Thought I'd do a little post on what I look for in a Bible. One of the most important criteria for me is that it lay out the text in paragraphs. As Fee and Stuart say in "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth", we must learn to THINK PARAGRAPHS. It's vital to remember that the Bible is not a collection of golden nuggets and trite sayings, but rather it advances via paragraphs of thought. My reading of Scripture grew in leaps and bounds when I started using a Bible that laid out Isaiah or Mark's Gospel paragraph by paragraph. So much so that I'll rarely pick up a good version like the NASB95 because it doesn't place spaces between paragraphs. (For those who want to use the KJV, I believe Cambridge puts out a beautiful paragraph edition. The Penfold-Newberry is OK. The Scofield's paragraphing is too arbitrary, it seems to me.)
What criteria are important to you in selecting a Bible? Hopefully not size!
4 comments:
Mike,
Good post. Right now I'm having my Greek students work through Philippians, paragraph by paragraph (not verse by verse).
God bless, and keep up the thoughtful blogging.
Dave
Thanks Dave. Right now in my personal study I'm going through 1 Peter by paragraphs, summarizing each one quickly in order to come up with the overall structure of the letter. An exercise I think I learned from your blog!
MK
Mike,
My wife Becky is currently working through 1 Peter as well. She is loving her inductive study. She uses the KJV by the way.
Onward and upward,
Dave
After reading Colossians one to three more times, I'm going to try to figure out the paragraphs. As a matter of fact, it's part of an assignment I'm doing. Sometimes, I actually like homework :)
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