I sent the last Bible we had to Liese.

I still have mine from Catholic school. Also have ones from DH#1 and DH#2. I have no clue where they a re actually located. I think Bob's family bible is at my mom's house.

I've got a King James Bible and it sits on the shelf next to my Riverside Shakespeare and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (Not the Oxford English Dictionary because that's too big for that shelf.) Anyway, it's filed there because it's an important linguistic resource, like its shelf mates.

Not sure where JZ keeps her Catholic bible. Probably on our dresser.

I remember reading somewhere that, within the way that Jewish marriages are traditionally done, if you're already engaged, then it's easier to get married and then divorced than it is to break the engagement, but I don't know all the details of that.

Well, sure. I mean, the invitations have already gone out.

We have a ludicrous number of Bibles, in two languages. They hail from multiple sources: my time in the FAC, studying Biblical Literature at University, and Wallybee's church back in China. Finally, Wallybee's work as an interpreter often sees her in the Refugee Tribunal. A lot of those cases involve claims of religious persecution. She therefore needs Chinese-language and English-language Bibles for her job.

Lo and behold, we do have a Bible, so we looked it up, and Mary and Joseph were not yet wed when she became pregnant. I think they still weren't wed when she gave birth, but I'm not 100% on that.)

As I recall from someone's tipsy attempt to read the story, married, but knew her not until after the baby Jeebus went out the hoo-haw shoot.

Let's see, there's the Revised Standard Version Bible I got when I started Sunday School back in the Dark Ages, there's a Bhagavad Gita somewhere, a couple of Books of Mormon given by hopeful in-laws, I've got the Bible bookmarked so I can compare translations--Hubby might have a Koran somewhere, but I don't know. Oh, and various Catholic texts that I've picked up because catechism and how it changes fascinates me.

As I recall from someone's tipsy attempt to read the story, married, but knew her not until after the baby Jeebus went out the hoo-haw shoot.

So is that a translation issue? Because Tim's Bible is the NIV, and it was clear that they were unmarried at the time he took her to Bethlehem. Maybe the translation in the NIV is dodgy. I bet the NASB is online. Lemme look.

Dang, I can't believe I can still geek out about this shit.

NIV says "pledged to be married to him." NASB says "engaged." KJV says "espoused wife."

The freak-ass church held that the NIV and NASB were the most accurate translations, but then a lot of what they taught was full of shit, so I no longer know if that's true.

I think Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special said they were betrothed, IIRC. But that's all I remember.

I love that you people geek out about this stuff.

Shameful book confession: I've never read the bible. Mom wasn't religious, and Dad was pretty rigorously agnostic after growing up Very Catholic. I went to church a couple of times in my childhood, with friends' families, but that was a purely social thing. And now the onlyreason I'm even vaguely interested in reading the Bible is for ritual magic/occult research.