I am spending some time reading The Books of the Bible, a very interesting production of the Scripture by the International Bible Society. The goal was to present the Scripture is a more readable way by returning it to a format that reflects the biblical authors’ intention. From the website:
- chapter and verse numbers are removed from the text (a chapter-and-verse range is at the bottom of each page)
- individual books are presented with the literary divisions that their authors have indicated
- footnotes, section headings and other supplementary materials have been removed from the text (translators’ notes are available at the back of each book)
- the books of the Bible have been placed in an order that provides more help in understanding, based on literary genre, historical circumstance and theological tradition
- single books that later translations or tradition divided
into two or more books are made whole again
(example: Luke-Acts) - single-column setting that clearly and naturally presents the
literary forms of the Bible’s books
It’s TNIV (I am not a big fan for all the reasons many of you could guess), but I dig the format. Worth checking out for personal reading. The website has sample books available as PDFs.
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