Which of These Study Bibles Makes the Most Sense for You? (Review of Popular Study Bibles)

in this episode me and my dad are going to review these study Bibles we know that making Bibles or anything is very hard and we respect people who do it even if we do have a few notes thank you hey everybody I'm Matt thanks for hanging out with me on my YouTube channel this is my son and in this video we're going to review not all of these study Bibles I think we're only going to get to this stack in this video and then we'll do a follow-up video where we get to this stack because there's some spicy things over here they're going to take a little extra time when we get down into this region right here here's what I'm going for I throughout the course of the year I work on bible stuff and I'm fascinated by Bibles and the thinking that goes into publishing them and how to present them and so I always got my antenna out for study Bibles more academically oriented Bibles that uh are interesting to me in some way or another and when I see an one I grab it and then in the course of my daily work for a few days I use it in anticipation of having this conversation with you at the end of the year now I figure if you're watching this it's probably because you're thinking about buying a new study Bible or you're thinking about giving one to somebody you know or maybe you just want to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world of Bible publishing and Christianity in general any of those reasons that's awesome and I'm hoping that this video will help answer some of the questions you have about these without you having to buy them now most of these I just saw somewhere they looked interesting so I bought them surely something in this stack has been sent to me either by one of you who enjoyed something you sent it my way that happens from time to time thank you for that by the way not everything that gets sent to me ends up making it into this particular video but maybe next year I think a couple of these were sent to me by a publisher as well we don't got any kind of sweetheart deal or anything I am your advocate here so I'm just going to tell you what I honestly think maybe at times mildly uncomfortably but here's the thing disclaimer before we get into it making Bibles or anything is super hard like the boy was saying up front and I I I don't own the Bible I'm not in charge of this I'm not fit to say exactly how everything ought to be so I'm going to give you my honest take and my read on things ultimately you're smart you know what to do with stuff even if you totally disagree with my take hopefully the video will be useful enough for you to have a sense of what's going on in a given Edition and decide what you want to do with it so here's what we're going to look at as we go through these instead of a simple thumbs up thumbs down good Bible bad Bible instead what I want to consider is what are these Bibles going for and then how well do they do it so I got a bunch of little sliders that I've made up that cover the following spectrums of what are Bibles going for uh question number one the purpose is it trying to be more academic or is it trying to be more devotional in nature slider number two nudge factor is it really trying to spell out how to read this particular part of the text or is it sprinkling along a bunch of little breadcrumbs to give you the tools you need to go and figure it out for yourself Spectrum number three targeting is it meant for just whoever might be interested in the Bible or is it targeted toward a very specific demographic group like this courage for life study Bible for men it has in the name that's kind of the hint that I'm looking at then topicality is a given Bible meant to address a specific question does it have the antenna out for one particular thing like the nature of God church history biblical archaeology Reformation values Catholic ideas or is it kind of a general purpose Study Bible just meant to give you the obvious notes on each text to help you get deeper into into it next spectrum is bias some of these are going for more of a neutral read almost everything on the desk is lightly to somewhat significantly Protestant Evangelical is in its foundational assumption but a lot of those groups will tend to try to give you a pretty flat read on what's going on there some of those other Bibles are going to push pretty hard toward a now this is this is a theological perspective we're offering these notes from these two Bibles I would expect are probably going to lean the hardest that way like I said when we get to these in the next video it gets a little bit spicy so we'll look forward to waiting to see how that plays out next Spectrum portability some of these are really big and hard to carry around some of them are little and easier to carry around and the weight of the pages has a lot to do with it so it's not immediately evident from the size to address that problem we have brought along a tool when we y the lad here is going to be in charge of weighing the Bibles so that you know how much you're committing to in terms of physical output when you carry this around for your whole life as opposed to this you get a big giant Bible and carried around for 40 years versus a little light one I mean that's tons and tons of weight difference between the two over that much time it's very important detail we're going to nail it uh up front what do you think is going to be the heaviest one um I think this one the Catholic one bold Choice I'm going to go with this one we'll see what checks out as we go along okay okay finally oh the question of presentation some of these bibles are making much more of an effort outside and or even inside to add a lot of flare and flourish and colorful wayfinding others of these are trying to be very practical and pragmatic and we'll try to evaluate what they're going for on that Spectrum as well and then finally we'll just do a simple 1 to 10 scale in terms of the concept of the Bible the execution of the notes and the resource ources the general presentation of the Bible and then I'll make up some arbitrary number for what I think is my final grade on this again as much as anything that's just me having