Bibles Worth Buying
Friends,
Donald Trump is marketing a Bible. And bonus he is apparently into the Constitution or at least into including, like it’s a third testament perhaps. Before you invest 60 bucks in what I suspect may be a leatherette abomination, I want to highlight a few Bibles that I do find worthy of your hard earned dollars.
I love a high quality NRSV study bible.
Because if you are going to explore ancient words, it is wise to first understand that the Bible was not written in English, not even King James English, and that there might be some cultural and linguistic gaps between us as modern folks and the original audience.
A High Quality Study Bible has essays at the beginning of each book and verse by verse explanations, notations and information to help us as modern readers give context to the words of scripture. These Bibles are collaborative scholarly works and there probably isn’t one word in there that hasn’t been debated, vetted, deconstructed and reviewed by other scholars.
You can of course buy a diversity of translations like NIV or KJV and even some, like the Inclusive Language Bible that may reduce some of the gendered language for God. Different translations can help us explore because they offer different words that might inspire us but I would still choose an NRSV Study Bible as my first step.
These are my top three favorites:
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version
The New Interpreter's Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha
HarperCollins Study Bible-NRSV-Student (Revised and Updated) By Attridge, Harold W.
If you are hungry for more as you study ancient words, I would add companion resources like The Women’s Bible Commentary, the Jewish Study Bible and perhaps Reading the Bible Again for the First Time by Borg and Crossin.
The Women’s Bible Commentary offers scholarship in a concise way to help you understand each text you are reading a bit better and it's not a multi volume commentary so it's easy to keep on hand as you think of questions. There is a Queer Bible Commentary as well but the price is a bit high for a starting place.
The Jewish Study Bible will give some lovely poetry to the Hebrew Bible and have additional commentary that you can learn from and reminds us the “Old Testament” is alive and not written as a prequel to the “new testament.”
Finally Borg and Crossin do a fine job of inviting us all into the Bible in a way that is serious. So serious in fact, you can not just take it literally and park your brain at the door. (Like the man who told me he doesn’t need any commentaries or history because the bible was written for him.)
Women's Bible Commentary, Third Edition: Revised and Updated
The Jewish Study Bible
Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally
All of this is to say. If you are going to buy a Bible, buy a good one and don't, for the LOVE of GOD, buy it from an entitled rich man who needs to pay off legal debts for hushing a porn star, famously bragged about grabbing women by the “pussy” and talks trash about vulnerable people every chance he gets.
There may be many answers to the question of what Jesus would do and friends, I just don’t think he would buy this man’s story.
If you’re looking to purchase any of these recommendations, you can find them here.
Blessing from your friendly local Abbot,
Rev. Debra