I’m talking to a friend about the Bible, and we’ll need to check what the Bible actually says on a subject. My friend says, “Here, I’ve got a Bible in my back pocket” and he pulls out his “Bible.” But it’s not a full Bible. I blurt out, “That’s not a real Bible. That’s a half-Bible, a quarter-Bible.”
Old Testament professors are a bit defensive about pocket New Testaments that are billed as real Bibles. The Old Testament is over three-quarters of the Bible, you know.
But there’s one Old Testament book, that occasionally makes it into the elite status of the NT, so that it gets included into these quarter-Bibles.
The Book of Psalms (and occasionally Proverbs).
I’ve started a series of blogs on the Psalms for Biblical Seminary’s Faculty blog, beginning, of course, with Psalm 1. Check it out: The Rewards and Consequences of a Torah-Focused Life [Psalm 1].