get the biblical references?” We all rolled our eyes secretly, eyes that said “yeah, yeah Ellen, whatever.”

But I never forgot her remark. I hate when I don’t get the references; it like so bugs me. I feel stupid and out-of-it when I don’t get things because I’m a smart girl and should get these seemingly simple things. But I never got around to actually wanting to fulfill this dream until a few years ago.

I started on my one-year bible plan three years ago, and that unfortunately only lasted through the middle of February before I gave up. It was too hard. The bible study plan I was using started off in The Old Testament and I don’t know about you but there are parts of the five books of the Torah that are just, I don’t know, unreadable. The people who put together the one-year bible must have first hand knowledge of the bible’s put you sleep state because each day has a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. Leviticus and its endless dietary restrictions should only be taken in small doses.

I also found the one-year bible online after I bought the book, so dummy me didn’t even have to spend the money. Oh well. My only issue with these bibles is the translations. Although I’m used to reading the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation, personally I like the New Standard Version (NSV). The NRSV takes the wonderful and violent language of the NSV and waters it down, makes it politically correct and I think infinitely more boring. But the one-year bibles that I saw at the bookstore in the Embarcadero only came in the New Living Translation (NLT) and the New International Version (NIV). The NIV is the most popular translation but it only came in the compact version, so I ended up buying the NLT not only because the book was bigger but I wasn’t sure what to make up the NIV introduction when I read that evangelicals endorsed it. That statement, I am embarrassed to say, was enough to scare me off that translation.

The online one-year bible gives you more options to translations, which I wish they would do for the book version. I guess it makes sense for the publisher to print translations of bible that they know will be bought.

So okay, I know it’s March 7 and I have January and February to get caught up with in my reading plan, but I’m hoping that I will be able to fulfill my dream to read the whole bible.