New Wineskin Buying Guide

Last Sunday morning my wife and I were waiting for a table at our favorite breakfast place. At the cashier’s station I saw an elderly gentlemen carrying a very thick book. As he headed out the door, I caught a glimpse of the book’s cover and saw it was a 900-page exegetical commentary on Ephesians. Not exactly what I would call casual Sunday-morning reading.

The Letter to the Ephesians consists of six short chapters and maybe five or six printed pages. Why would someone want or need a 900-page book on it? Well, the fact of the matter is that no matter how feature-laden your study bible is, there will be times when you need more information. Fortunately, there are plenty of supplemental sources you can turn to.

Commentaries

The most essential bible reference is the commentary. You can use a commentary to help interpret the meaning of a particular passage or as a guide in working your way through an entire book of Scripture. Finding a good/reliable commentary isn’t easy. Commentaries range from the very introductory to the very scholarly. If you want to focus on the practical application of the Bible for Christian life, there are devotional commentaries (e.g., Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible) that would suit this purpose. But if you want the history, culture, and background to the biblical text, you will need something more in-depth.

Commentaries come in mainly two formats, the single-volume and the multi-volume varieties. One-volume commentaries (e.g., HarperCollins Bible Commentary, New Jerome Biblical Commentary) provide you with basic, introductory material on every book in the Bible. If you are starting out with scripture study and building up your library, a one-volume commentary is a useful first step. But by its nature as a concise commentary, do not expect the analysis to be in-depth.

Multi-volume series (e.g., Anchor Bible, Hermeneia) have an entire volume (or two) dedicated to one of the biblical books. A commentary dedicated to a specific biblical book will usually include the author’s translation of that book with textual notes explaining the rationale behind the translation choices. Because different volumes in the series have different authors, the quality and writing style will vary.

Commentaries are geared towards different audiences. A commentary on Genesis intended for pastors and well-educated laymen will be less dense and run a couple of hundred pages, but one intended for scripture students and readers familiar with Greek and Hebrew could be 1500 pages spread over three volumes. Individual textbook-level books such as this could easily run more than $50. Before making a big investment, check out reviews and, if available, the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon to see if the reading level and style of the commentary is suitable for your purposes.

Other Reference Works

While bible commentaries are an essential study aid, other reference materials such as a bible dictionary, bible atlas, and concordance could come in handy.

A bible dictionary is really a bible encyclopedia. You use it as you would an encyclopedia to learn more about a biblical person, place or thing. They also come in the single-volume (e.g., HarperCollins Bible Dictionary) and multi-volume (e.g., Anchor Bible Dictionary, New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible) varieties. Multi-volume dictionaries are very expensive and would be considered an investment. A good one-volume bible dictionary is probably all you need and Wikipedia might do in a pinch.

A bible atlas is more than just a set of maps. Some bible atlases include articles on history and archaeology, details of battles and conquests, artistic renderings of biblical cities, etc. I would put this in the “nice to have” category, especially if your bible already has some decent maps.

A concordance is used to look up all the verses in the bible that contain a particular word (e.g., all the verses in the bible with the word “camel”). Since the Hebrew and Greek words can be translated using different English words, you need to use a concordance that is keyed to a particular translation. There are free bible concordances available online for popular translations like KJV and NIV.

A Gospel Synopsis places similar passages from the four gospels side-by-side so that you can easily compare them. It’s in the “nice to have” category but very useful if you want to study gospel parallels.

Old and new wineskins.

How They Work Together

Let’s say you want to research Jesus’ proverb about “old wine in new wineskins” but don’t know where it is in the Bible. Looking up “wineskins” in a concordance you find references to Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22; and Lk 5:37f. You could then look up these three passages individually in your bible, but a Synopsis of the Four Gospels presents them side-by-side on the same page.

From the synopsis, it is easy to see that Luke adds a non-related statement (v. 39) that no one drinking the old wine desires the new wine. This saying apparently has no bearing on what was just said about old wine in new wineskins and seems a bit odd, so now you want to know what biblical scholars have to say about it.

A single-volume commentary only has two sentences on v. 39. From this you learn that v. 39 is a unique Lucan proverb that conditions how the previous saying about “new wine” should be interpreted. The “old wine” represented by the Sabbath and practices like fasting are not to be cast aside as they also contain God’s will.

