I just got an ESV Study Bible!

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hamalas

Hamalas

whippersnapper
Alright! I just received an ESV Study Bible for my birthday yesterday! I worked at a Christian bookstore and have been coveting this Bible ever since it came out. Not only is it the largest study bible ever made, it is also one of the best! It's kind of heavy but aside from that I love it. The lush illustrations, helpful graphs/charts/outlines, and insightful notes are simply amazing! I can't overstate how much I am looking forward to the article's that they have in the back. It will be a great help when talking to other Christians to have a solid, reformed presentation of key doctrines right in the back of my bible. The only thing that could make this bible better is if it had the Westminster standards in the back, but I guess then I'd have to get a bible cover with wheels. :think:
 
Hamalas said:
Alright! I just received an ESV Study Bible for my birthday yesterday! I worked at a Christian bookstore and have been coveting this Bible ever since it came out. Not only is it the largest study bible ever made, it is also one of the best! It's kind of heavy but aside from that I love it. The lush illustrations, helpful graphs/charts/outlines, and insightful notes are simply amazing! I can't overstate how much I am looking forward to the article's that they have in the back. It will be a great help when talking to other Christians to have a solid, reformed presentation of key doctrines right in the back of my bible. The only thing that could make this bible better is if it had the Westminster standards in the back, but I guess then I'd have to get a bible cover with wheels. :think:
Click to expand...

I don't suspect it'd ever have that, though, since it's not a Reformed bible, per se. (though many - but not all - of the contributors of the notes and articles are Reformed of one stripe or another) It's marketed as an evangelical product, and inclusion of the Westminster Standards or the TFU would be marginalizing to Crossway's intended market, I think.
 
Congrats. I ordered my ESV Study Bible a few days ago and I checked the tracking via USPS and it is arriving today! I am excited to get it. I look forward to the maps, charts, outlines. I plan on using these with my children for teaching.
 
Jessica,
It is very different. Here is a shot of the hardback.
esvsb-feature.png


Here is the website.
Home | ESV Study Bible | Crossway

I have both and the ESVSB is In my humble opinion a much better study Bible; not even in the same league.
 
Largest Study Bible???

The 1599 Geneva Bible has over 33,000 study notes...how many does that one have???

-----Added 1/7/2009 at 02:06:58 EST-----

Ah...just caught Jessica's link...only 20,000 study notes... :))
 
TheFleshProfitethNothing said:
Largest Study Bible???

The 1599 Geneva Bible has over 33,000 study notes...how many does that one have???
Click to expand...

Yes, it has 33,000 notes, but most of them are one liners in double-column mode... the ESV Study Bible is far larger, with only 20,000 notes - but most of them are longer than my Geneva. Also, there are 80,000 cross references - which are exceedingly valuable, and compared to which the Geneva Bible has very few.
 
Some of the articles in the ESV Study Bible are exceptionally good. I was browsing through mine before Sunday School last week and hope this Bible gets in the hands of more Evangelicals as it has some excellent stuff on the person and work of Christ as well as the history of redemption.
 
he beholds said:
Is this separate from the Reformation Study Bible, ed. by R.C. Sproul?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been using the Reformation Study Bible since the summer of 2005. However It's starting to look a little used. I'm not quite ready to switch totally to my ESV Study yet so I'll probably be carrying both around for a while.
 
Hamalas said:
he beholds said:
Is this separate from the Reformation Study Bible, ed. by R.C. Sproul?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been using the Reformation Study Bible since the summer of 2005. However It's starting to look a little used. I'm not quite ready to switch totally to my ESV Study yet so I'll probably be carrying both around for a while.
Click to expand...

My ESVSB is going to stay in pretty pristine condition for a while, I think. I use the online version, for the most part. :)
 
Its pretty much reformed (though avoids baptismal issues) though they do have Bock from DTS involved on a few things. You still wouldn't see any Dispensational views in there because he doesn't deal with any passages that would show it (from what I've seen).
 
I just received one my self and, so far, am very impressed with it. I especially have appreciated the maps and background information.
 
The one thing i do not like about the Geneva Study Bible, or the newer titled Reformation Study Bible, is the notes on Matthew 24:30. Because of the bad translation of that version in the ESV and all of the major modern translations, (as explained by me in another thread), it has Jesus being wrong and a false-prophet, just like the English philosopher Betrand Russell has Jesus being wrong from exactly that same verse via a misreading of it. Russell misread that verse and he wrote a book called "why I am not a Christian". That book was written around Russell's interpretation of Matthew 24:30, and the Ligonier Study Bible pretty much says without actually saying it, that Russell was right. And the ultimate irony of all of this , is that R.C. Sproul gave a excellent multi-part radio lecture on why Russell was wrong about his interpretations of Matthew 24:30. But because Ligonier is pretty much forced to use a bad translation of the verse, they ended up having notes on it, that say that all of what Jesus said would come true in that verse did not come true, and thereby saying indirectly that Russell was right.
 
