The Best Bible Translation ...Bible series, part 3 of 6

In my last post I talked a lot about why there are different translations of the Bible into English. Today I wanted to share some of my thoughts about several of the most popular translations available; you can actually find a list of the best-selling Bible translations right here. I'm not intimately familiar with all ten of them, but it so happens that the top six or seven (as of this month) are the ones I want to talk about anyway!

Keep in mind that there are tons of wonderful Bible sites out there where you can test-drive any translation, compare it to one you're already familiar with, that kind of thing. One of the best of these sites is BibleGateway.com, which has about 25 versions in English (depending on whether you count slightly different versions of the NIV as different translations). All of the translations I will mention today are available there. Next week I'll talk more about online Bible reading/study sites, but today I want to talk about the Bible translations themselves. I'm not going to give you a bunch of history on each; you can visit Wikipedia or other sites for that (I'll provide a few links). I'm just going to give my general impressions on each translation, and you can go from there.

King James Version
Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

KJV 1611 Bible 400th Anniversary Edition

I talked a lot about the King James Version in my last post; I won't repeat those details today. It's a beautiful, well-respected, accurate translation, and I would never dream of discouraging anyone from using it. For hundreds of years, millions of people have considered it THE Word of God. In fact, if you search Google for about ten seconds, you'll be able to find Web sites run by people who believe it is the only legitimate Bible translation in English. Best quip ever about the KJV: "If the King James Bible was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me!"

The KJV is considered a very literal translation; highly recommended if you're not afraid of the old-timey sentence structure. In fact, some of the things that seem like archaisms (the usage of "thee," "thy," "thou," and so on in addition to "you," for example) are not archaisms but conscious choices by the translators to make it more literal (in standard English, "you" can be either singular or plural; in KJV usage, "thou" is singular and "you" is plural). Despite language that is sometimes clunky by "front page of the New York Times" standards, the King James Version is of high quality and highly respected. It's worth your time.

New International Version
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

NIV Study Bible

The NIV was almost the only Bible translation that I read for a good decade or more of my life. The English is clear, easy to understand, and for the most part, quite accurate. I have no idea how many times over the years that I heard a minister, preaching from the KJV, correct the translation to what I was looking at in my NIV, but the number is a big one. I even think it could be used from the pulpit; at this point, many Christians are as familiar with the NIV as they are with the KJV. I especially love the Psalms in the NIV; they seem quite musical to me. Over the years, though, the NIV has suffered from some criticism over certain verses, and that plus changes in the English language over the years were reasons for the attempt at releasing an updated NIV called Today's New International Version several years ago, and the new revision of the NIV which is available for reading online right now and which will be released in bookstores this year. To compare the classic 1984 NIV, the 2005 Today's NIV, and the upcoming 2010 revision, visit this page at BibleGateway.com.

The New International Reader's Version deserves a separate mention. This is a revision of the NIV designed for beginning readers. Basically, they simplified the more complex vocabulary, and they cut longer sentences into shorter ones. It's a good translation for young children who are just learning to read, but they will likely grow out of it quickly. One of the ironies of the NIrV Bible we bought for my son when he was five years old (read about that here) was that the dramatized "Bible stories" scattered throughout the text actually were harder to read than the text itself.

New King James Version
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

NKJV Study Bible

If you've ever heard a minister who was reading from the King James Bible but modifying the language on the fly to make it sound a little more "modern," that's a little bit like what you'll get with the New King James Version. The idea was to modernize the language of the classic KJV while still retaining some of the timeless qualities of that translation. I've used NKJV quite a bit myself (although it is not currently one of my actively-used translations) and enjoy and respect it very much. This is the translation my pastor generally uses when he is preaching. The only criticism I have of the NKJV is that the translators used (more or less) the same ancient texts as the translators of the original KJV had used back in the 1600s, which means that improvements in Bible manuscript scholarship since that time were not a big part in the translating process. Ironically, the NKJV has been soundly rejected by those KJV-only folks, even though the KJV they hold in their hands is quite a bit different from the KJV delivered to King James himself centuries ago! The KJV we read today is actually a "new" version of the KJV. If you ever have a chance to spend some time with an actual copy of the 1611 KJV, read a few chapters and then thank your lucky stars that it was re-edited and modernized over time! You would expect the KJV-only folks to have been the biggest supporters of the NKJV, but they apparently hate it.

