ESV Study Bible: First Thoughts

I became minorly personally involved in this project when an editor asked me for some advice.  Later I was given the chance to endorse the Bible (on the basis of materials sent electronically), and it quickly became clear that whatever powers that be had really no idea of my humble status.  Yesterday I saw a box for the Bible in the trash at DTS, which alerted me to the fact that the Bible was finally out.  I of course pulled the box out of the trash and admired it.  When I arrived home from school today, a Bible was waiting for me.

I was first surprised that they (the publisher, Crossway) sent it so fast.  It was, after all, a freebie given to those who endorsed the Bible.  But they shipped it before it was officially available.  That speaks of some measure of hard work and concern.  (By contrast, I, ahem, only sent on CDs to those who helped me on the recent Bivin photos project a week after its release.)  Of course, they would send a hardcover.  That’s what these guys do.  They want to minimize their costs as much as possible and they know you can’t complain, because, after all, you didn’t pay for it.  But they didn’t send a hardback.  Guess which one they sent?  No, not the TruTone or the Bonded Leather.  Not even the Genuine Leather.  They sent the Premium Calfskin Leather, which sells for more than 2x the next most expensive Bible.  How do you suppose that that makes someone feel?  Do you suppose that it creates deep feelings of gratitude?  Do you think it might engender some loyalty?  Of course it does.  Of course I ‘ll recommend the Bible all over the place.  (Case in point is what you ‘re reading right now.)  It strikes me as smart.  It seems like their investment will repay itself many times over.  So why doesn’t everyone do this?  Answer: because they think short-range and not long-range.  Note that I did not say that they were greedy.  I’m not condemning greedy here.  I’m just saying that it’s better to be greedy in the long run.

You ‘re interested in more than the sensations that course through my fingertips as I caress the cover, and I’m happy to oblige.  Real fast of course, because I’ve only had it a few minutes and I need to do something else.

The first passage I looked up was Romans 7 because I was studying that intensively all week.  The explanation is terrific.  You would expect that someone who now fancies himself a mild expert on the passage would find plenty to be disappointed with.  In fact, the opposite was the case.  I felt for a fleeting second like it meant that I did not need to write a blog post on my thoughts on Romans 7 (as previously suggested).  Not only were the comments thorough, they were fair.

Then I flipped over to Revelation 20.  My impression from looking over the list of contributors (BTW, what do you know but that the people who wrote the notes and the articles actually got credit for it in this Bible.  At the front and in a very clear format.) was that the dispensational viewpoint was not well-represented.  I ‘ll go back and look that over later, but my feeling of Revelation 20 was that the notes were fair.  The Reformed brothers weren’t trying to rub it in our faces like we would do to them but gave both views in an even-handed way.

Then I jumped over to Jeremiah 22:30 which I am studying for a study group I’m involved in.  Here there were no options, but only one suggested solution, which was both new to me, but also unsatisfactory.  Ok, not perfect.

One last thing – you can’t flip pages without the color maps and beautiful reconstruction diagrams jumping out at you.  This makes the Bible more appealing and useful.

Oh, also, I haven’t checked this out yet, but the Bible comes with a code to get the entire contents of the ESVSB for free online.  Which means that if I want to put a portion of their comments on Romans 7 on my blog, I don’t have to re-type them.  I like that.

One really last thing – if I’m going to hold this thing in my hand, I’m going to have to start working out.