That provides some insight and many people would be happy enough to stop right there. But those wanting to go deeper could consult a commentary volume dedicated to Luke and there they would find several paragraphs devoted to v. 39. Reading the detailed commentary, you learn the proverb is referring to religious conservatives comfortable with the old practices like fasting having difficulty in accepting the “new wine” that Jesus offers, saying, “The old is what is good.” Therefore, this proverb does not contradict what was said before about the incompatibility of the old practices with Jesus’ new teachings, but confirms it.

Hopefully, this very brief example illustrates how to incorporate multiple reference works to bring out a deeper meaning in a passage that, on initial reading, seemed odd and confusing.

Scripture Notes

Bibles come in a variety of versions. I’m not just talking about various translations or formats like hardcover, paperback, or leather-bound. I’m referring to special-featured editions like devotional bibles, bibles for men and bibles for women, and ones for teens and kids and so on. My “marriage devotional bible,” for example, has features such as daily and weekend devotions, marriage quizzes, and 30 profiles showing both good and bad examples of married couples in the Bible.

Any of these editions are fine if you simply want to read the Scriptures and the features may be inspiring or help you apply lessons from the Bible to your daily life. And if that’s all you’re looking for, then read no further. But if you really want to understand Scripture, there are some basic features that a bible should have to help you towards that goal.

Footnotes

Footnotes come in many forms. Translators’ notes offer alternate readings of an ambiguous text or different readings from other manuscript sources. These kind of notes can generally be found in all bible editions, even in those that are not intended as study bibles.

Explanatory notes or annotations comment on the biblical text, either on a passage or a specific verse. Also called study notes, these annotations come from the editor of that bible and generally not the translators. Annotations may not appear in all editions and may even be frowned upon in some circles because they tell you what someone else thinks about the Bible. Study notes written by a fundamentalist, for example, will not be welcomed by a mainline Protestant and vice versa.

But, in my opinion, trying to read the Bible without some guidance is like embarking on a cross-country road trip with no maps. Sure, you can follow the road signs, but it wouldn’t take much to veer off-course and wander aimlessly.

No, my bible doesn't look like this. At most I have a few little scribbles in pencil. (Bible journaling by Shar Martinez at https://gypsymamanc.wordpress.com/)

Cross-references operate under the principle that the Bible is its own best interpreter. Cross-references help you locate other verses in the Bible that may be helpful for understanding a particular passage. If, for example, you are studying the story of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke, it may be instructive to compare with the parallel baptism passages in the other gospels. A cross-reference will also help you locate the verse in Hab 2:4 that Paul quotes in Rom 1:17 so you can read it in its original context.

Introductions and Topical Articles

Most bibles will include some brief introduction to each individual book in the Bible. A good introduction should explain what we know about the author and when the book may have been written. It should also describe the themes of the book and outline the major sections. This may be carried out further in the text itself in the form of unit and section headings. These help you quickly identify the contents on the page much in the same way headings and subheadings do in a contemporary textbook.

For example, my previous articles have covered the unit of Genesis chapters 1-11 known as the “primeval history,” set before the time of Abraham. This unit can then be subdivided into sections on The Creation Week (Gen 1:1-2:3), Adam and Eve (2:4-3:24), Cain and Abel (Gen 4), and so on. Sometimes these unit and section headings are embedded in the text itself, but other times these headings are only mentioned in the footnotes. I prefer the latter approach because deciding where a section begins and ends is a judgment call. Not having an editor’s decision forced upon you through the formatting of the text allows you to make your own decision.

A bible may also have general introductions to both the Old and the New Testaments as well as their major parts: the historical, wisdom, and prophetic books in the OT, and the gospels and letters in the NT.

General or topical articles would help you understand the Bible in general. These may include articles about history during the time period covered by the Bible, how the Bible came to be written, the theology of the Bible, or how to understand Hebrew poetry. These vary widely in content and quality from bible to bible. It is nice to have them conveniently available to you in your bible, but you can easily purchase an introduction to the OT or NT that would cover such topics in more depth.

Maps and Charts

The Bible takes place a long time ago in lands very far away. Although the lands are the same, the place names and political boundaries have certainly changed. Therefore, a set of maps will help you visualize the route of the Exodus, the extent of David’s kingdom, and the journeys of Paul. Ideally, the bible should also include an index to the maps to help you identify a particular location.