Use the NKJV if you just like the KJV but want something written in a less-archaic style. Or, use it if your pastor reads from KJV and you can't follow what it means! Your NKJV will be essentially the same in most cases, but you'll be able to understand it better. It will be a little bit like reading captions while listening to someone speaking English with a heavy foreign accent.

English Standard Version
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

ESV Study Bible

Years ago, the announcement of Today's New International Version translation created a controversy in some Christian circles. The uproar was over something called "gender-neutral" Bible translation. Basically, there are places in the original Bible texts where masculine pronouns are used in a non-gender-specific way. An English equivalent would be the word "mankind," which very rarely only refers to men but usually refers to men and women, the whole human race. An example from the Bible might be when Jesus said "Man shall not live by bread alone," not meaning that only men should depend on the Word of God but that all people should depend on the Word of God. A "gender-neutral" translation might render this phrase "a person does not live by bread alone." This may seem like hair-splitting; the pro-gender-neutrality people would say "That's what the original text means!" and the anti-gender-neutrality people would say "But it's not what the original text says, and people aren't so stupid that you have to rewrite the Bible so they can figure out the pronouns." In 1997, representatives of a number of ministries came together in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and drafted a set of "guidelines" for gender usage in Bible translation. These are known as the Colorado Springs Guidelines, and you can read them here. 

The ESV was among the first translations (maybe the first translation) that consciously sought to adhere to these guidelines. The ESV calls itself an "essentially literal" translation, and like the NKJV it seeks to retain the literary beauty present in the KJV, but the ESV uses the latest textual scholarship available at the time of its translation. The ESV is currently my favorite translation for reading and for study, and it is the translation I generally use on this blog and on the related Web site, ScriptureMenu.com. This year (and last year) I'm reading the Bible cover to cover from the ESV Study Bible and the NIV Study Bible, and there have been several times where the NIV Study Bible notes said things like "The same word is used to translate this word and this word in the original texts," and the NIV translates it with two different words but the ESV translates it using the same word. The ESV is sometimes not as fluid to read as the NIV or some other modern translations, but it is not nearly as difficult to absorb as the KJV or the NASB or other literal translations, and I actually like the fact that my brain is forced to engage when I'm reading it. And there are places, particularly in poetic sections like the Psalms and Isaiah, where the ESV preserves powerful metaphors that other translations gloss over.

The ESV is a great translation to have available to you. Make sure you keep one handy, and bookmark ESVonline.org to read it online.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

HCSB Study Bible

In the past year or so I have gained a growing respect and liking for the Holman Christian Standard Bible. It seems to me to have a fluid style like the NIV, but it leans a bit more to the literal side of the equation than NIV. My perception is that its fidelity to the original texts is a notch better than the NIV, but readability was not sacrificed for the sake of accuracy. I'm not sure I would recommend the ESV for young children to read, but I think they could handle the HCSB. By way of making a very subjective, emotional comparison, I would classify the ESV as "majestic," the NIV as "friendly" or maybe "non-threatening," and the HCSB as "warm" and "inviting." Any of the three is a good read; all three are currently favorites of mine.

Have an HCSB on your shelf, and bookmark MyStudyBible.com to read the HCSB Study Bible for free!

