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What are you reading?

hopperace

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The Parallel Study Bible – Helping you study the Bible like never before! (NKJV, NCV, THE MESSAGE, COMPREHENSIVE STUDY NOTES) – from Thomas Nelson Publishers

Parallel Bibles have flooded the market the last several years – there’s now a wide selection of 8 translation New Testaments, 4 translation NTs and complete Bibles, and 2 and 3 translation offerings of either the NT or complete Bible in a mix and match of most of the prominently popular Protestant English translations, a couple of collections in Roman Catholic English translations, and even a number of 2 translation Spanish collections (with a variety of new Spanish translations also flooding the market in recent years).

For those appreciative of big bulky parallel Bibles, this particular one should not be overlooked, and may well be the best parallel tool for Sunday-School teachers of a Baptist ilk. It has no cross references (apart from those in the commentary notes, which are actually rather strong in comparison with study Bible commentary notes), the absence of which is actually kind of standard in parallel Bibles anyway, but it has a “Harmony of the Gospels”, a “Read Your Bible Through in a Year” guide, a nice “NKJV Concordance”, and is the first to offer a comprehensive commentary, which is a concise abridgement of the annotations from Nelson’s NKJV Study Bible, set as the fourth column in the traditional parallel Bible format.

As to the condensation of NKJV Study Bible notes, the Parallel Study Bible has compact 2-3 paragraph book introductions compared with the 2-3 page intros of the NKJSB, it is minus the outlines and timelines, and without graphic features like in-text maps & charts; but and the staff editors (Earl D. Radmacher, TH.D. was the general editor on the NKJSB) have done an excellent job of whittling down the commentary, and even managed to include a few condensed INDepth and WORDfocus articles from the NKJVSB as highlighted additions to the commentary in the PSB commentary column. The notes are very oriented toward traditional Baptist theology and tend to give a single interpretation of a passage (e.g. “sons of God” in Gen. 6 as “angels”).

The intros and text are a bit small printed (7 pt. Type), which might be a detraction for many, but it’s a fairly readable type face in dark ink on bright white paper. The text selection offers the transmitter language sensitive/ word-for-word / complete equivalence translation of the modern, 8th grade reading level New King James Version, the receptor language sensitive / thought-for-thought / dynamic equivalence translation of the 5th grade reading level New Century Version (which, together with the NKJV, Nelson is marketing very strongly right now – with a comparative eye toward Zondervan’s controversial TNIV, I think), and the widely popular paraphrase and fresh rendering of Eugene Peterson’s The Message.

I could really stand for the print size being a bit larger, and I’m one who loves compact Bibles crammed with lots of goodies in teeny, tiny print (I’ve even got a compact Dake Bible), but the Parallel Study Bible is a great addition to Nelson’s arsenal of big swords.
 
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JuJube

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My devotionals which I dont think I could ever change are,"My Utmost for His Highest " by Oswald Chambers, and "Streams in the Desert" by LB Cowman. I skip around in the bible a lot, so this year starting the 1st, I'm going to do and read thru the bible in a year with my church. And then I promised a friend that I would read Pilgrims Progress which I've started and have gotten past the 1st couple pages. It's good. Classic, right?
 
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Salamon

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YES Pilgrims Progress is a very cool book! Another of John Bunyan's I highly recomend is "The Holy War" it is not about a war between muslims and christians it is about the battle of the heart it is very good in both books I recommend looking into the text because almost everything he writes is a metaphore for somthing that takes place in "Christians life". Well Enjoy, Chris
 
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leytonstones

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My devotionals which I dont think I could ever change are,"My Utmost for His Highest " by Oswald Chambers, and "Streams in the Desert" by LB Cowman. I skip around in the bible a lot, so this year starting the 1st, I'm going to do and read thru the bible in a year with my church. And then I promised a friend that I would read Pilgrims Progress which I've started and have gotten past the 1st couple pages. It's good. Classic, right?
If you are reading Pilgrim's Progress (great book btw) you might also be interested in reading "Themes and Issues in Pilgrim's Progress by Barry E. Horner ISBN no. 0-85234-529-1

Blessings :wave:
 
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MamaChris

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YES Pilgrims Progress is a very cool book! Another of John Bunyan's I highly recomend is "The Holy War" it is not about a war between muslims and christians it is about the battle of the heart it is very good in both books I recommend looking into the text because almost everything he writes is a metaphore for somthing that takes place in "Christians life". Well Enjoy, Chris
I am reading Pilgrims Progress now, thank you for the sharing about the Holy War. That will be my next book.
 
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