fun you take that with a grain of salt and do what you want with it do what your eyes tell you all right so the plan is once again we're going to get through this stack right now then in the next video we're going to get through this stack where things get a little bit Lively and we run into a bit of surprise that if you if you want to know where that goes you'll just have to watch the next video all right let's review some Bible Study Bible number one is the chronological Life Application Study Bible by Tindale this is the New Living Translation I know some of the people who worked on this I trust the scholarship behind it it's super readable this is one of my three favorite translations and this is the chronological version of the flagship product of Tindale the Life Application Study Bible which you have there right here let me trade you take that out of the box for me pal the Life Application Study Bible is why wildly popular and on the purpose slider scale it edges toward devotional I mean it says Life Application right there in the name and so for me this has not always scratched the itch of my curiosity for why I get a study Bible but I can see why it's super popular and why tons of people have appreciated it and benefited from it that said I really really like this chronological Life Application Study Bible and this is one that at some point I might just read end to end as a chronological read through of the Bible the normal arrangement of books of the Bible obviously isn't evident here they just grab all parts from all the different parts of the Bible and they try to just put them together as best as they can in the actual order that things happened so you lose some of the continuity I mean there's no way to keep from losing some of the continuity that you're going to get with a traditionally ordered Bible from from a theological thematic perspective but you gain a bunch of continuity narrative wise and so what they were trying to do with this Bible is give you the best of both worlds I think they did a really good job better than I've ever seen with any Chronological Bible the wayfinding in this Bible is phenomenal by wayfinding I mean the color coding the organizing the conscious stuff that you'll catch the subconscious stuff that you'll Inuit it that helps you stay oriented in where you are in the story and how it all fits together literally figuratively thematically uh chronologically and I just I think Tindale is so far ahead of the curve on this in terms of all of these Bible Publishers nobody does wayfinding as well as them and every little flourish it doesn't matter where you turn the color the font it will be right that is it will correspond to every other place that same thing that same genus or class or species of idea or category it'll always always be the same throughout and so you'll get done with one of these recently developed Tindale Bibles and you will feel a mental map of the Bible that uh just wouldn't be as obvious or wouldn't be as present without really thoughtful artistic work in making the wayfinding element of this come together that said that's a really big Bible with all those resources you're in charge of weighing it what do we got see I can't see it from there we got to move back a little bit what is that I think it's three three 3 lb 12 O that's a lot of Bible so I mean if you're looking to shed a couple pounds get a little bit ripped maybe a little bit going in the shoulders they'll pop on the delts or something this might be a good option but know that you are in for a commitment good stuff [Music] Tindale next up is another one by tnd D and another one in the New Living Translation this is the courage for life study Bible for men it has Lions all over it I like lions I'm a man let's put it in the hands of an aspiring man there you go young man what do you make of that tell me what you see awesome Lion Okay um here talk a little louder so they can hear you an awesome Lon then Proverbs 281 okay everything has blue stitching that's pretty cool and then it says the wicked run away when no one is chasing them but The Godly are as bold as lions yeah so I mean you like it is it the kind of thing that you would be into yes okay so I mean they know their audience props on that I like the artistic effort and energy that they put into it you flip the thing open and what you discover pretty quickly with this one ah sorry scale is that each page has its own little devotional slash study guide it's right in between this isn't a Bible that is designed at least on the page to be is super deep di Study Bible there are lots of resources that you won't see in print more on that in a minute what you will see is this little threefold really fourfold guide that goes along with each page of the Bible and that's tough to pull off because they're meant to correspond to what's on the page so it's like here's how I do things well I can only do one page today I got to do 10 push-ups and I got to do this other stuff I got to take my vitamins I got to read one page of the Bible if you do that on every page you will get something to reflect on in sort of this four-fold approach pray they say observe but it's kind of like you know look at the raw materials of the text interpret the text and then apply the text it's an age-old approach to Bible study and it's good I read several of these they did a really good job of making them correspond to what is going on on the page some of these Pages don't lend themselves to that as much and so some of these are going to be a little bit of a stretch but I think all in all that's fine the the thing about Resources with this Bible though is that it's got the filament system that Tindale does where you can point a phone at the page number and there's a little app that goes along with it and you get a whole bunch of the resources from the Life Application Study Bible and and so really if you wanted to use this with your phone as a companion this would also serve as a very robust Study Bible but it's not on the page again it's very very catered to a certain demographic you can start weighing that and those usually aren't personally my favorite thing but this is pretty cool and it's only 2 lb and 15 o so I mean I