New American Standard Bible
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

NAS Study Bible

Just over a year ago, I won a beautiful, and rather expensive, edition of the New American Standard Bible in an online contest. I actually have a little cheap paperback New Testament on my shelf in the NASB translation, but I can't say I've ever spent any time with it. And to be honest, I was hoping to win a nice ESV in the contest! But this Bible is so beautiful that I've been carrying the huge black thing to church every week ever since. Hopefully people don't think I'm carrying a big Bible to impress them! I'm absolutely not. It's a beautiful Bible, and it's a wonderful translation, with some rather surprising features.

The NASB has an interesting lineage. I mentioned before that the 1611 KJV was revised and modernized to what we now use; this revision, made in the 1880s, is called the "Revised Version." In 1901, a revision of the RV called the American Standard Version was released, and in the 1960s and 1970s this ASV was once again revised and released as the NASB. The NASB you are most likely to find in a Bible bookstore is the 1995 revision of this; this is the one I won in the contest. My paperback NASB New Testament is the earlier version. (The ESV is actually a revision of the Revised Standard Version, which is a revision of the ASV, so the two translations are related.)

The NASB is probably the most literal mainstream translation on the market; I find the sentence structure a bit clunky at times, but in general I like it a lot. And as I mentioned, there are a couple of very unique features of the translation, specifically in the New Testament. One thing I find very useful and interesting is that Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are printed in ALL CAPS, so they stand out clearly. This is actually more revealing than you might think, because not every quotation of the OT in the NT is clearly indicated as a quote by the OT authors. It's very interesting to run across the "hidden" ones that would have already jumped out to a Jewish reader. My other favorite feature in the NASB NT is that on occasion, verbs are marked with an asterisk: "*". The asterisk means that the Greek text actually uses a present tense verb in a spot where the English translation uses past tense; the authors used present tense to make the narrative seem more immediate. In formal English we don't switch verb tenses midstream, but it's not unheard-of in colloquial usage: "So I left my apartment and got to the laundromat, and I'm putting my clothes in the washer, and this lady says to me..." I doubt that knowing when one of those tense shifts has occurred will ever provide a deep spiritual insight, but I think it's fascinating to know about it.

New Living Translation
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

NLT Study Bible

I haven't yet had a chance to really spend a lot of time in this translation, but what little I've read of it, I really liked. The original intention was to create a revision of The Living Bible, a paraphrase written in the 1960s, but eventually it was decided to create a new translation from the original texts. Although it is not as free with the text as an actual paraphrase, the NLT uses the "thought-for-thought" translation philosophy, which makes it easier to read but potentially less accurate at expressing shades of meaning. I did some side-by-side comparison with an ESV recently, and although I did spot the occasional difference that bothered me a little, overall I would consider it trustworthy for reading; for heavy study I would recommend something closer to the "word-for-word" end of the scale. That said, I have a NLT Life Application Bible sitting on my shelf, and I look forward to delving into it in the near future.

The Message
Official - Wikipedia - Bible Gateway

The Message
Numbered Edition

I'll be straight with you: I'm not a fan of The Message Bible. It is considered a paraphrase, not a translation, although it was paraphrased directly from the original languages (as opposed to the original Living Bible, which was paraphrased from the 1901 ASV). There is no effort to match the vocabulary or sentence structure of the original text or other translations; in fact, most editions don't even bother with chapter and verse numberings. The idea is to be almost like a novelization of the Bible. The language is fresh and immediate and colloquial, and it's certainly fun to read, but I don't feel like I'm reading a Bible when I read it; sometimes it almost feels like a parody of the Bible to me. However, I have friends that I respect very much who enjoy reading The Message, and as long as you don't assume that it's something that it's not, I think it's great if it gets people interested in what God's Word has to say.


