For years, I’ve collected study Bibles. For a while, this was my hobby, but I recently acquired what I believe will probably be the last study Bible I ever buy, both because of the expense and because I doubt any will come out in my lifetime that I like better.
As well as a collector, I am a compulsive Bible annotator. I anotate as a kind of religious discipline: In my office, with no illumination except a desk lamp, bent over the page and writing in my finest print with a Sakura Pigma Micron, I have my own little scriptorium.
Although I own many more than that number, I have over my life used three study Bibles to hold my notes and am now on the fourth. I started with an NIV Study Bible I scribbled in as a teen, followed by the Nelson Study Bible I purchased from its editor at a retreat, followed by the HarperCollins Study Bible, which I purchased while in graduate school, took two years to read, and carefully wrote in for over a decade.
My HarperCollins is now falling to pieces. For that reason, I reecently spent a year and a half consolidating all of my notes. Then I purchased my fourth and (as I anticipate) final study Bible, into which I have begun copying all that work. I expect this project, the complete duplication of my annotations in a new volume, to take three years at least. I will probably add to these notes until I die or at least become incapacitated.
My notes are eclectic: They consist of everything from summaries of sermons to summaries of archaeology journal articles to quotations ranging from Bertrand Russell to the Bhagavad-Gita. There is no theme or discipline to my notes; they consist of things related to the Bible, either directly or through thematic association, that I want to be able to find again.
On the Nature of Study Bibles
The study Bible I want does not exist and likely never will. I have written before in another place that study Bibles come in two varieties: a) Evangelical Fundamentalist study Bibles and b) painfully ugly study Bibles. Although I have nothing in particular against Fundamentalists, I’ve moved away from their theology and also want certain content in my Bible that they don’t provide, so I have had to content myself with ugly.
The Content of the Study Bible
The study Bible is an artform: It is an attempt to compress, into a single, portable volume, the complete content of, and thousands of years’ worth of thought on, a collection of loosely related and often esoteric texts. The study Bible I want is a scholarly one written from an agnostic perspective that maintains a neutral tone and focuses on such matters as textual sources, relevant historical events, translational difficulties, textual variants, relevant archaeological discoveries, and the like. I want this not because I am an agnostic myself but because I get my theology from sources other than marginal notes.
Of the Bibles written from the perspective I want, which is falsely called “ecumenical” but is really agnostic, the supposed “gold standard” is the New Oxford Annotated Bible. But saying the New Oxford is the best ecumenical study Bible is like saying Americans win the World Series every year: It’s easy to be the champion when you’re the only one playing.
In my opinion, a study Bible should have the following features:
- Leather binding, preferably goat or calfskin. None of this “bonded leather” bull honkey. And in black, dammit; burgundy Bibles are for the unregenerate.
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Silk ribbon bookmarks, preferably red and preferably three in number. These are fun because they make the mal-educated think you’re holding it upside down.
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Quality binding that doesn’t fall apart. Sewn; it has to be sewn. This is non-negotiable and one of the reasons I refuse to use Bibles in hardcover or paperback, as they are usually just glued.
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A translation that doesn’t make me want to strangle the translators. (More on this in a moment.)
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Pericope headings. I should not have to mention this, but I do.
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Consistent page numbering from beginning to end. See above.
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Headers, placed on the upper corners of each page, that contain the range of chapter and verse on that page, analogous to the headers in a dictionary. Again, I shouldn’t have to say this, but some Bible publishers need to be beaten over the head with a design manual.
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A complete corpus of the texts that are in use as scripture by extant Christian sects.
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Book introductions focusing on date, authorship, major themes, major historical events of the time, and so forth.
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Running annotations focusing on alternate translations, textual difficulties and variants, archaeological discoveries, and varying interpretations. These should be in a smaller version of the main text’s font and placed in two columns like the main text. Again, this should be obvious, but it apparently isn’t. These notes should seek neutrality insofar as it is possible.
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Inset charts and maps as appropriate, especially to guide the reader geographically.
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A cross-referencing system, preferably located in a narrow center column.
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A mini-concordance in the back.
