THE NIV JOURNALLING BIBLE
Hodder & Stoughton. 960 pages. £21.99
ISBN 978 1 444 745 627 THE NIV PROCLAMATION BIBLE
Hodder & Stoughton. 1,536 pages. £28.99
ISBN 978 1 444 745 603
Bibles make great Christmas presents. There are two new editions from Hodder & Stoughton which are noteworthy!
They are both versions of the 2011 updated and revised NIV. Although this is somewhat of an improvement on the other recently heavily gender neutral renderings, it still has problems. For example, 2Kings 22.14 identifies Huldah the wife of Shallum as a prophet rather than a prophetess as traditionally translated. This is despite the fact that both in the Hebrew and the Septuagint the word is definitely feminine. There are other similar issues elsewhere in the text. Readers ought to be aware.
Exciting propsect
The Journalling Bible looks great fun. It has extra wide margins with ruled lines so that you can make little notes of lessons or cross-references which occur to you in your daily reading as you study God’s word. Some of us make notes in separate journals, but I think many people will be excited by the idea of being able to scribble thoughts in the margins.
Substantial item
The Proclamation Bible is a much more substantial library item. The publishers approached Lee Gatiss, Director of the Church Society, who collaborated with the Proclamation Trust to develop this edition. Writers from that stable have provided a number of excellent essays on how to approach Scripture and introductions to Bible books which are bound into the volume. There are, for example, essays on ‘A Bible Overview’ by Vaughan Roberts, ‘Finding the “Melodic Line” of a Bible Book’ by Tim Ward and ‘Historical Reliability of the Bible’ by Dirk Jongkind of Tyndale House. The latter I found particularly fascinating. Every Bible book has a helpful introduction which gives a one-sentence summary of the message of the book plus a suggested structure and other helpful reflections.
Both these Bibles should prove very useful, so long as we do not elevate the status of the added notes, whether ours or someone else’s, to the status of Scripture. Remember Schofield!