Bible Translation Continuum
I mentioned before that there is sort of a continuum for Bible translations, with the most "literal" or "word-for-word" translations on one end, and the most "dynamic" or "thought-for-thought" translations at the other end. You could arrange these eight translations roughly in this order, starting with the most "literal" and ending with the most "dynamic":

New American Standard Bible
English Standard Version
King James Version
New King James Version
Holman Christian Standard Bible
New International Version
New Living Translation
The Message

But you don't have to choose just one; if you look around you can find "parallel Bibles" with two, four, or even more of these translations in them, side-by-side for comparison. The most interesting one I've seen is a The Message/NASB Parallel Bible which, with texts from exact opposite ends of the continuum above, must quiver while you hold it, ready to spontaneously split at any moment! But in all seriousness, if you want to carry several texts with you, there are some really good parallel Bibles out there. I'm kind of partial to this one, myself. We'll talk about electronic Bibles in an upcoming post (and I've already mentioned the Bible Gateway), so comparing translations has actually become quite a bit easier in recent years, but sometimes it helps to just have a couple of translations right on the table in front of you.

Again: which one is best? The "read" Bible is the best. Get one of them, and make sure you've "read" it! The Word of God in a book has the power to prop open a door; the Word of God in your heart has the power to transform lives.

"Basic to the Bible's canonical status is its 'inspiration.' This word indicates a divinely effected uniqueness comparable to the uniqueness of the person of the incarnate Lord. As Jesus Christ was totally human and totally divine, so is the Bible." - ESV Study Bible, "Reading the Bible Theologically"

iShine Bible: pre-teens are important to God!

(Today I'm taking a break from my Bible series to review a new tween Bible that comes out today. We'll be back to the Bible series tomorrow!)

NLT iShine Bible for Boys

My son Mikey will turn 11 years old in April. When he was five years old, we bought him a fabulous Bible for small children called the NIrV Super Heroes Bible (you can read more about that Bible purchase in this post). That Bible was amazing for him at the time, but now that he's a bit older, the NIrV translation is starting to feel a bit pedestrian to him. The sentences are choppy because they are shortened on purpose for beginning readers; when he was five years old this was an advantage, but at ten, he reads very well... and as he approaches his teenage years, I think the cartoonish illustrations may be looking a little childish to him, too. When I heard that the tween-targeted iShine Bible was coming out, I requested a review copy right away! I was hoping it would be something he could enjoy at the age he is now as much as, or even more than, he enjoyed his Super Heroes Bible back when he was little. And I think I can safely say that he's loving the iShine Bible!

There are actually two slightly different versions of the iShine Bible: the "for Boys" version that Mikey has, and a "for Girls" edition which I have not actually held a copy of. The contents of the book are not gender-specific, and I'm guessing that the only difference is the cover itself (predictably, "Backstage Blue" for boys and "Lip Sync Pink" for girls). The cover is a nice soft faux leather, very flexible and comfortable to hold; our boy-targeted copy has a picture of a boy playing a guitar on it (you can see part of him through the triangular hole in the cardboard packaging in the picture above). Most of the Bible is printed in black and white on the traditional thin Bible paper, but there are some special color sections inside; I'll talk more about them in a minute, but right now I'll say that they carry on the trendy tween theme, with pictures of Christian rock band Mission Six and several other musicians and speakers from the iShine universe (learn more about iShine at iShineLive.com). There are also QR codes to scan with your cell phone (they take you to relevant videos and other materials), and even the pictured artists' and speakers' Twitter handles. The whole thing has a fresh, trendy feel to it; I imagine in five or ten years the supplemental material might seem outdated to the trendiest kids, but by that time (hopefully) they will have developed a love for God's Word and graduated up to an adult Bible anyway. But even if those iShine features begin to show their age at some point, the Bible itself is of course timeless.

The Bible text itself is the New Living Translation, Genesis to Revelation. My son loves it. He thinks it is much more readable than the choppy NIrV in his other Bible. For myself, I did some side-by-side comparison between it and my beloved ESV translation, and although I still prefer the ESV for my own use, I really liked what I read in the NLT text. I actually wouldn't recommend the ESV for the average teenager or tween, because I think it might be too complex language-wise to be fun for them to read; I would heartily recommend the NLT for a tween or young teenager, though.

