Publisher: Thomas Nelson

In a recent book Scot McKnight says that there are five common ways of reading the Bible that are inherently flawed.  Extremely briefly (and in my words) they are:

• It’s a book of rules (though I suspect most who read this way are selective about the rules they quote);
• It’s a book of blessings (they only quote the nice parts that we all love to hear);
• The ink blot brigade (they read into the words what they expect to see – this shows us more about the reader than the text);
• The systematic theology approach (we need to find out everything the Bible says about a particular topic and put it all together – but lets leave out the bits that don’t seem to fit with the rest!); and
• One book or set of books is superior to the rest (so we need to make the others fit our favourite).

He suggests the correct way to read the Bible is to read it as a story.  As always, there is more than an element of truth in a statement like this, however the Bible is a very difficult collection of books to read this way.

The Chronological Study Bible makes this task viable and probably more importantly it makes it possible for the ordinary reader.

As a pastor with a teaching ministry this edition cannot replace the necessary commentaries and dictionaries needed to explore the text fully.  But the three most important rules for understanding scripture are, in order, “context, context and context”, and this Bible makes understanding this almost ridiculously simple.  The in text maps, time capsules, time panels, background notes, daily life notes and historical overviews add to the chronological text in such a way that the “story” is much clearer than normal.

If you’re looking for a study Bible for everyday personal or small group usage, I highly recommend this.  But don’t expect to be able to take it to church and find a particular passage in time to follow the reading – because of the chronological nature of the text individual passages can be hard to find!

The Chronological Study Bible (Bible Nkjv)

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