Thursday, November 24, 2011

The Expanded Bible


Published by: Thomas Nelson

Okay, so unlike “The Voice” New Testament which I recently reviewed, The Thomas Nelson Expanded Bible is NOT a devotional bible. At least, not if you’re easily distracted.

This is best described as an amplified Bible and the amplifications are great. Very helpful when studying, though hard to just sit down and read.

Case in point, Romans 1:1: “From Paul a servant [slave; bondservant] of Christ Jesus. God called me [L…called] to be an apostle [messenger] and chose me [set me apart; appointed me] to tell the Good News [Gospel].”

I reviewed the electronic version of this Bible and I can say that it is definitely not the easiest e-reader Bible I’ve tried to navigate, but its not the worst either. There’s got to be a better way…oh wait, there already is! Why can’t the publishers settle on an efficient way to make it so us avid e-readers can enjoy the Bible on our devices I just can’t understand…

I think I would have enjoyed the hardcopy version – it’d be a great resource to have on the shelf or take to a Bible study. But as an e-reader? Not so much. Devotional Bibles are great on an e-reader because you can just read through them page by page, but when you’re trying to study the Bible, you’re often going from book to book, chapter to chapter. To have to go back out to the Table of Contents each time and labouriously go through the process of getting to the reference is a real chore.

Get the hardcopy. If you like the Amplified, you’ll like this.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Voice New Testament: Revised & Updated



This is probably best described as a devotional New Testament put together by proponents of the Emergent Church. Very much like The Message, the translation is dynamic and original with much of the text laid out in playwright format or prose. This Bible also has quite a bit of commentary thrown in here and there to explain or add to some of the more difficult sections, as well as quite a bit of commentary included right in the text of the scripture as an aid or amplification of what the editor’s felt the passage was attempting to convey.

In order to produce a fair review I decided to abandon my tried and true NKJV Women’s Study Bible (which I love…) for a full week and do my morning and evening readings using only The Voice so that I could really get a feel for it.

I really enjoyed reading from the Voice. It was a captivating narrative and made some of the passages come alive in new and interesting ways. It was easy to get into and when I went through some of the sections that I was worried about how the editors would interpret (i.e. mangle) them, I was usually pleasantly surprised to see that they had usually been quite true to the script – much more so than the Message, which is awesome (I also enjoy the Message, don’t get me wrong, but it has serious shortcomings).

However, I was very disappointed with some of the commentary added to the text. In many places the editors have interpreted very controversial passages in one way without even acknowledging that there are other valid interpretations. For instance, their commentary on Revelations 7 states categorically that the 144,000 Israelites refers to all mankind. Case closed. Okay, I can see where they’re coming from and I think that’s a supportable premise, but there are other equally strong theories on this passage yet The Voice makes no allusion to this. Pompous and somewhat misleading if you ask me.

That reservation aside, however, I really enjoyed reading with the Voice during my week. I was able to get through most of the Gospels and several letters and I really enjoyed how they made the voice (in the letters especially) come alive for the reader. Interestingly enough, during  a recent plane trip I was reading from The Voice and my seat-neighbour noticed and asked me what it was. When I told her she was so intrigued that she took a picture of the book with her iPhone so that she could go home and order one. So it’s a great evangelistic tool! I’m looking forward to passing this Bible on to a friend, who is an unbeliever and I think would benefit from a Bible that she is more likely to actually read.