My son's favorite part of the iShine Bible is called "The Bible Talks About..." in the front of the Bible in a section called the "iShine Index." It's about a 40-page topical list of question after question that a tween might want a Biblical answer for. Some of the questions are pretty straightforward: "Smoking looks cool. Should I try it?" "Is it right to treat people differently based on how they look?" "I dislike one of my teachers." "Is swearing okay or not?" Some of them are things that adults wonder about as much as kids do: "Does God really listen when we pray?" "Is there really a hell?" "Can I trust God?" "Why is there evil in the world?" And there are some that, as a dad who is also a former teenager, I find positively heartbreaking: "I can't do anything right." "I'm afraid of dying." "I'm being abused. Is it my fault?" "My friend is hurting. What should I do?" "I wish I weren't so afraid." "I feel dirty. I'm not good enough for anybody." Each question is followed by a quoted Scripture verse, a short paragraph giving an answer to the question, and an "Other verses..." section with several Scripture references that are relevant to the topic. I love the sensitivity of the questions themselves (just reading the questions takes me back to how it felt to be a Christian kid growing up in a confusing world!), and I appreciate the thoughtful way the questions are answered. I also love, both here and elsewhere in the iShine Bible, that the Scripture references always have page numbers next to them. Why assume that a child knows how to find Ephesians 4:31-32 when you can help them out a bit and tell them to look right on page 897? And the page numbers are really easy to spot on the pages, too, right up next to the traditional book+chapter at the top of each page of the Bible text. My son liked this "The Bible Talks About..." section so much that he read it straight through the first time he picked up the iShine Bible; that's how well-written it is.

There are three more articles in the iShine Index: "What Is the Bible?", "Finding Your Identity in Jesus", and "Growing In Faith". All of these articles are written in the same warm, friendly style as the "The Bible Talks About..." section. They don't talk down to the reader, but they aren't over the head of a 10-year-old, either. I think the execution is fabulous.

I mentioned before that there are some colored sections midstream in the Bible text; these are of a thicker paper than the traditional Bible paper that the rest of the pages are made of, and they contain some tween-friendly design elements, but they aren't just about style and flash. There are three of them, and they are each focused on a specific thing: "value" in section 1 ("What matters to you?"), "identity" in section 2 ("Who are you?"), and "purpose" in section 3 ("Why are you here?") Did you notice that the initials let you know that you are a "V.I.P." to God? Each of these could easily be used just as it is by a youth pastor as a message to his youth group. They are surprisingly dense with information, but the page design and typography make them so visually interesting that you almost don't notice that you're learning something as you read! And the three topics are well-chosen for tweens... in fact, if more of us adult Christians got a firm grasp on what really matters in our lives, who we are in Christ, and what God has created us to accomplish with our lives, we would be much more effective Christians. I hope a lot of young people get a great head start on those topics through reading this Bible.

In the back of the iShine Bible, there are some very interesting lists: "Great Chapters of the Bible," "Great Stories of the Bible," and "Great Verses of the Bible to Memorize." These lists are short but sweet; the chapters/stories/verses are well-chosen, and page numbers are included to make it simple to find the right spot. I suspect that these short sections are going to be the antidote for many a "bored" teenager's idle afternoon, and I think that's great! Traditional Bibles have a concordance and maps in the back; those features have not been included in this Bible, but in an age of computer technology, I'm not sure those things are as necessary as they might have been in years past. Young people certainly won't miss them; the topical approach will seem much more immediate and relevant to them.

If I had to come up with something to criticize about the iShine Bible, it would be the small print. The Bible itself is small; at 6.13" X 4.13" I can nearly cover the whole thing with one hand. The compact size is nice to carry, but it does mean that the font used for the Bible text is pretty tiny. I asked my son if he even noticed it, and if it bothered him. He did notice the small text, but he wasn't bothered by it: "I wouldn't recommend it for someone who wears glasses, though," he added. This 40-year-old who wears contact lenses can make it out all right, so younger eyes should have no problem, but if you see your tween reading it in low light, make them turn on a lamp so they can avoid eyestrain.