Jon Peters said:
I just received one my self and, so far, am very impressed with it. I especially have appreciated the maps and background information.
Click to expand...

One question for those of you who have one of the leather ESVSB's. How's the paper quality? I can't imagine the maps and illustrations shown on the website working well with typical thin bible paper. Can anyone comment?
 
Seems pretty high quality, and the maps look fine. They're not color, but done professionally.
 
TimV said:
Seems pretty high quality, and the maps look fine. They're not color, but done professionally.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that bit of info, though rather disappointing. There should be some sort of disclaimer on their website, then, saying that what they have given out as samples does not represent what you see in the Bibles themselves.

-----Added 1/8/2009 at 10:43:00 EST-----

but wait a minute! Their website clearly says "200 full color maps". They aren't?? Are they full color only in the hardback copy? I'm very confused.
 
If you buy the ESV Study Bible, in addition to the printed study Bible, the box contains a coupon allowing access to all the study resources online. I actually don't use the printed study Bible that much; it's too bulky to carry around, so for church services and Bible studies I take my Reformation Study Bible. But I use the online resources regularly, and they have been worth the price I paid for the whole package.
 
While I would agree that many Reformed churches (including my own), use the ESV, I have discovered that a few of the translators are semi-pelagian or even pelagian. An example of that is Dr. Jack Cottrell of Cincinnati Bible Seminary. Cottrell doesn't believe in the doctrine of original sin or in total depravity. (see Advisory Council). Dr. John Oswalt is part of the Wesleyan holiness movement and is semi-pelagian. (see Translation Team). In other words, even though there are many Reformed scholars involved, there are also many on the Arminian side of things.

An example I found recently of bad translation was in Ephesians 1:5, 9. The ESV translates "eudokia" here as "plan" or "purpose" while the KJV and NKJV both have "good pleasure." I think "good pleasure" is a better translation in this context because it emphasizes God's sovereign choice rather than merely a "plan" or "purpose" in general. In fact, there are other Greek words for plan that could have been used. In verse 11 the Greek word for purpose is "prothesis." Anyway, you can do your own word studies on this. You also might want to check out Revelation 13:8 in the ESV and in other translations. In Revelation 13:8 I think the NIV has a better translation because it follows the natural flow of the thought of the verse.

Of course, James I. Packer, the Anglican Reformed/Calvinist fellow is the editor. But I've discovered some paraphrasing in the translation even though it claims to be a "literal" translation. The ESV is not that much better than the NIV in my opinion, though it does try to be more literal than the NIV. The best way to study Scripture if you don't know Greek and Hebrew is still to compare many translations together and read the footnotes so you can at least get an idea of what the original languages say.

Most study bibles are mixed bag. I would prefer the confessions of faith over the notes in a study bible. However, the Geneva notes are bad.

Just my opinion:0)

God bless,
 
Hamalas said:
The only thing that could make this bible better is if it had the Westminster standards in the back, but I guess then I'd have to get a bible cover with wheels. :think:
Click to expand...

Not quite; the paper the ESVSB is printed on is not the thinnest Bible paper that is currently on the market. My personal Bible is the 1657 Statenvertaling, a Dutch translation with many more notes than the ESVSB is, plus Psalms, The Three Forms of Unity, the Short Catechesis, the forms and all the rest, and is half the thickness of the ESVSB. If the ESVSB adopted a smaller print for its notes and the thinner paper, you could probably put in quite a bit more.

toddpedlar said:
Hamalas said:
No, all of my maps/illustrations are clearly color!
Click to expand...

Ok... don't know what Tim was talking about.

Is yours a leather/bonded leather/ or hardback ? Just want to make sure before I shell out $60 ;)
Click to expand...

I have bonded leather, and the quality of the full color maps is great; even the big illustrations, like both the temples, the tabernacle, many city panoramas etc. are of good quality.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

F
  • Locked
ESV Study Bible
2
Replies
56
Views
12K
Matthias
Matthias
Joseph Scibbe
  • Locked
Just got em today
Replies
0
Views
2K
Joseph Scibbe
Joseph Scibbe
Bladestunner316
  • Locked
Just got 2 books today.
Replies
3
Views
2K
ANT
ANT
InevitablyReformed
  • Locked
Just got the latest Wells book
Replies
4
Views
2K
rrfranks
rrfranks
baron
  • Locked
HCSB Study Bible
Replies
13
Views
4K
baron
baron
Back
Top