September 9, 2015

The New NIV Zondervan Study Bible is Out!

By Clarke Morledge

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?

What you need is a good study Bible. If so, you should consider the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible.

“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.

But now the team that produced the NIV has come out with a new study Bible that could possibly eclipse the ESV Study Bible. What sets the NIV Zondervan Study Bible apart, aside from its 60+ all-star scholar team led by D. A. Carson, is its emphasis on “biblical theology,” which is basically a way of looking at the”‘unpacking of God’s story, book by book,” focusing more on the progressive history of revelation as opposed to the more systematic, thematic approach taken by the ESV Study Bible. You can get a feel for the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible by looking at this sample of articles and the text with commentary of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. For a short review, consider the following one from the Baptist Standard.

Devour the Word!!

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.

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September 7, 2015

Your Desire Shall Be For Your Husband

By Clarke Morledge
Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946). Missionary to China and activist for women's equality, spent a lot time studying the original Hebrew meaning of Genesis 3:16 (photo credit: Boston University)

Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946). Missionary to China and activist for women’s equality. Bushnell spent a lot time studying the original Hebrew meaning of Genesis 3:16 (photo credit: Boston University)

To the woman he [God] said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
    and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16 ESV)

The beauty and simplicity of the early chapters of Genesis ironically leads to a pitfall when reading these chapters. The story of Adam and Eve is very terse and yet captivating. The details are sparse, but the narrative is engaging, as well as being foundational to Christian theology and practice. The story invites the reader to explore the imagination, going deeper in trying to figure out what it all means. But sometimes, the imagination can take you far away from the text itself, and thereby importing an alien sense of meaning that does not belong there.

For years, I have wrestled with the meaning of the curse given to Eve in Genesis 3:16, subsequent to the Fall. In contemporary Western culture, where concerns about women’s rights flourish, many readers bristle over the idea that Eve might somehow be the one to blame for the Fall of Humanity. After all, she interacted with the serpent and then offered the forbidden fruit to Adam. Does Genesis teach that Eve was truly at fault?

More specifically, by asserting herself so forwardly in her dialogue with the serpent, was she subverting her role as a supportive helpmate to Adam? If one reads the Apostle Paul in one of his letters to Timothy,  you might get the idea that Paul really believes that it was all Eve’s fault (1 Timothy 2:13-15).

But even when reading Paul, such a neat conclusion is not so simple. In fact, such a conclusion would be wrong. In his most profound work of theology in his letter to the Romans, Paul squarely places the responsibility for the Fall on Adam’s shoulders (Romans 5:12-17). Eve is not even mentioned.

So, perhaps the wisest conclusion to make is that both Adam and Eve share in the downfall of humanity, though in different ways. You can not pin it all on Eve.

But then there is the whole matter of the curse placed on Eve, specifically, that “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” What is that all about?

This past summer, our church held a Summer Bible Study on Genesis 1-11, and this very question came up. Here is a TableTalk session where Tommy Vereb, our worship leader, poses the question to our lead pastor, Travis Simone:

Continue reading

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August 29, 2015

God Wrote a Book

By Clarke Morledge

John Piper, the main voice behind desiringGod.org, challenges me and encourages me in his exposition of and love for the Bible. Granted, there are times where he can be a bit over the top in his unashamed Calvinism. Nevertheless, there are some real gems, as when he teaches that the Bible offers us a window through which we can see the world from God’s perspective. Here he nails it. Great cinematography.

1 Comment   |  tags: , | posted in Apologetics

August 27, 2015

Surviving College Intellectually as a Christian

By Clarke Morledge

Michael Kruger was a young Christian when he entered his first year at the University of North Carolina. He thought he was prepared for the challenges to his faith at college, but when sat in a New Testament introduction class taught by Bart Ehrman, it nearly blew out his faith, much like the feeling of getting a flat tire and listening to all of the air hiss out.

Colleges across the country are now in session. Will young Christians survive their time at a university with their faith intact? Dr. Kruger, now the president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, shares some wisdom about surviving “Religion 101” in the following 6 minute video. I highly recommend Dr. Kruger’s blog.

2 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Apologetics

August 25, 2015

Blue Letter Bible

By John Paine

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!

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Tools