Bibles Bible Studies Books

This Atlas is beautiful. It has a combination of a variety full-color maps (some of which are interesting, low-angle images), satellite images, and color photographs of the many different regions and climates of the Biblical lands. The narrative is a helpful chronology of the major events of the Bible--including the "inter-testamental era--and concludes with an examination of the role of archaeology. There are also separate two-page snapshots of key archaeological discoveries. This atlas has everything I was hoping to get when I ordered it.

Why bother creating such a beautiful book, full of helpful maps and lovely photographs, when the authors clearly only half believe the Biblical narrative? I got disgusted by the all phrases such as "purported to have happened," and "said to have taken place," in the first few chapters. My guess is that most people wanting to really delve into the geography of the Bible believe it's true, or they wouldn't be bothering. Had I realized how heavy this slant was, I would have chosen something else.

I have a copy of the older version of this study.

I like the way the book is laid out chapter to chapter.

1. It starts with a question to consider.

2. Then it gives text the to read. (It's nice to have it in front of
you).

3. Then it asks questions based on the text.

An added bonus is the explanation of words in the text to the side. It is like having a exhaustive word study included.

I would recommend this study to any believer or unbeliever.

This is an amazing book that will help you understand the history of Bible translation and about different Bible manuscripts.

Fantastic. I studied under Abegg and Flint, and although Flint was a horrible Greek teacher, his Hebrew work is fantastic.

Great job. A must own for scholars and Pastors.

I m really love this version very impressive ,I m really love this version very impressive I do recommended this bible , but I though Book of Enoch & jubiless was in it , I was disappointed about that .

I thought this was an interesting version of the old testament because while it comes directly from the oldest manuscripts, it took much devotion to get it right, given the wide ranging gaps in the parchments. Still, all in all, I am glad I have added this book to my faith literature.

As I continue to search for truth, I found this book most enlightening. This book in conjunction with other scholarly work concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls has enhanced my understanding of bibical history.

Though this book is fiction, it really makes the Bible come alive. It is an easy and very enjoyable read. My Sunday school class is currently using this book as a Bible study. I highly recommend this boook!

I found this book very easy to understand. It explained in an easy to read way stories of our Lord. Highest recommendation for anybody who finds the Bible a little hard to read. 5 star rating very well deserved.

I have purchased "The Book of God" several times. I read it, give it to a friend who ends up loving it, I buy it just to read it again and every time I do I enjoy it even more. Reading this book does NOT compare to sitting down trying to decipher and digest the Bible. The stories capture your attention and come alive as the writer adds real-life, believable details (like Abraham on his knees in his tent, with a candle, listening to his wife Sarah's breathing or Mary's experience riding a donkey into Bethlehem while in hard labor . . . details the Bible does not mention but more than likely occurred). I promise, you will not be able to put this book down, and you won't find it dishonoring of God's Word in any way. To the contrary, those of us who struggle with the Biblical text, will have a hunger to learn more after reading this wonderful book!

The author makes you feel like you've walked along side the Biblical characters.
You feel as though you were actually there during the events.

WHAT A WONDERFUL BOOK! I love history & I love God - what a wonderful combination & what a great way to know the bible. My Mother has read this book three times & I am now reading it with my children at night. I have given this book as gifts & will continue to do so. I highly reccomend this book. So well written - you are there! Thank you. I look forward to reading The Book of Jesus by the same author - Walter Wangerin Jr.

It's required reading for the NT 1 course at Covenant Seminary so I picked it up to accompany the free course download at http://www.covenantseminary.edu/worldwide/en/NT220/NT220.asp . Haven't read it all yet but so far it's a keeper.

Here is a book that works towards making a case for the New Testament gospel accounts as being historically reliable. This is an apologetic work by a conservative christian new testament scholar. This book contains intelligent and plausible content on it's subject matter. It is certainly worth an honest read and studied consideration. The author has produced a fine conservative "take" on the subject. With this being so, I wouldn't want this to be the only perspective one gets on the subject.

This new edition of Craig Blomberg's THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE GOSPELS should be an essential addition to anyone's New Testament library.

This book serves almost as an introduction to the study of the Gospels. Blomberg discusses form criticism, redaction criticism and other methods used for gospel interpretation. He also provides generally sensible harmonizations of apparently divergent accounts which avoid some of the overzealous attempts of harmonization of the past. Blomberg persuasively argues that reading the Gospels in light of ancient standards of biography and history leads to the conclusion that they contain reliable accounts of Jesus' life. (Contrary to what someone else said, Blomberg does not argue for "camcorder exactness," but instead contends that ancient history allowed for summaries, reordering and a certain amount "creative interpretation" of source material).

Along the way, Blomberg discusses miracles, the evidence for Jesus outside the Gospels (both inside and outside the New Testament), and textual criticism, among other topics.