In addition to a good set of maps, a proper study bible may also include various charts for helping convert ancient weights and measures to their modern equivalents, for example. Or it may include a chronological table listing events from the Bible with contemporaneous events happening in other parts of the world.

Even with these helps, you will only be able to go so far without additional reference works. In the next article, we’ll discuss how to take your bible study to the next level.

Parallel Lines

The last several articles have examined various English translations of the Bible, but how do they compare to one another? Let’s take one Scripture citation and see how it looks in various popular translations available at your local bookstore.

The Test Case – Rom 1:17

Here is a hyper-literal, word-for-word translation from the Greek:

For God’s righteousness in it is revealed from faith to faith, as it has been written, “But the righteous by faith will live.”

Paul is talking about how the gospel reveals God’s righteousness. There are only two main issues in translating this verse (in bold above):

1. What does “from faith to faith” mean?
2. In Paul’s quotation from Hab 2:4, does “by faith” describe how one becomes “righteous” (option A) or how the righteous “will live” (option B)?

King James Family

(KJV) For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith. 

(NASB) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” 

(NRSV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

(ESV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

The KJV here is a very literal translation with no archaic language to confuse the modern reader.

The NASB translates “righteous” instead of “just” in the Habakkuk quotation. “Righteousness/righteous” better reflects the use of the same Greek root word than does the “righteousness/just” combination in the KJV. The NASB also inserts the word “man” (that’s why it is in italics) after “righteous,” probably because readers expect “righteous” to be an adjective and not a noun.

The NRSV translates “through faith for faith” and the ESV “from faith for faith” but these are only slight variations and neither really tries to interpret the phrase.

All versions choose option B for the Habakkuk quotation with some version of the “just/righteous will/shall live by faith”.

Just as train tracks seem endless, so do the number of new English translations of the Bible.

Catholic Translations

(NJB) For in it is revealed the saving justice of God:  a justice based on faith and addressed to faith. As it says in scripture: Anyone who is upright through faith will live.

(NABRE) For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous by faith will live.”

The NJB is clearly a thought-for-thought translation and not a word-for-word one. It translates the Greek dikaiosynē theou as the “saving justice of God” and expands on that in the cryptic middle term with “a justice based on faith and addressed to faith.” It chooses the word “upright” in the Habakkuk quotation, in which case it would have been better to translate dikaiosynē theou as the “uprightness of God” to preserve the connection. The NJB translates “as it is written” with the more interpretive “as it says in scripture”.

The NABRE and the NJB are similar to the phrasing of the King James tradition with two exceptions. First, they place the verb “revealed” before the “righteousness of God” instead of after. Second, both follow the ambiguous word order of the Greek in the Habakkuk quote instead of choosing between option A or B.

Protestant Translations

(NIV) For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

(CSB) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

(CEB) God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.

(ISV) For in the gospel God’s righteousness is being revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous will live by faith.”

The NIV (and CEB and ISV) introduces the word “gospel” so the reader isn’t confused what the pronoun “it” refers to. The NIV also repeats the word “righteousness” in the middle part and is more interpretive with “by faith from first to last.” Paul would certainly agree that salvation is a matter of faith from start to finish but that is not a literal translation.

The CSB is very close in wording to the very literal ESV but the Common English Bible (CEB) and International Standard Version (ISV) go a different route by translating “God’s righteousness” instead of “righteousness of God”; this is a more natural way of describing a possessive in modern English. They both use the present tense (“is being revealed”) rather the perfect tense (“is revealed”) to capture the idea that God’s saving righteousness continues to be revealed whenever the gospel is preached. The CEB, though, is unique with the translation “from faithfulness for faith”, which to my ears is not much of an improvement in clarifying the meaning.

All these versions choose the traditional option B in stating that it is by faith that the righteous will live.

In Summary

Hopefully, this side-by-side comparison of more than a dozen different translations gives you a flavor for how translators go about doing their work. Sometimes they have to make a choice between leaving a confusing word or phrase in place or try to clarify it for the reader. Other times, the verse is ambiguous or has two meanings, only one of which can be captured in English. 

Which of these versions speaks to you?