The "This Bible belongs to" page in the very front of the iShine Bible says that it is "...a reminder that I am loved, valued, and called by name." I can't think of a better description of the Bible... any Bible. But this Bible goes to great lengths to approach pre-teens on a level they find interesting and engaging and bring the truths of God's Word to them, organized in such a way that it's easy to discover something they find relevant and useful. My 10-year-old loves it. If your child is a two-digit that doesn't yet end with "-teen", I think they'll love it too.

Want a quick tour of the iShine Bible? Here's the video you see if you scan the cell phone QR code on the title page.

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I was provided with a review copy of this book by Tyndale House Publishers. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.

Study Bible Junkie

On Easter of 2005, everybody in my family got new Bibles.

My baby girl wasn't born yet, but my little boy was almost 5 years old at the time, and we decided that it was high time he had his own kid Bible.

NIrV Super Heroes Bible

My wife needed a new Bible too, and I had my eye on an ESV Bible (I had been a long-time NIV reader, but I wanted to switch to the more literal translation - and I've never looked back!) I had done some looking around and I had discovered what I believed (and still believe) is the most awesome kid Bible ever created: the NIrV Super Heroes Bible. Take a look at that cover: that's Moses parting the Red Sea! The Bible has forty of those incredible, comic book style illustrations of Bible "Super Heroes" like Elijah, John the Baptist, David (and Goliath), and even some of the awesome female super heroes of the Bible like Mary, Queen Esther, Deborah, and Ruth. The pictures are filled with action and humor, but are never irreverent. Perfect for getting a kid interested in looking at what's in their Bible! There are also over 200 profiles of Bible characters, written at a kid's level of understanding. (The ironic thing about these well-written profiles is that the vocabulary and sentence structure are actually harder than the NIrV translation itself is!) We bought this Bible for him partly because the translation is very easy for beginning readers. When he turns ten next week, we might think about upgrading to an NIV.

My wife Cathy picked out an NIV Life Application Study Bible.

NIV Life Application Study Bible

It has book introductions, maps, all of the regular Study Bible stuff, but the text notes on each page are focused on "How does this really apply to me? What does this mean to my life?" She actually had a tough time concentrating on the message in Church for a while because she would get distracted by the study notes! (This is the main reason I still to this day bring a more plain-jane Bible to church with me!)

That was my first brush with a study Bible... well, as a high school student I owned a New King James "Open Bible" (they are out of print now) and I really loved it a lot. As I remember, I gave it away to someone that I felt needed it more than I did. I really wanted a study Bible in the ESV translation, but at the time there really wasn't one! I went with a small ESV Compact Trutone Bible which is almost the opposite... no study notes, no book introductions, no cross-references. It actually served me very well for many years, but I still wanted a study Bible in the ESV translation.

The first ESV-translation study Bible I remember hearing about was the ESV Reformation Study Bible. I actually checked a copy out from the library, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I was a little bit nervous that it is self-classified as a "reformation" Bible; I was concerned that the notes might be slanted toward "reformed" Theology, and I wasn't quite comfortable with joining that camp whole hog. I wouldn't at all mind having this Bible in my library, but it wasn't really "the one" that I wanted to have for my primary study Bible.

The next ESV study Bible that came out was The ESV Literary Study Bible.

The ESV Literary Study Bible

. This Bible focuses on the Bible as a book, a work of literature. This might trigger red flags for some, but really, it shouldn't. The Bible is a book. It's got characters, settings, and plots. It's also got poetry, historical accounts, and letters. The Bible is a book consisting of dozens of genres of writing, and it is valuable to understand those genres in order to truly understand the Bible. I was very interested in this Bible, but I really wanted something as my primary study Bible that would explain things like historical details, settings, that sort of thing, and this Bible focuses on the literary aspects. I wanted something that I could approach at a more basic level. I still want to pick one of these up, but it will be a future purchase.