Blomberg is a prolific New Testament scholar. Among his other books, I particularly recommend INTERPRETING THE PARABLES.

The gospel accounts have ZERO historical reliability. After the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD, a great deal of material was added to the gospel of Mark to make it appear that Jesus had predicted the event. Then, the Pharisees re-wrote much of that account to make it support their belief in (a) exorcism and demonic spirits, (b) angels and (c) a general resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgment. The version we have (which appears with minor changes under the names of Mark, Matthew and Luke) is completely fictional, an attempt to reinvent a dead Galilean as a "son of theos" using the title of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

Let me give you a superb example of the so-called historical reliability from a letter written by Paul:



2 Thessalonians 1:6 .... when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, (end)

What is the historical reliability of a prediction that Jesus will appear from behind some clouds to take a fiery vengeance on all who do not obey the gospel? And by some weird coincidence, he just happens to be leading a company of angels?

There is no Historical Reliability in the New Testament. None. ALL of the gospel story, with the possibile exception of Peter denying that he came from Galilee, was invented after all the people who actually knew Jesus had died, and replaced the original version of the gospel. (See Secret Mark for a glimpse into the original, where Lazarus was not brought back to life, but merely slept in a tomb as part of an initiation ritual.)

Biblical scholarship is the only field I know.... where all of the leading experts are so dim, they can't figure out the difference between a History Book and a Sales Pitch for a resurrection cult.

Blomberg, an expert in the Synoptics, does a superb job, showing the inadequacies of much liberal gospel scholarship, and making an eminently credible case for the overall historical reliability of the canonical gospels. This is clearly going to be a classic, and anyone interested in Biblical Studies should read it.

Do not miss any of Beth Moore's Bible studies or books! She is a gifted writer who reaches beyond the obvious time and time again. "Living Free" is a grand shortened version taken from the 12-week "Breaking Free" and "Believing God" Bible studies.

Fabulous! So helpful in my walk. Beth is blessed with a way with words and an understanding and discernment of His Word. You will love this!

This short but powerful study is a great followup for "Breaking Free" another of Beth Moore's studies. It would be great to do on it's own too.

If you like to "dig into" the Word and really get to know yourself, this is the study to bring you to that realization. Through it all Ms. Moore's bible studies will impact your life if you stick with it and complete it. Nothing else beats spending time in the word, and Ms. Moore leads you there pleasantly, and simply.

I did this Bible Study several years ago as a group. This time I purchased the book to go through at my pace and to truly grasp everything there is to learn. It was amazing. It is perfect for someone who wants to develop a discipline of a daily quiet time and Bible Study, but doesn't have hours to spend. As a mom with 2 preschoolers, my days are crazy and chaotic, but spending the time with the Lord in the morning using the book as my God has helped, even now that I have completed it. It has taught me how to get the meat out of God's Word myself. I highly recommend this Bible Study.

Outstanding. Actively involves the reader with thoughtful questions, enhances Bible study in a rubber meets the road syle that reaches each reader on a personal level. Highly recommend any workbook by Beth Moore.

This book takes a very difficult topic and gives it an encouraging side. Even though life can be tough, even wrenching, sometimes (Kushner's analysis applies well beyond the topic of death that we associate with this psalm), finding the comfort in Psalm 23 means not being alone in your plight. The author puts a much greater understanding around some very abstract language that allowed me to get much more than just reading the words and taking them at face value only. This is a must-read for many of us.

This book gives so much depth and daily application to a prayer that almost everyone has heard at one time or another. I used to think this was the prayer for funerals and death but it is very much for the living every day. Rabbi Kushner is a phenomenal author that I find incredibly easy to read and so meaningful.

Good book to read - good for a book discussion group.

This is a beautiful and thought-provoking work by Harold Kushner. I've recommended it to many people and have given it as gifts to others. Well worth the money and something you will probably want to read more than once. The book on cd is great also.

If you believe in God from a Christian or Jew perspective, you can be enlightened and delighted with this thorough explanation of the psalm and benefit from taking the posture the psalmist(s) had when writing it. I have listened to this psalm throughout my whole life and never had the opportunity to fully see all that may be found in its deep meaning. It is amazing all can be expanded from these simple phrases.
I usually love Harold Kushner's way of explaining spiritual material (Must read: "When Bad Things Happen to Good People", "Living a Life that Matters" and "How Good do We Have to Be") because, although his main point of view is a religious one, even if you don't believe or don't even want to think about these points of view, you can still get the full message, get a wise vision of life, adversity, the laws of nature, reality, joy, ethics, reaching for self fulfillment and integrity, etc. But, I must repeat, in order to enjoy and benefit from this book, I think you must believe in God because this one is much more religious than the other books I mentioned from the same author. If you want to understand what may be in the depths of the psalm and don't really care about feeling peace or living according to it, go ahead and read the book because it gives an interesting way of understanding what religion may provide or wants to give.

