Comments on: Why I Don’t Recommend Study Bibles

By: rick

rick — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:24:06 +0000

Drew, thanks for the insightful article.

Kevin, I must agree with you… I no longer recommend study Bibles, but I do recommend studying the Bible.

By: Ask the leadership coach

Ask the leadership coach — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:24:18 +0000

[...] David Ker posted a noteworthy aricle today onHere’s a small snippetUnfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg of confusion that is dissemenated by the popular study Bibles on the market. If you are struggling with a passage, get a good dictionary of Bible words, a concordance, some comparative … [...]

By: Kevin W. Rhodes

Kevin W. Rhodes — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:55:09 +0000

I have seen too many Christians confused by these notes because they give them more weight than they deserve. Therefore, I no longer recommend them at all.

By: John W. Brown

John W. Brown — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:27:39 +0000

Thanks for your post, Drew.
We might want to be careful to make a blanket condemnation of all study Bibles. I preach from my Nelson Study Bible, but it is a NKJV. Its comments are apparently different. On Acts 10.47 ‘Willingness to be baptized is the consistent response in the Book of Acts of all who placed their faith in Christ’ They then reference Matthew 28.19-20 and Acts 2.36-38 in the next sentence. They dont state everything precisely the way you and I would, but it appears to be much better than the KJV you ran into. They do worse on 22.16. They are off base there, but the comments are very brief. I dont have the KJVSB. My guess is, and it is strictly a guess (you know Nelson is in Nashville), that the KJVSB came out first and when the NKJVSB came out they made it more favorable to our understanding of baptism for marketing purposes. Strictly a guess, may not be right.

I have the MacArthur SB in a NASB. He is millennial to the core and is not afraid to tell you about it. I’m guessing that may be 10-20% of the NT commentary. But, most of the rest is really good material (I didnt say all of the rest). Both of these study Bibles are very helpful to me in my study and teaching. If we read only what our brotherhood writes we exclude a lot of good material. I have heard it said that we can chew up the meat and spit out the bones.

Now, having said that, I assume you are talking about someone who is not as studied in the Bible as we preachers are suppossed to be. That is certainly a valid point and I dont pretend to have all the answers.

I have always felt personally that we have nothing to fear, in studying and discussing the Bible, because we are simply seeking truth.

Let me encourage you heartily in your good work.

John

By: Kevin W. Rhodes

Kevin W. Rhodes — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:37:42 +0000

THANK YOU, DREW!!!!!

I have been saying this over the last few years when I recommend people get a wide margin Bible instead to take notes.

I do have an idea for a study Bible, but I do not have the means to finance it nor the time at present to work on it.