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Full-color maps in the back, printed on thick but flexible paper. The flexible part is important: In my experience, only Oxford UP creates full-color maps that don’t eventually destroy the binding.
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Wide margins for the reader’s own notes.
The study Bible may also contain:
- Inset tabs to help the reader find a book quickly.
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Sidebars containing mini essays that expand on particular topics.
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Section introductions discussing genre and canonical arrangement.
However, the study Bible should not contain:
- Lengthy essays in the back matter, which do not aid study and properly belong in a separate volume.
On Translation
In Defense of the King James
I have written previously that I think Fundamentalists are right about a lot of things, but for the wrong reasons. One thing I think they are right about is their insistence on using the King James Version. The King James certainly has imperfections—the Received Text is not be the best basis for a New Testament translation, and our knowledge of Semitic languages has advanced considerably over the last few centuries—but in my many years of reading Bibles, I’ve come to the conclusion that, even with all this accumulated knowledge, the difference between a modern, critical translation and the King James is so slight as to be unimportant to anyone but a specialist who should have mastery of the original languages anyway. And though modern translations have the advantage of better textual sources, they have a worse command of English.
The best defense of the King James I have ever read comes from, of all places, the introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita translated by Juan Mascaro. In his personal beliefs, Mascaro was a mushy syncretist, and English was not his first language, but he was in love with the King James Bible, which explains why his Bhagavad-Gita has majesty and power while other versions, such as Christopher Isherwood’s, read like weed-smoking hippy-dippy shit. In his disorganized, stream-of-consciousness introduction to the Hindu masterwork, Mascaro compares passages from the King James to passages from more recent translations and points out how the newer versions break the poetry by adding unnecessary words, or else aim for a specificity that eliminates all hints of greater spiritual significance.
And in many cases, the bad English of our newer translations is intentional. The Common English Bible, for example, is deliberately breezy and slangy and uses anachronisms like “DNA” in place of seed, which any serious student of the text would find intolerable. Ah, yes, we might say, the first-century Romans’ successful isolation of deoxyribonucleic acid; quite the scientific advancement, that.
The Offense of the NRSV
And then there’s the New Revised Standard Version, which is supposedly a development of the King James but is in fact a sustained assault on the English language. The translators, in their cheeky introduction, chortle that they have chosen to ignore the distinctions between who and whom and will and shall in the New Testament. More notably, they change all references to any unknown or hypothetical individual to the plural in order to avoid those dreaded masculine pronouns that so exercise feminists. In their introduction, the translators even go so far as to lie about their intentions, claiming that this is to recover the meaning of the text—but although there are many difficulties in translating ancient Hebrew into modern English, this is not one of them: Both languages default to the masculine when the sex of the antecedent is unknown. So the translators found a bad solution to a nonexistent problem. In many cases, this change from singular to plural alters the meaning considerably, and in some cases (the Pauline epistles especially), it renders passages unintelligible. As Mascaro would tell us, it breaks the poetry, but it does more than that: It breaks the language and turns it into gobbledy-gook.
The utter absurdity of the NRSV is exemplified by its most breathtaking example of awkwardness: In 2 Corinthians 11:25, Paul writes, in a litany of the suffering he had endured, “Once, I was stoned.” The NRSV changes this to, “Once, I received a stoning.”
What could possibly be the reason for this change, aside from the translators’ love of unnecessary syllables? The only answer I can come up with is that they worry that the reader, despite the obvious context, might think St. Paul was smoking marijuana. In other words, the NRSV is intended for deeply stupid people. It is an insult to the reader’s intelligence as well as an assault on his ear.
This is why I have come to see the appeal of the King James: It is unquestionably beautiful, possessing a majesty no other translation has matched or will match, since the talent to produce its equal has gone from the world. And also, its archaisms creates a certain barrier to entry; that is, it forbids any reader dumb enough to think “I was stoned once” means “I smoked a blunt.” Anyone that stupid has no business reading the Bible anyway; let him have it explained to him by his pastor instead, or let him read a Bible storybook suitable for children. The intelligence to be able to read Shakespeare comfortably is, I think, the minimal level of intelligence necessary to read the Bible without making excessive mischief, and that is the level the King James demands.