kind of expect it to be bigger and heavier so that you could get masculine cred for dragging around a giant Bible but uh it's Sleek it's manageable it looks cool and I don't know how to close the [Music] Box all right this one's interesting this is the new inductive Study Bible it's an nasb New American Standard Bible that airs more toward the side of as much as it's possible a sort of literal interpretation in the approach to translation and it's by Harvest House but the interesting thing here is that this Edition is reflective of a certain philosophy of biblical interpretation one that I think makes quite a bit of sense the inductive method says that you go to the text for what it is and you really work through it and try to understand what it's doing and then you take from that the obvious truths that flow out of it that approach and the popularization of this term inductive was meant to be a corrective a push back on what the people behind this would call deductive interpretation that's where you have an idea already about how things are and how God is and what the Bible must mean and you go and find verses to fit that and make it happen well of those two options obviously the inductive thing is going to be better it's going to get you closer to understanding what's going on that said there's a specific technique that goes along with this and the technique can be pretty overwhelming to people the first 30 pages or so of this Edition are dedicated to that Tech look at this buddy look at all the signs and markings that are intended to be used to mark up the Bible and you got these specific ways to categorize and organize your thoughts and take notes and look at this look at the way they mark up a page I mean it's overwhelming to me it's makes me feel like I felt in eth grade when they made us diagram sentences and I still don't think I actually understood what we were doing there for some people like I was saying it's just going going to be a perfect lock and key fit that's how my brain works I can now make sense of the Bible I can break it down into its Elemental components and extract from it the truth better than I could otherwise for me it does not have that effect I think the whole inductive approach to the Bible is sort of intuitive but to me too much of this can get you away from reading it for what it is which is narrative or poetry and dude I just got a yawn out of you I'm so sorry you're a really good sport to sit here and look at Bibles with me even though you were a little bit tired thanks pal so um that is what this approach does to me it makes me want to sleep and it just it isn't how I think about any kind of literature even though I can totally see why it would be useful but here's the thing when you actually go through this Bible it this looks like a Bible what is the biggest thing buddy that you notice that is different from this Bible versus normal Bibles other Bibles you have um this line of okay so it has cross references yeah I agree what do you make of the headings for the chapters oh it says chapter 13 theme so it's not there so how are you supposed to know what the theme is of a given chapter I think they're supposed to have you write it okay right uhhuh so you got to read it and you got to do the work yourself I like that I think that's cool because a lot of times those chapter headings I me those aren't from God Christians don't believe that those can cheat those can skew your honest read on the text those divisions aren't necessarily in natural places nobody believes those divisions are ordained and so I like the way that this Bible very subtly just calls that into question simply by leaving a line there that you need to fill in for yourself so I think it's cool I see what it's going for I'm not prepared to vouch for for that approach to marking up your Bible but I could see how it could be helpful for some and if you're into this kind of study maybe if you were part of a campus ministry that did this or if you just want to try this out hey this Bible is built to help you come at it that way last question what does it weigh I feeling it's going to be [Music] heavy this is what one of those that I came across in the wild and I had to know what was going on with it this is Crossways Global Study Bible this is another one of the three translations I really like this is the English Standard Version and I just had no idea what to expect when I saw this are we going to do a thing that is just chalk full of articles about Christianity from different perspectives are the notes going to be like oh well people from subsaharan Africa tend to read this passage this way but people from Eastern Europe tend to read the same passage the other way I thought that'd be interesting like some kind of comparative thing but then as I got into it what I figured out is it's a simplification of the larger ESV Study Bible there's already uh concise sorry just a second there's already a concise ESV Study Bible and it looks like there's quite a bit of overlap in terms of what's going on Note wise but what I notice is the big difference between this concise ESV Study Bible and the global Study Bible is that while this one is still of fine quality it's clearly built to be cheaper to print cheaper to distribute and therefore easier to get into the hands of people all around the world whereas you got to have a couple bucks to buy something like this that's really printed with with very high quality so I dig into this a little bit more and you know my next question is all right so okay it's a Study Bible it's meant for Christians all around the world I wonder who contributed to it so you got to dig through the front end when you're trying to figure that out and this is what I see really cool the contributors are from the United States Singapore India Sri Lanka Singapore Indonesia South Korea Kenya Singapore Zambia the United States Jamaica Japan Nigeria huh well no that's pretty cool so you're hearing from Bible scholars from all around the world from different contexts in terms of historical Orthodox expressions of biblical faith and so it is a little bit that thing that I thought it might be right out of the gate but honestly the articles are pretty few and