Tuesday, November 6, 2007

ESV Literary Study Bible / ESV Journaling Bible


Have you seen the new ESV Literary Study Bible? Edited by Leland Ryken and Philip Graham Ryken, this new study Bible from Crossway does seem to fit a demonstrable gap in the study Bible market (which is no small feat given that you can apparently buy the red letter RSV Quadriplegics Study Bible in sheet metal cover these days). This particular tome addresses a couple of key deficits in evangelicalism's general biblical literacy: the sense of Scripture as a Story with a united theme and the consideration of genre in the study of individual books or pericopes.

Michael Spencer recently listed 10 Reasons to Love the ESV Literary Study Bible.
Steve McCoy just reviewed it positively as well.

The wifey gave me one last week, and I'm eager to begin test driving it. It will make a great companion to the ESV Reformation Study Bible and NRSV Oxford Annotated Bible I currently use for study.

My wife also gave me two (count 'em -- two!) of these bad boys. (Btw, Mark, if you're reading this, I tell everyone I know that the awesome ESV Journaling Bible was your idea. :-)
The idea behind two was that I'll be filling each with my notes and thoughts over the years and thereby create two keepsakes to give to our adult daughters someday. This is actually a project I began a couple of years ago with my NRSV Annotated, which was purposefully bought in part for its wide margins. (So, yes, essentially my birthday present is 20 years of homework. But it'll be fun homework.)
They're fun to carry around too, since they look less like a Bible and more like that little leather secrets book Indiana Jones carried around in Last Crusade.

3 comments:

Eric Guel said...

I like that journaling Bible idea. I've got that on my wish list now.

Gail..... said...

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this comment.."which is no small feat given that you can apparently buy the red letter RSV Quadriplegics Study Bible"

Can you please explain?

Thanks,
Gail

Jared said...

Gail, it was just a joke about how specialized study Bibles have gotten, a jab at the companies who continue publishing increasingly specific Bibles for an increasingly narrow demographic for the purpose of making more and more money.

I didn't mean any offense against handicapped persons.