Finally, I heard that The ESV Study Bible was coming out!

ESV Study Bible

This was the Bible I was looking for. It didn't look to be focused on one slant on the Bible to the exclusion of others, although it was conservative in its point of view. It had book introductions, study notes, cross-references, and articles about Bible topics. I picked up a sample of the Gospel of John from Mardel and read it straight through... I was hooked! I preordered a copy and picked it up on the day of release. It's my all-time favorite Bible! One of my first projects was to make my way through the book of Revelation, and I came away understanding it in a way I never understood it before. I started to see it as almost symphonic in nature, with a prelude, movements and interludes, loud sections and quiet sections. I'm a trained musical composer, so the fact that the ESV Study Bible caused me to see the Word in a way that made sense to me as a musician was a big deal!

When I decided at the beginning of this year to read my way through the whole Bible, cover to cover, of course my ESV Study Bible was at the center of the whole idea. But I never anticipated just how much having study notes to give me context and background would really help me to engage the Scripture. Reading the Bible isn't like reading the latest Tom Clancy novel; the Bible is a book that was written thousands of years ago in a different language in an ancient culture. There are things that would have been obvious to a Hebrew reader on 1,000 B.C. that just aren't obvious to an American in the year 2010. Some historical and geographical context is critical to really understanding what's going on.

I was so excited about the things I was learning in the Bible that I wanted more! I checked out The NIV Study Bible from the library to give it a test drive.

NIV Study Bible

I added it into my study times, reading the ESV text, then the ESVSB notes, then the NIVSB notes. To my surprise, the NIVSB was teaching me additional things that the ESVSB wasn't getting at! Occasionally there are notes in the two that disagree on some small point, but in general, the two simply have a different focus. This seems to be the case with study Bibles; no reference work will tell you everything there is to know about the text, so consulting different sources will often give you more insight into the passage. I bought one from CBD one day when they had it on sale (sometimes they announce one-day sales from their Facebook page), and now my Bible reading time includes two study Bibles!

A few weeks after I added the NIV Study Bible to the mix, I got a sale paper from Lifeway Christian Stores which led to another study Bible purchase. I had seen a video on the Internet talking about the Apologetics Study Bible for Students (you can view the video at that link if you like) and I was pretty impressed with the idea that a study Bible would have its focus specifically on explaining things about the Bible that people have a hard time understanding. I had seen the Web site for the (non-"Student") Apologetics Study Bible already, and so when I saw it on sale in the Lifeway flyer, I knew I needed to pick it up.

Apologetics Study Bible

The weekend of the sale at Lifeway was kind of crazy; it was a "spring sale" on the literal first day of spring, but the day before we had a freak snowstorm and there was like six inches of snow on the ground! I went anyway and picked up another new study Bible for less than twenty bucks, and it's been great. I did not try to add it into my daily Bible reading regimen (two is plenty... I could spend hours just reading notes and following links in those two study Bibles!), but this won't be my last trip through the Bible. The Apologetics Study Bible will probably be my companion on the trip next year, or the next, or the next! It was a good purchase anyway; we didn't have a full copy of the Holman Christian Standard Bible in the house yet, so it was another translation to add to our collection. The Holman translation is a good, solid translation, too... it's probably my second favorite now, next to the ESV. The NIV still holds a place in my heart, though; it's probably my #3 favorite translation.

Now that I've become a bonafide Study Bible Junkie, I have my eye on some other study Bibles.

NIV Archaeological Study Bible

I still want to pick up that ESV Literary Study Bible that I mentioned above; my plan is to buy one of those for myself as a reward for making it all the way through the Bible this year (or maybe I'll ask for it for Christmas!) A few years ago I spied an NIV Archaeological Study Bible that someone had accidentally left on the seat at church, and I leafed through it. It has full-color photographs to support the information it contains about the archaeology of the Bible. It's a beautiful Bible; although I haven't looked at one long enough to be able to report on the quality of the in-text notes, it's another one that I'd like to pick up a copy of sometime.

