I don't have a pithy intro for you other than to say that this is the holy, inerrant, inspired word of God. It's the ASV translation because (1) I can't find anyone having read the Douay-Rheims on free audio and (2) the USCCB holds the copyright on the NAB, and they keep a tight grip on it. Oh, and the RSV-CE (a vastly superior translation compared to the NAB...and don't get me started on the NAB's footnotes!) is copyrighted as well. So the ASV is what we get.

Rather than a good intro, here are Ten Reasons to Reject the Q Hypothesis. If you've been to a Catholic school / RCIA in America (and probably elsewhere) you've no doubt heard that Matthew, Mark and Luke were based off of another Gospel....Q (from the Latin "quelle" meaning "source"). This is a stupid idea, and if you don't know why you should click the above link. The first two reasons are the most compelling for me.

Oh, and for a nice companion, here's the EWTN program on the Gospel of Mark with Dr. Tim Gray (RealAudio format -- if you need MP3, see: Converting RealAudio to MP3) No matter what you know, you'll learn something listening to this.

• E-text
• Wikipedia - American Standard Version

• Zip file of the entire book (45.9MB)

Total running time: 1:35:29
Read by Sam Stinson

mp3 and ogg files

• Chapter 01 - 00:06:03
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.9MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 5.8MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 3.3MB]

• Chapter 02 - 00:04:45
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 4.5MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 2.6MB]

• Chapter 03 - 00:04:35
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 4.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 2.5MB]

• Chapter 04 - 00:05:46
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.7MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 5.5MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 3.2MB]

• Chapter 05 - 00:06:01
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.8MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 5.7MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 3.3MB]

• Chapter 06 - 00:07:46
  [mp3@64kbps - 3.7MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 7.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 4.2MB]

• Chapter 07 - 00:05:00
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.4MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 4.8MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 2.7MB]

• Chapter 08 - 00:05:25
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.6MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 5.2MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 2.9MB]

• Chapter 09 - 00:07:15
  [mp3@64kbps - 3.4MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 6.9MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 3.9MB]

• Chapter 10 - 00:07:27
  [mp3@64kbps - 3.5MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 7.1MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 4.0MB]

• Chapter 11 - 00:04:36
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.2MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 4.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 2.5MB]

• Chapter 12 - 00:06:27
  [mp3@64kbps - 3.0MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 6.1MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 3.5MB]

• Chapter 13 - 00:05:14
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.5MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 5.0MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 2.8MB]

• Chapter 14 - 00:09:53
  [mp3@64kbps - 4.7MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 9.4MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 5.3MB]

• Chapter 15 - 00:06:03
  [mp3@64kbps - 2.9MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 5.8MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 3.2MB]

• Chapter 16 - 00:03:13
  [mp3@64kbps - 1.5MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 3.0MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 1.7MB]