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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Scrambled Bibles: More Chronological Study Bible Buzz

A rather vague article at The Christian Post mentions several bloggers getting upset about the Thomas Nelson's new repackaging of the Bible as well as mentioning Wayne Hastings' work in damage control. Here's the article: Clarity of New Chronological Bible at Question. Katherine T. Phan, the writer or the article fails to link to any of the posts in question so I'll throw out a few links:

There's also a mysterious "Drew" mentioned in the Christian Post article but I'm unsure which of our blogger buddies named Drew that might be.

Come on, Katherine! Give us some links in your articles. What is this, the era of movable type?

Another Bible version worth critiquing in this regard is The TNIV The Books of The Bible. The ordering and grouping of the canon is in my opinion a statement about authorship and textual criticism. While I applaud the publication of editions aimed at getting readers to actually read the Bible, scrambled Bibles have a long way to go to prove their worth.

HT: Michael Kruse Clarity of New Chronological Bible at Question

3 Comments:

At Thu Aug 28, 07:39:00 PM, Blogger Iyov said...

I don't agree with your equating of the Chronological Bible and the TNIV Books of the Bible.

It is far from clear what the "proper" order of the Bible books are. The Hebrew Bible has the books in a different order than the Christian Old Testament. Catholic Bibles similarly order the books, with the Deuterocanonicals, in a different order than Christian Bibles with the an Apocryphal appendix.

The TNIV Books of the Bible, by reordering the books of the Bible (in a logical, if non-standard order) retains the interior logic of individual books.

In contrast, as I understand it, the Chronological Bible divides up the interior of the books -- even to the point of dividing up the psalter. I cannot feel that is a good thing, because each book of the Bible (including logical units such as the Pentateuch, Kings-Samuel, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah) has a strong interior literary structure.

Indeed, I see a correspondence between the Chronological Bible and what "higher criticism" scholars do in dividing up Isaiah into different books.

 
At Thu Aug 28, 08:48:00 PM, Blogger David Ker said...

RE: TBoTB, I've only had access to the online samples here: http://thebooksofthebible.info/sample.php

The Preface shows the reordering of the books. [pdf]

Iyov, I will readily concede that an easy to read version without versification is attractive to me.

Suzanne mentions TBoTB here and iMonk reviews it.

 
At Thu Sep 04, 01:34:00 PM, Blogger Dru said...

Just letting everyone know that I'm not the mysterious Drew! I spell my name differently and as yet I haven't got a blog of my own.

 

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