I've had an interest in the New Living Translation for a while, and the best way to satisfy my desire to have that translation and also to get a new study Bible would be to pick up a copy of the NLT Study Bible!

NLT Study Bible

The New Living Translation is kind of the child of the Living Bible Paraphrase from the 70s; the NLT is supposed to be a Bible with the clarity of language of the paraphrase, but with the precision of a new translation from the original languages (the paraphrase is a rewording of the text of the American Standard Version, with no reference to the original language texts. Kind of like "The Message" except from the 70s). I've briefly read some passages from the NLT and I liked what I saw; my concern is fidelity to the source texts. I'll just have to spend some time reading it to have a verdict on that. I hope to pick up this sampler of Genesis sometime and spend some time with it; it helped me get the feel of the ESV Study Bible to read a sample, so maybe that will help me with this one too! (If you don't mind reading on your computer, or if you have a Kindle or similar reader that can handle PDF files, you can download that Genesis sampler here.)

In my research about study Bibles, I ran across the NRSV New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. I haven't actually seen one, so I'll probably want to spend some time browsing it before I buy (I expect a slightly liberal bias), but it sounds like a well-respected reference work. Plus, I would really like to have a copy of the Apocrypha in my library, again for reference. ("Bel and the Dragon?" What's that? And who is this "Susanna?" Oh wait, didn't she come from Alabama with a banjo on her knee?) Of course, I might just wuss out on that one and pick up the Apocrypha parts by themselves instead.

The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible sounds pretty cool for in-depth study. I would probably pick it up in the New American Standard version; I already have a beautiful NASB which I carry to church, but there is certainly no shortage of KJV Bibles around here, so since those appear to be the only two choices, probably I'd go with the NASB. I haven't seen one of these Bibles yet, though, so I can't recommend it (same with the Oxford one, and others in this post that it's clear I haven't spent time using).

If you are interested in study Bibles, CBD has a Study Bible Store that you could use for doing a little bit of research on what's out there. I got my NIV Study Bible and my Apologetics Study Bible each on sale for about $20 apiece; watch for sales and you can sometimes get a fabulous deal, particularly if you're cool with hardback copies (I prefer them, actually; they seem to do better on shelves, they're generally a little cheaper, and the covers have some personality to them!) For a deal from CBD, check the Slightly Imperfect Study Bibles store. That doesn't mean study Bibles with faulty Theology, or missing the book of Esther, or anything like that; it just means Bibles with maybe something wrong with the cover or some other minor manufacturing defect. Copies with a flaw that does not detract from their usefulness, but that makes them impossible to sell as though they were new. You can often get them for 40-50% off regular price, and sometimes never even notice the flaw.

There are tons of great Bibles out there, in zillions of translations, styles, designs, colors, and sizes. I've got probably a dozen different English translations in my library (and a couple in languages I don't even speak!), three study Bibles so far, and even one with the events of the entire Bible in chronological order. I even have a metal Bible! (I haven't picked up a waterproof Bible quite yet... then again, I don't read the Bible in the swimming pool!) But all the Bibles in the World can't help you a bit if you don't read them. When we picked out those Bibles five Easters ago, my goal was to find a Bible for each of us that we would like enough to open them up and read them. Pick a version and Bible that you enjoy reading, and get into the Word. These great study Bibles can help, but if cartoons of Bible characters are what it takes to get you to open up The Book, go with the cartoons. Just get into the Bible!


Useful Links
ESV Study Bible
ESV Literary Study Bible
ESV Reformation Study Bible
ESV MacArthur Study Bible
NLT Study Bible
HCSB Apologetics Study Bible

ESV translation
NIV translation
NIrV translation
HCSB translation
NLT translation