The ESV
There is, however, one modern translation that greatly interests me, and that is the English Standard Version, which was created specifically as a reaction against the distortions of the NRSV, and which aims at a beauty of language most modern translations lack. Produced by devout Evangelicals, it was originally released without an Apocrypha, but its creators have now, reluctantly, allowed a complete Apocrypha to be translated, including all the texts used by the Eastern Churches. The ESV Apocrypha only came out last year (2021), and no study Bible yet exists that includes it, but I’m keeping an eye out. Unfortunately, the original publisher, Crossways, has refused to release any Bible with an Apocrypha despite the history of Protestant Bibles including it, so the licenses for the ESV Apocrypha currently belong to Oxford UP and Cambridge. Whether they will create a study Bible using the ESV translation remains to be seen.
If an ecumenical ESV study Bible makes an appearance, I will snatch it up, love it, swear by it, make it my own forever, and be buried with my head resting upon it. Although, like all translations, it is imperfect, the criticisms I have seen of it are so slight that even attempts to attack it make it look good. At present, all the “ecumenical” study Bibles use the deficient NRSV, with the exception of the one that uses the even more deficient CEB. An ecumenical ESV is a much-needed antidote to such dreck.
The Three Study Bibles
There are a total of three “ecumenical” study Bibles that I know of (aside from the intolerable CEB), but two of them are nigh impossible to get. I have all three, and not one of them has all the features I want. I was able to acquire all of them in leather, though only one has leather that appears to be of fine quality. Each is missing a cross-referencing system, which ought to be an obvious feature. Only two have attractive layouts and, of those two, only one has a nice font. They are all in the NRSV, but that matters to me only a little: I have already read the NRSV in its entirety and have no intention of doing so again, so I use these primarily as reference works.
The HarperCollins Study Bible
The first is the HarperCollins Study Bible, the Bible I have recently worn out. It was available for only a limited time in leather, but I managed to grab a leatherbound copy in the available window. A revised edition has been released with more material, but it was never available in leather, and it is printed with a cramped, hard-to-read font and tiny margins, making it useless to me.
Generally, the first edition of the HarperCollins, although now difficult to find, is good. Its content is minimal (it contains no section essays, discursions, or back matter, and it has few maps or charts), but its annotations are written in a conversational style that is neither too terse or too chatty, though they have a bad habit of summarizing or paraphrasing biblical passages instead of providing meaningful additional material. They also frequently refer the reader to parallel or related passages, which they would not have to do if this Bible had a good cross-referencing system.
This Bible has the best fonts and layout of the three discussed here; the annotations are in two columns, in a smaller version of the serif font used for the biblical text. The margins, although not huge, are sufficient. The headers are made correctly. The biggest drawback is the set of full-color maps in the back, which are printed on cardstock that cannot bend and will therefore rip away from the rest of the binding. That is why my copy now needs replaced.
The New Interpreter’s Study Bible
The second is the New Interpreter’s Study Bible. I have only acquired it recently, so my comments are preliminary, but I doubt my opinion will change much. This, like the HarperCollins, was available for only a short space in leather. I missed the window of opportunity and then spent years trying to acquire it; at last, I found a copy in like-new condition, which I purchased at ridiculous expense, so it now resides on my shelf. The buyer’s remorse, I must say, runs deep.
This one is different from the others mentioned here: It is an encapsulation or condensation of the vast, multi-volume New Interpreter’s Bible, which, as the name implies, is an update of the Interpeter’s Bible. I have access to a set of the Interpeter’s Bible, and if the one-volume study Bible accurately reflects the updated edition of this prestigious commentary, it is further proof that newer doesn’t mean better.
Whereas the other two study bibles on this list might be called “agnostic,” the New Interpreter’s is best called “apostate.” It is supposedly written for pastors, but it apparently means pastors who have lost their faith in Christ and have replaced it with a faith in The Current Thing. For example, it actually claims at one point that Jesus’ intended goal in his brief ministry was to “smash the patriarchy.” I’m not kidding. No doubt a revised edition is forthcoming to inform us that Jesus supports Ukraine.