Froehlich gives an introduction to the Jewish background, and first four centuries of Christian Bible interpretation. Methods from the pre-christian rabbis to Augustine are examined.

It is surprising to see how different the interpretaions by early theologians are from their counterparts today. Early interpreters saw different levels of meaning in the text. There was a literal surface level for the unspiritual, and a deeper level for the spiritual. Not all interpreters agreed on allegorical interpretation, but all acknowledged the divine author of Scripture put deeper meaning and hidden treasures of revelation in the sacred text.

Translations of eight ancient authors are given in the rest of the book.

Sifra
Ptolemy
Irenaeus
Origen
Papyrus Michigan Inv. 3718
Diodore of Tarsus (2 texts)
Theodore of Mopsuestia
Tyconius

I found the book very intresting and informative. Froehlich does a great job of describing interpretation during those early years.

One just assumes the Bible was always interpreted in a literal fashion like it is today. I think this kind of knowledge is a little hard to find.

I purchased both V. Gilbert Beers' "Preschoolers Bible" and "Early Readers Bible" for my niece. They were very similar in text, illustrations, reading level, and layout, but the "Early Readers Bible" was vastly superior. I tried to return the "Preschoolers Bible" but with shipping costs it would have cost me as much to return as it did to purchase it in the first place! A very disappointing purchase, and I already know which will become one of her favorite books, and which will languish unread. Not recommended, there are better children's bibles out there, even by the same author.

My 3 1/2 year old son enjoys reading this bible BUT he asks a lot of questions because the stories are too simple, lack depth and kind of leave you hanging. I'm searching for a new bible that has more details with accurate information in it. His language skills are advanced so that is part of it but also just reading it to him makes me feel like I'm not telling him accurate information because the important pieces have been left out.

GREAT TOOL TO REPLACE THE RGULAR BEDTIME BOOKS ..... INSTEAD READ THEM A BED TIME STORY ABOUT THE BIBLE , WHAT A BETTER WAY TO EASY , FUN LEARNING ABOUT SPIRITUALITY & A FOUNDATION FOR GOOD MORALS . START EARLY ..... THIS WAS GREAT ... NOW MY SON ASKS ME TO READ THE BIBLE STORIES TO HIM ALL THE TIME NOT JUST FOR BEDTIME ......


THANK YOU
MS. Y. ALLISON NYC, NY

Let's face it . . . preschoolers do not have a long attention span. The Bible stories provided in this book are not only educational but they are kept to 2 or 3 pages. . . just long enough to spark the child's interest. They also provide faces to the characters which helps the child to remember the stories. My daughter and I have enjoyed the this book as well as the Beginner's Bible videos. Reading this book to your child will give them a great start in their christian lives.

The Torah and Talmud are considered The Old Testamet to Christians but remains the Holy Book for Jews. This is the law and book of Moses. Whether you are Gentile or Jew ... a way into the understanding of Judaism.

I am very impressed with this Torah overall. While I would have never myself spent $60 on a Torah, I am very pleased that my mom did so just before she dropped out of Torah study class,
allowing me access to this book. This summer I had to read the book of Genesis for my senior AP English class, and though I was at first skeptical about using what I thought would be the
Torah as re-written by ultra feminists, I have not been at all bothered by or even noticed the different gender references unless I looked for them. The translation is written in modern day English, another aspect that first alarmed me, but that I later came to appreciate. It is much easier to take in the stories this way then the olde English style, and since it wasn't written in English to begin with, I feel no obligation to read it that way for authenticity's sake. When I purchased a Christian New Testament, I chose the King James version for the opposite reason, but when I bought a Qu-ran, I
again chose a modern translation.

The commentary in this book is expansive and, as others pointed out, not for those seeking religious fulfillment, but better for those looking to study the text from a historical perspective.
There is nearly as much commentary as there is text, so if you read it carefully its almost like reading a historical and linguistic research book written on the biblical times. Also, there are extensive essays and short quotes from various sources, such as biblical scholars, Gilgamesh, the Qu'ran, poems and wisdom from countless ancient cultures the world over, Shakespere, even the odd Eli Wiesel excerpt. To read everything included between the books takes nearly as long as reading
the Torah itself.

The quality of the book is good for a 1600 page volume. The pages are a bit thin, but not too much so to be bothersome, and only enough so that the book will not weigh more then the average cat. The cover is resilient and modest in appearance, and the inside of each cover along with the first and last pages of the book are thick imitation leather to protect the pages. The spine is also very high quality and has given me no problems.

The Hebrew is in clear modern print with vowels, just like the practice reading books I remember from Hebrew school, and the same size as the English text. If your like me and read Hebrew but don't understand it, I think you will still be happy to have it. There are occasional times when the commentary points out idiosyncrasies in the Hebrew, and it is nice to go and investigate them yourself. If you do not read Hebrew, I don't see much of a point to having it other then that it looks cool- When I bought a Qu'ran, I decided on a left to right version without Arabic, since I would have no use for it other then to look and say "oh, pretty."

