I’m guilty of coveting Bibles. It seems like such a minor infraction. Lately I’ve been dreaming of those wide margin bibles to write lots of notes. So I got one from Ebay. It hasn’t arrived yet.
There’s a part of me that wants to take detailed notes during sermons and Bible lessons in the margins of the Bible. This new one will help in that endevor. The problem is that I can never find that right verse at the right time when someone is asking a Biblical question…whether it is in class….or in a casual discussion.
The canidates were the NASB and NIV. From my teenaged years and onward I had been warned about the NIV…jokingly called the “Non-inspired Version” within my fellowship. So I managed to get the NASB because I don’t think I could reasonably study the NIV without feeling guilty.
And to some extent I feel guilty if I’m not using the NKJV. Therein lies the conflict. God wants us to understand His Word. Merely to understand the word, one might have to use a contemporary translation which might just be a paraphrase of the original Greek/Hebrew. Preachers have told us forever that one can easily understand the steps to salvation merely by picking up the KJV standard. And yet we all scratch our heads when we read “begotten” or that Mary and Joseph were “betrothed.” Still, for me it takes some explaining by my preacher/minister/elder(s)/Bible class teacher/someone in the know.
Growing up I had heard stories that at my church, Bible class teachers were required to use NKJV, KJV, or some other conservative (read non-paraphrased version). NIV was out.
And yet today, I see “God’s Word” versions as the classroom Bible. And when I ask my class to read, I get all sorts of version…many more version that what we had in my youth. I guess with the advent of more and more Christian bookstores, easy-to-read versions have become the norm, at least among parents who wanted their child groomed for Christianity by reading the Bible. It is merely that they are reading some kind of Bible, not necessarily the one my father used.
And yet should I feel guilty for wanting a Bible that is easy to understand? Possibly not, but I still do. Maybe its all those memory verses I had during VBS and Sunday school, seemingly all learned in standard KJV version. When I hear those verses from my youth being read within some other version, it seems watered down.
The wide margin bible? Still waiting on it to be shipped. It’s a hardback, so I’m not sure of how it’ll look. I’m hoping for a decent cover (read no-flair), but in all likelihood I’ll get one of those ugly designed cover using the latest design tools from Lifeway.
In any case I’m hoping for a tool so that I’ll be able to come up with my own cross references as I study, and not necessarily some other cross reference that some other Biblical scholar thinks is important.