far between for the most part what you're getting is a very simple take on the notes from the great big grandiose ESV Study Bible which is the flagship product of Crossway and ultimately I find the amount of notes to be pretty satisfying I mean this is more than good enough to give me a sense of what's going on in the text but more than that I love the idea that instead of trying to make something more and more and more premium to try to win the premium Market why not make something with people in view who don't have as many resources but would really like quality stuff quality resources that they can carry around in one volume I've traveled to different parts of the world and met with pastors and worked on things like this and the hunger for just simple access to Reliable good biblical resources is something that I did not see coming and I think this is going to scratch that itch and I really salute Crossway for making this happen and hey if you went out even in a very American setting and grabbed this it's going to one help you see the text through the lenses of Christians in other parts of the world and two it's just a good study Bible that's downright useful for whoever you are Global Study Bible cool idea oh that was like my I'm a wrap it up thing but you have a job so I'm not wrapping it up don't go anywhere that's 2 pounds and change now you know all right this one's tricky that doesn't mean bad it doesn't mean negative It's Tricky Crossway who has the English Standard Version has published this Systematic Theology Study Bible now Crossway tends to cater to a pretty strongly reformed theology crowd and so I saw the title of this knowing who published it and thought well I mean should you maybe just call it a reformed theology Study Bible and by calling it Systematic Theology it feels like you're making a very Universal claim to say this is just what the Bible obviously says about theology like well challenge accepted I want to know how that works and what they did with it and how much they overstep and how much this is going to irritate everybody so I grabbed it and I was using this when I was working on Ezra and Nehemiah which I guess I'm still working on I even know where it is in the Bible I'm just distracted and there really wasn't much in the way of resources here in terms of systematic theology and Ezra I saw an article on worship okay I get why that would be in there with the rebuilding of the temple one on Disobedience toward the end of Ezra which I mean I see why that would be in there Nehemiah had an article on scripture and something else and then in Esther there's one about the sovereignty of God I read it I was like well yeah I mean that's pretty much just biblical theology from Esther and from the rest of the Bible it's on one about Deliverance in terms of how things work out between morai and Esther and Xerxes and hmon and how it all comes together so when I was actually using this Bible I was like well that's kind of innocuous I mean it's almost just not even noticeable I mean it would be it was almost the same functionally for me just using a plain text Bible as I was working on Nehemiah and Esther as it would have been using this it just some articles there that said kind of obvious things and that's great you know that's fine but not enough to get me to buy it not enough to get me to be mad so then after the fact I was like all right well let's just go see what happens in Ephesians 1 because that is a part of the Bible that people sometimes disagree about and get mad about which is so funny because in Ephesians 1 the whole tone that Paul the author of Ephesians is taking it's like God Is So Glorious it's so amazing that he ordained in advance that the predestination is a thing and all of this is to the praise of his glory and grace is amazing and look at what he's done I mean it's just so gushingly celebratory excited I mean this is what we're talking about in church right now I mean right wouldn't you agree that's the like Paul seems really happy the whole time right yes okay fair enough but people tend to fight about Ephesians 1 because there's stuff about predestination in there so I go and I look sure enough we get an article I knew they couldn't not election and adoption Ephesians 1: 3-6 our heavenly father is praiseworthy for granting us all spiritual blessings especially salvation yeah I think Christians think that which he ordained before creation okay well it's kind of in the text you might I want to caveat it a little bit but yes that's good he who works all things according to the counsel of his will verse 11 CHS us in Christ verse three that is with a plan to join us spiritually to him by faith his love and will rather than anything in US determined by his choice and the goals of his election are final sanctification and adoption by Grace God the Father brings into his family Believers in his son because he sent Christ as Redeemer to Deliver Us from bondage and make us the father's children we enjoy being God's children now as we await final adoption all right like straight up that that's on the pages of a Bible and I know right now there are a bunch of you who are watching that and you were like yes obviously that's what the text says it's awesome but I also know there are others of you who equally love and study and care about the text who are like ah yeah I don't I might I might push back on one or two of those turns of phrases here or there so my point is not that's a good article or a bad article I mean mostly that's just biblical historical Christianity with a couple of af4 mentioned turns of phrases that one might want to caveat differently but my point isn't are the Articles great or not my point is this is a big swing and I'm not sure there's enough happening resource-wise in the text to really justify taking the big swing I'm not I'm not sure this is a good idea strategically but each publisher knows who they're publishing to they know their base and I guess my critique of this Bible would be does it know what it is yeah it does it is a Systematic Theology Bible that leans a certain direction interpretively does it execute it well no I think it's trying to shoot the middle enough and be safe enough that it