All in all, this is a good Torah for the religious scholar, or secular Jews like me who are interested in reading holy books for academic or personal reasons, but not good for anybody who thinks that the Bible is the literal word of God and believes in stories such as the flood, since the commentary explicitly describes much of what takes place as mythology, and makes frequent references to the human authors of the text.

The original 1981 edition of the Plaut commentary on the Torah marked a dramatic improvement over the fundamentalist Hertz Torah commentary (The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text English Translation and Commentary by Joseph H. Hertz) which it replaced in Reform Jewish congregations. It attempted to give both a traditional Jewish and a modern historical view of the text. In this connection, the frequent references to the widely recognized sources (J, E, D, P) is particularly welcomed in a Jewish study Pentateuch. However, it did have a number of weaknesses only some of which have been addressed in this new edition. These weaknesses included:

1. It was informed throughout by the Albright-Wright/Biblical Archaeology view that the "essential historicity" of the Patriarchal stories in Genesis and the conquest narratives have been verified by archaeology. This view, which held sway in the USA and Israel roughly 1930-1965 started to be undermined by scholarship in the 1960s and had been totally demolished by 1975. (See, for example, Shifting Sands : The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology by Thomas W. Davis). Since that time, few serious scholars would suggest that there is any retrievable historic information relating to the period before 1000 BCE, or even later, recoverable from the Pentateuch. Thus, much of the historical interpretive information in the commentary was known to be wrong or misleading well before the publication of the commentary.

2. Its occasional egregious errors such as transliteration of the divine name "YHVH" (see new edition p. 36) when the virtual universal scholarly opinion is, and has been for at least a century, that the third letter of the name was pronounced similarly to the English letter "w".

3. No attempt was made to make use of gender-neutral language where possible.

4. Its layout was suitable for study but not for synagogue liturgical use (subdivision of parashot into short chapters, placement of supplementary essays, placement of haftarot together at the end of each book of the Torah);

5. Its lack of commentaries on the haftarot.

6. The complete lack of drawings from Karaite (Jewish but not rabbinic) and Samaritan (Israelite but not Jewish) texts in the otherwise excellent "gleanings" sections which included abundant Christian and occasional Muslim, Babylonian etc. texts.

7. Positioning of the English translation below the Hebrew which made parallel reading of the Hebrew and English difficult.

8. Its very thin paper, small Hebrew type, lack of accent signs (te'amim) in the Hebrew text.

This new edition should have been an opportunity to correct these problems which, to a certain extent, has been done. Taking the above points item by item -

1. The reliance on the invalid Albright-Wright/Biblical Archaeology historic reconstruction is unchanged. In the original edition this reliance showed a lack of awareness of current research. Now, twenty four years later it is hard to understand why a serious revision has not been undertaken. One glance at the bibliography (pp. 1568-1569) pointedly shows the datedness of the materials. Of great importance is the lack of any reference of the great strides over the last decades in understanding the historic nature of early Israelite history and religion (e.g. the work of Smith, Zevit and Dever).

2. Its occasional egregious errors - uncorrected.

3. Gender-neutral language - this is one area where the new edition strikingly excels. The use of the term "Eternal" for the divine name is to be especially commended.

4. Layout - layout by parashah followed by haftarah improve its usability in synagogue while making it less easy to use as a tool for private study.

5. Haftaraot now include very basic commentary although I consider them inferior to that included in Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary.

6. Lack of drawings from Karaite and Samaritan traditions - unchanged.

7. Positioning of the English translation below the Hebrew - now changed to the traditional, and useful, parallel layout

8. Its very thin paper, small Hebrew type, lack of accent signs (te'amim) in the Hebrew text - these problems have all been addressed.

I did notice one additional problem with this new edition. In the first edition the titles of the topical essays were included in the table of contents thus increasing their findability. The new edition does not do this thus effectively burying them in 1,600 pages of text.

I bought "the new Plaut" some time ago. The more I use it, the more I love it. It's easy to read with big clear type (both English and Hebrew). Contains TONS of useful information, maps, charts, illustrations, essays.

I attend a Reform Synagogue, and therefore I see the Plaut commentary every single week. Every single week I read the weekly parsha, complete with the Plaut commentary, and I can honestly say that this is the best commentary out there.

I also own the Hertz commentary, and it is very good. However, it just does not measure up to the Plaut commentary. The scholarship is impeccable, and it is also strong from a religious viewpoint. The haftarah commentary, which Plaut also wrote, is equally potent. When I was preparing for my Bar Mitzvah, this was the edition that I turned to. I would recommend this version to Jew and Gentile alike.