Nov

9

The Chronological Study Bible

Filed Under NKJV, chronological bible | 1 Comment

Thomas Nelson recently published The Chronological Study Bible (Bible Nkjv), not the kind that gives you a guide as to how to read your bible in a year, but one that puts the books of the bible into chronological instead of canonical order. Transition comments explain the chronology and placement of the biblical books or passages.

The Chronological Study Bible comes with a substantial concordance, the usual maps included into bibles from Thomas Nelson publishers, a glossary, and a wealth of information about theological history, the daily life of biblical peoples, considerations about the authorship of the different biblical books and other background notes you can expect from a study bible. You furthermore find time charts, time panels and in-text maps as well as plenty of photos that help you imagine the biblical landscapes and architecture.

The books of the bible are grouped into 9 epochs, the first 6 of which deal with Old Testament writings. Epoch 7 reflects the time between the Two Testament, and the two remaining epochs deal with the New Testament writings. Each Epoch comes with an introduction.

Just one word of warning: As always, every commentary on Scripture is just an opinion, no matter how learned the people who wrote it may be. Comments are not Scripture. So all the beautiful and interesting additions may help fueling your imagination and enhance your understanding of life in biblical times, but when it comes to commentary about the books of the bible itself, caution is called for. For example, the authors claim that Revelation might not have been written by the apostle John after all, but by another John. That claim in and of itself is not a problem, that might very well be, only that the authors back up their claim by saying that the author of the book of Revelation “never claims to have been an eyewitness of Jesus.” In contrast to this statement stands Rev 1:1-2:

“The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.” (Rev 1:1-2)

We know that John called Jesus the word of God (John 1:1;14), so I have no idea how the authors of this study bible can say the author of Revelation never claimed to have been an eyewitness of Jesus.

Here is what John Gill’s Expository of the Whole Bible has to say about the beginning of verse 2:
“Rev 1:2 Who bore record of the word of God,…. Of the essential and eternal Word of God, his only begotten Son; as John the apostle did in his Gospel, and in his epistles, and also in this book; and which is a clear evidence of his being the writer of it,”

I have not spotted any other statements that contradict Scripture so far, but if I do, I will let you know.

Recommendation:
I think this is the best chronological bible out there at the moment, and the price is reasonable too. Since discerning the word rightly always requires you to double check against Scripture what any commentary has to say, I still recommend this bible despite the flaw described above. No single commentary I found so far has had it all right, so as long as you keep this in mind, there is no harm in reading commentaries that go with the verses, passages or books you are studying at a given moment.