The proclamation Bible Published by Zondervan is in the NIV translation . This Bible is said to be “There are many Study Bibles, But none Better” by Timothy Keller. It was definitely pitched as a Study Bible. Before each Chapter and section, such as the poetic books in the Old Testment. there were also articles at the beginning of both the Old and New Testament. Thats pretty much the description is a nut shell.
So as I pondered how to review this, my question was this: “Do I review it as a study Bible OR do I review it as a Bible with interesting infer in it?”
Clearly my answer lies in the statement at the top of the Book.
Upon receiving this book/Bible it is beautifully bound and STURDY! something lacking in a lot of Bibles. You can tell its a High quality book and of course it’s Gods word so I cannot be too rough on it. However, the Study Bible claim, That I can be hard on. so lets go through this methodically. If you call yourself a STUDY BIBLE what should the VERY first thing you should have ?
Study notes: There quite literally aren’t ANY…AT ALL! So that was the very first thing I looked for and was grossly disappointed! So I asked my friends….A Bible College student, a pastor (my hubby) FB friends, a new but very growing believer and this was in ALL of their top 3. So Yes this is a HUGE disappointment. As you can see you basically get footnotes which any good Bible has,but a study Bible has more.
One of the other things that my friends said was plenty of cross references which as you can see is not a problem.
Then the third thing that friends said was CHARTS, There again ….NONE, not one single one.
Now in order to FULLY get an accurate view of the whole picture of this Bible I handed it over to my hubby for sermon prep. he was impressed. Heres the thing If you are going to say,
“The NIV Proclamation Bible is remarkable for how well it puts the highest quality biblical scholarship at the Bible student’s fingertips in such a clear, penetrating and accessible form. There are many study Bibles on the market right now, but none better.” -Tim Keller
You should probably check with some guys in the trenches.. My Husband has a Bachelors in Religious Ed. with a concentration in Pastoral Greek and Hebrew, an M.Div. A ThM and an MA in Linguistics specialty in Biblical Greek, so I take his opinion HIGHLY. The whole time I reviewed the book and it sat on our kitchen table, if someone came in and looked at it and inquired about it, his words were immediate.” I wouldn’t recommend it. ”
I too said that same thing through much of this process. I used this Bible as I researched and wrote about various Characters from the Bible and time and again was disappointed with the lack of information when it came to specific texts and found myself going to other books and other study Bible. My end conclusion is this, If you’re going to say that there is no better Study Bible it better be BETER, it should have the most information and helps, it should be the book you go to when all else falls short (Instead of the other way around) and if it says its a STUDY Bible then it really should have STUDY HELPS, charts notes on complicated texts instead of a brief overview of the Book which coincidentally could be found in ANY commentary and be far more in depth and helpful.
were the articles helpful? Yes but they seemed so few and far between especially when it came to in depth study.
I had High hopes for this Bible but sadly I must give it only two stars.
(Disclaimer: I received this book free of Charge from BookLook Bloggers for my personal Non-biased review)
