Can Palestinian Christians become the bridge to bring about peace between Israelis and Muslim Arabs? Elias Chacour, in Blood Brothers, says, “Yes.”
In the news, we hear much about the tension between Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But did you know that there has been a community of Christians in the Holy Land for centuries? The story of this ancient church is often overlooked.
Since the time of the New Testament, there has been a Christian presence in the Holy Land. Possession of the land has changed multiple times over two thousand years. Pagan Rome, Zoroastrian Persians, Byzantine Orthodox Christians, Muslim Arabs, European Crusaders, and Muslim Turks have all claimed title over Jerusalem. But miraculously, the Christian church in some form or another has survived all of these various conquests. Sadly, the Christian community in Palestine today is nearly threatened with extinction.
My local church here in Williamsburg, Virginia, the Williamsburg Community Chapel, recently announced that we will be moving to the English Standard Version (ESV) for our pew Bibles, by this coming summer. A lot of people love their NIV (I still do!), but with the unavailability of the 1984 edition of the NIV, it forces a lot of churches to make a difficult decision. I am reposting my research on this very important and timely topic….
Does your church have a “pew Bible?” Through a generous gift years ago, an anonymous donor in our church gave hundreds of copies of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible so that everyone who comes to our church would be able to read from the Bible where they sit each and every Sunday morning for worship. What a great gift it is to have a copy of God’s Word at your fingertips!
The problem is that we use the 1984 edition of the NIV…. and the version’s publisher, Zondervan, is no longer printing copies of the 1984 NIV. So what is a church like ours to do if you want to get a new pew Bible?
Ah, so we enter into the world of contemporary Bible translation controversy. The controversy, though a bit nerdy for many in some respects, is important because lovers of Jesus are also lovers of…
Having trouble getting an understandable overview of the different books of the Bible, such as the Book of Romans? There is a team of Bible teachers and video animators at The Bible Project that are creating short, video narratives of each book of the Bible. The animation is very clear and engaging, and I can not think of better way to gain a general overview of the Bible, in short video segments of about five minutes each. The Bible Project is working on creating videos for each book of the Bible. Have a look at what they are doing and join them if you want to help them out. Here is an overview of Romans 1-4.
Ever find yourself reading the Bible, and going, “Huh?” Having a little difficulty keeping your Moses, Malachi and Matthew straight? Do you scratch your head, trying to figure out the difference between the Gospel of John and the Letters of John?
“Study bibles” have revolutionized the way Christians read and understand the Bible. Bible paraphrases, like Eugene Petersen’s The Message, are helpful for simply reading the Bible, to get an overview of the text. But it would be a mistake to use a paraphrase for in-depth, verse-by-verse analysis of God’s Word. Thankfully, study Bibles have been developed to allow you to do just that… study the Bible!
Perhaps the first popular study Bible goes back to the Reformation period, with the Geneva Study Bible of the 16th century. What made the Geneva Study Bible such an early success were the explanatory notes found alongside the Biblical text that helped the reader to understand difficult passages. But not everyone appreciated the type of “help” offered by such explanatory notes. As theologian Alister McGrath perceptively observed in his brilliant In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, King James of England was so enraged over the anti-monarchy tone of the Geneva study notes that he pushed to have a major revision to the English Bible that would supersede the Geneva Study Bible. The “authorized” King James Version of the Bible was an unparalleled success that dominated the English world for almost 400 years… yet without study notes!
Bible scholarship has greatly improved over the past few hundred years. Today, the best successor to the tradition of the Geneva Study Bible is the The Reformation Study Bible, reviewed a few months ago here on Veracity. Moreover, there are a number of other excellent study Bibles that go beyond the approaches taken by earlier study Bibles. These newer study Bibles possess a more generous sense of scholarly breadth while maintaining an evangelical commitment to the truthfulness of God’s Word.
I am mostly not a fan of study Bibles that are basically written by just one person. If you are going to be spending most of your time reading and studying out of one Bible, why would you limit yourself to what one person says? Instead the better study Bibles today help give you information from a broad range of scholars, that you can use to allow you to be a better student of the Word, coming to your own conclusions, as you trust in the leading of the Holy Spirit. In addition, most of the newer, better study Bibles all have great maps, commentary to go along with the text, footnotes to textual variants, cross-references to other parts of the Bible, and helpful articles in theology, church history, and biblical literature to aid in your understanding, as well as providing you online access to Internet resources to further your study. But the great thing is that you do not have to be a Bible scholar nerd to benefit. Think of a good study Bible as a one-stop shop for serious Bible study for those who want to dig deep without getting in over their head.
My favorite study Bible is the English Standard Version Study Bible, partly because I tend to favor the English Standard Version of the Bible, but also because of the team of 90+ scholars who put together the notes, articles, and other resources that went into the study Bible are simply top notch, beating all other previous study Bibles.
A CAUTION IS IN ORDER: Study Bibles are great tools, but we should always remember that the notes, maps, etc. are not meant to substitute for the Scriptural text itself. If you remember that the tools are simply there to aid and assist in your understanding of God’s Word, then you will be able to maintain a healthy perspective when studying the Bible.
When it comes to researching the Bible, people often call me a geek. And they’re right. I have little patience for flipping through tomes and trying to remember where I read something. Give me a multi-tabbed Internet browser and an electronically searchable document every time. For casual research (on the couch or Barcalounger) an iPad does the trick nicely, thank you. The guys at Google should be knighted or something for their contributions to society. Put the inventors of the Kindle Reader app right behind. Gotta love Amazon theology for instantly accessible books. Have trouble remembering things? Try Evernote. Bible study has never been so accessible, easy and convenient.
But things evolve rapidly in cyberspace.You can get used to a favorite tool, and miss out on something even better. Likewise, you can try one that is in an early stage of gestation, be unimpressed, and fail to see improvements that are rolled out later on. So it is with Bible reference sites.
For years, I enjoyed using a popular Bible search tool that eventually became thick with advertisements. It failed to keep up with modern resources, instead offering 19th-century commentaries that rarely satisfied. Friends recommended the Blue Letter Bible site and app to me a couple of years ago, but I just didn’t like the interface.
Things change.
My go-to searching tool for Bible study has become the Blue Letter Bible. It has a very convenient and well-thought-out interface that connects resources in a powerful way. Aesthetically it’s a bit like looking at the guts of an engine, but once you get used to it, you’ll have tremendous power at your fingertips. For those who copy and paste Scripture into documents and would like to avoid having to manually remove each verse number and then type the citation after you paste, Blue Letter Bible’s copy and paste options are amazingly flexible and powerful. Seems like a simple thing, but that’s what brought me back to retry the Blue Letter Bible.
Wow, have they delivered a lot of smart features! But don’t take my word for it. Watch this five-minute video tour then try it out for yourself. Enjoy!
Veracity 