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.
3 Comments
I love this project.
I bring mine to church every Sunday to follow along with the teaching. I think my biblical literacy is actually increasing in the absence of verse and chapter markers.
Someone make this using the ESV, and I am all over it
How are you liking the TNIV? I have tended to find it more literal than the NIV and more to my liking in many ways. I find I read the TNIV and ESV the most recently and switch back and forth in an irrational manner.
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[...] Books of the Bible Posted on January 8, 2008 by Mike F. Joe Thorn points out an interesting new Bible version that attempts to be more readable. It’s in the TNIV, which [...]