Customer Reviews

Illustrated Dictionary and Concordance of the Bible

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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Wow. If you're looking to understand names and places and theme of the Bible, this book covers it all. I couldn't really find anything that's in the Bible that's not in this book. It can help a serious scholar or the casual interest (like me). If there is more than one entry for a topic, this book covers them all. It is richly illustrated and well written. The only problemn is it weighs so much it's difficult to carry. You'll need to put it on a table because if you bring it to bed to read, you'll knock the wind out of yourself.

Obviously it's meant as a coffee table book, but church libraries in particular should consider adding this volume to their collections. It's not cheap, but it's worth every penny.

It is a fantastic book to look up anything from the bible, like a dictionary and it gives you scriptures to look up regarding what you are looking up.

The only thing I found dissappointing is that I purchased them used, one was in great condition, the other stated "good" but had coffee spilled all over the side of it.

As mentioned in other reviews, this work absolutely meets the definition of a 'tome' - and a very worthwhile one for your bookshelf. It's packed with loads of useful information: over 1000 pages of biblical facts, figures, summaries, explanations, and definitions. One great feature for Catholics - actually for all Christians - is that the entire canon (i.e. Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees) is included.

Turn to any page, and it's a virtual guarantee you'll learn something useful you didn't know five minutes before you began. It is true that the maps included are not great, but you can buy an inexpensive map book for that specific purpose. Also, there is a lack of citations for non-biblical sources, but all bible references are documented through the concordance in the page margins.

The cost of a good, clean, used copy is so low that there really is no excuse for not having one of these. You'll be glad when you need to pull up a quick reference, or just want to browse some topics. Granted, in the Internet Age, you can look up many of these items online but one thing you lose with that method is the 'surprise discovery' you encounter when crack open a book and go through process of looking something up. Unrelated items you never would have thought to research jump off the page, and that's something that's difficult to replicate with web searches. Plus, I'm one who likes to 'cozy in' and flip pages - I find that very rewarding, and this is a wonderful book to do that with.

Physically, this volume is solid and well-constructed; the font is good reading size, and the layout is straight-forward and accessible.

Highly recommended.