This, unlike the other study Bibles listed here, contains discursive essays focusing on specific topics, but because of the book’s theological (or anti-theological) bent, this is a detriment rather than an advantage: Most of the essays are weepy, hand-wringing complaints that the warlike Iron Age hillmen who wrote the bulk of the biblical text were not second-wave feminists. I am constantly wanting to punch the annotators in the nose, and I feel no guilt for saying that because most of them would probably be better for it.
The shortcomings of the New Interpreter’s illustrate why I want my study Bible to be agnostic in its outlook. The books of the Bible, whether they inspire faith in us or not, have survived the test of time; they are important books, books that deserve at least a crumb of our attention. At least once in our lives, we should chew on them and attempt to digest them. If in the end we spit them out, so be it, but we should nonetheless make the effort to understand them and mull them over for a spell. The New Interpreter’s, however, constantly tries to place itself as a buffer between the reader and the biblical text: When, for example, St. Paul states that wives should obey their husbands, the commentator rushes in to tell us that Paul didn’t really mean that or, if he did mean that, that we can safely ignore him. But St. Paul, like it or not, will still be here when you and I are dead and the New Interpreter’s Study Bible is forgotten. His corpus of writings is bigger and greater than you or I or any of our ideas. Even if we decide we must reject his message, he deserves our attention for a few minutes, but the New Interpreter’s does its utmost to prevent us from giving him a hearing.
That being said, it’s not a total loss: The commentators in the New Interpreter’s have a talent for close reading that the other study Bibles here lack, so their commentary excels where the others fall short; the commentary on the Psalms is especially good. Bu that doesn’t make up for the serious shortcomings.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
The New Oxford Annotated Bible is the only one of these three that is consistently available and continually updated. The Fifth Edition, which I expect will be the last one worth using (because the NRSV now has an update that makes it worse), is the one I have selected to hold my notes.
Perhaps the most famous edition of New Oxford is the Expanded Edition in the Revised Standard Version: Although its notes are decidedly brief and it’s too small to contain my annotations, it’s probably the best all-purpose study Bible at the moment. It was expanded considerably, and changed considerably in character, with the Third Edition, which switched to the New Revised Standard Version and had a new general editor. Unlike the other study Bibles here, which swiftly go out of print after release, the New Oxford keeps updating and is always available in high-quality leather with good binding. Interestingly, its Fourth Edition had a mini-concordance, one of the features I consider essential, but that disappeared again in the Fifth Edition.
I mentioned before that the HarperCollins came out in a revised edition that tried to pack more into a smaller space, shrinking fonts and margins until the book was nigh unreadable. By contrast, the New Oxford keeps getting bigger: Of the three, it alone seems to be aware that a study Bible is something people both want to read and be able to write in. The Fourth and Fifth Editions are both doorstoppers, though they have probably reached the uppper limit of one-volume Bibles at 2,386 pages (both editions, despite their differences in content, have the same page count).
The New Oxford, of the Bibles mentioned here, has the most generous margins, which is why I’ve reluctantly decided to switch to it despite its other deficiencies. It also features enormous amounts of commentary, though most of that, alas, is relegated to essays in the back, where they are useless for study. Those essays keep expanding with each edition despite their uselessness.
The biggest problems with the New Oxford are also its most distinctive features: a) It presents the annotations in a single column and b) it has no pericope headings. The New Oxford gives the distinct impression that it is written for students who would rather be reading anything else, so it is arranged to keep the reader’s eye off the actual biblical text and on the notes.
Still, it gives a lot of room to the amateur annotator. Observe:
This is the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two of Genesis. I have a lot of notes in the front matter, so getting to this point took the better part of a day. My notes look considerably neater and less crowded here than they do in the HarperCollins, and that is undoubtedly because of the more generous margins. The biggest pain really is the absence of pericope headings, which I’m writing in myself with a purple pen, though that’s only a barely adequate solution to the problem.
Conclusion
I’m not entirely happy with the New Oxford, but I have convinced myself I can live with it. Copying my notes and making a few edits to improve the content will take years, but that’s all right: This is an ongoing personal project that never ends anyway.
But if that ecumenical ESV study Bible ever appears—or, even better, a King James study Bible containing the complete text—I’ll grab it in a heartbeat and happily start all over again.
