A Bible

My recent explorations of the New Testament based on my reading in Isaiah reminds me that there is a mighty advantage to picking one printed Bible and using it almost exclusively. I use the 1995 New American Standard Bible because of its reliability and excellent cross-references, although I keep handy a MacArthur Study Bible ESV (English Standard Version) which is very similar in translation but has excellent notes, and I also keep at hand a NET Bible (New English Translation) because of its superb and extensive footnotes on the manuscripts and texts of the Bible.

The advantage is that you can very quickly turn to any reference because you become familiar with the book. I regularly surprise myself in jumping from one passage to another in that I can look at the edge of my closed Bible and quite accurately open it about where the sought after passage is. This only happens when you use the same Bible day by day.

It might be convenient to use an electronic version on your phone or tablet, but, in my experience, such electronic editions do not lend themselves to jumping from passage to passage unless you know the exact verse you are looking for. Because I use the same printed Bible all the time, my memory has images of things I have read and marked in it and where they are on the page. I wouldn’t trade the three pound Bible for an app on my phone because of this.

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