isn't going to help a reformed minded Christian go much deeper into the than where they've already gone and it's not going to push someone from a different perspective enough to really think it through I I'm not sure this does enough to justify its own existence I think you might be ahead with a plain text Bible nothing personal to people who like it how much does it weigh I can't that's a little heavier than I would have guessed all right next up we're moving over here to this other pile but before we do you were starting to tell me something about this Bible that you saw Yes um I think that that's a mustard seed tree and then all mustard hey yeah the Dwight shuit shirt color I like it nice catch okay yeah that's one thematic thematic artistic presentation point for the Systematic Theology Study Bible that's why I bring him along good catch nice shop you just jump in with anything like that whenever you want this is the Experiencing God Bible it doesn't say overtly Study Bible on it so this is probably the closest to the fringes of the category we're reviewing but I got curious about it I picked it up I came in with some negative assumptions I came away with more positive assumptions so I decided to roll it in here and do it this is a Christian Standard Bible csb I don't know a ton about the background of this translation I've found it to be reliable and good when I've used it this is by Holman Publishers so I cracked the thing open expecting to get something a little more wishy-washy something that doesn't provide a ton of value but just has some maybe light squishy meditations woven in here and there but right off the bat I notice I know these are pretty solid resources and and they all have these little boxes like like uh that say literally do you notice and the boxes rais really interesting questions that again they kind of breadcrumb you out to be like did you catch that might be worth looking into that more and I appreciate that because this is an invitation to Discovery more than a dictation of here is what Experiencing God looks like a b c we're going to quantify it for you and an even more subtle example of the way this is more of a breadcrumb Bible to get you curious and get you digging for yourself is that it's just littered with all of these little icons do you see those pal yeah uh I mean what does that look like uh U-turn sign sure what is this a sword I see that the same way an arrow with a little cross in it okay wow how did you see that cross my goodness young eyes impressive then a that one I got too and then that looks like Mammoth teeth Ten Commandments I see that now that you mention it and so that made me curious I go back to the again like all right what are these little icons that they're just putting right in the text just little circles text size circles and I find the code okay the arrow God works the heart love relationship there's a little email kind of symbol invitation The Ten Commandments God speaks and on through Etc and so it looks like what they're trying to do is to demonstrate that all these little passages and movements and all the different genres of the Bible are all somehow reflective of aspects of I don't want to say the cycle but the rhythm of actually experiencing icing relationship with God in the real world and one of the weaknesses I think of being into the kind of stuff that I'm into study Bibles and all of this business is that while the academic is super important as part of the deal and and breaking it down and understanding that's awesome like still what we're breaking down in understanding communicates that God is our father and that we're Sons and Daughters of the king and that there's an actual relationship here and that that it's it's meaningful and things happen in it and and so I just love that built into the text are all of these little reminders it even if you don't stop and say oh yeah that heart totally does and you're right that verse completely says it I'm not always satisfied that each place the icon appears perfectly Smoking Gun has a text right next to it that 10 out of 10 knocks it out of the park and is an epiphany every time it's not like that but sometimes it is and more so it's just a constant reminder that hey all of this stuff is revealing things about God and what it's like to be in a relationship with God and the attributes of God and the work of God and I like that as an orienting point of emphasis that's just woven into the text I think this could be a really good one to pick up and simply read through beginning to end one time with a maybe a little different set of antenna out so I like this one I thought it was worth weighing oh that's husky you got 3.76 there that's what I see that's more Bible than I expected all right Experiencing God [Music] Bible rock and roll buddy look at that we were going to try to get one stack done and we got one stack plus one bonus Bible I think that's a gigantic win way to go for the fist bump instead of high-fiving my fist bump like you did on the last day Okay the reason we need more time for these remaining five Bibles is because it does get pretty interesting right here I had a thing I wanted to accomplish with the Bibles that I picked then when I actually got into it and started looking I realized that one of these Bibles was the wrong Bible to pick and I super do not recommend it we're going to talk about which of these Bibles I really really don't like and don't recommend next time around but I think there'll be a silver lining on it we'll still all get to go home feeling good but in the meantime tension if you want to see that next video I would be grateful if you'd consider subscribing and hitting the little notification Bell so that you will be notified when that comes out if not no problem whatsoever next time around we're going to get to that stack and we'll just pick up right where we left off then all right cool I'm Matt that's my kid thanks for hanging out with me on my YouTube channel let's do this again soon

Channel: Matt Whitman

Views: 27,707

Keywords: Bible, Theology, Study, Matt Whitman, TMBH, No Dumb Questions, Matthew, Jesus

Id: SWcZ8Q9Aj2Q

Length: 32min 44sec (1964 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2023