Customer Reviews

New Interpreter's Bible: Complete Twelve Volume Commentary CD-ROM (New Interpreters Bible Commentaries)

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The New Interpreter's Bible is a twelve-volume series, updating the popular Interpreter's Bible from a few decades ago. There are several key features common to all of the volumes of this series. First, each includes a two-column, double translation of the Biblical text (NIV - New International Version, and NRSV - New Revised Standard Version) arranged by topical unit or story. Then, they provide commentaries that look at the passages as a whole, as well as verse-by-verse. Third, interesting Reflection pieces that relate the passages to each other, to history, and to current concerns occur at the conclusion of each passage. Fourth, introductory articles for each book are provided that discuss transmission, historical background, cultural setting, literary concerns, and current scholarship. Finally, there are general articles about the Bible, each Testament, and various types of literature (Narrative, Gospel, Wisdom Literature, etc.) are provided to give general placement and knowledge about the text overall.

The list of contributors, editors, and consultants on the project is a veritable Who's Who of biblical and theological scholarship, representing all major traditions and schools of thought liberal and conservative. Leander Keck, of the Yale Divinity School, is the primary editor of the series.

The volumes were published individually, and can be purchased individually, which is a good thing, given that they are a bit expensive. But for any serious biblical scholar, preacher, student, or enthusiast, they are invaluable. A great way to purchase them, however, is by buying the entire set, as is on offer here.

The text set includes seven volumes for the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures, and five volumes of the New Testament. Interspersed among the first seven volumes are the apocryphal texts. These books are called apocryphal because their status is not canonically clear within the Christian tradition. They are not contained in the official canon of the Hebrew scripture, and so Protestant tradition has tended to leave the books out of the Old Testament. However, these texts were included in the Septuagint, the primary Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures in the ancient world, and so the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches consider the texts canonical. This CD set includes all of this text.

High praise goes to the general editorial staff for working with such strong authors/scholars, that their work fits together well as part of this set while retaining their individual characteristics (much like the writers of the Bible itself!).

--Volume contents--

The following is a list of each volume in this twelve-volume set, and the contents of each. Each is included on the CD.

Volume I: General Articles on the Bible; General Articles on the Old Testament; Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus

Volume II: Numbers; Deuteronomy; Introduction to Narrative Literature; Joshua; Judges; Ruth; I & II Samuel

Volume III: I & II Kings; I & II Chronicles; Ezra, Nehemiah; Esther; Additions to Esther; Tobit; Judith

Volume IV: I & II Maccabees; Introduction to Hebrew Poetry; Job; Psalms

Volume V: Introduction to Wisdom Literature; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs; Book of Wisdom; Sirach

Volume VI: Introduction to Prophetic Literature; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Baruch; Letter of Jeremiah; Lamentations; Ezekiel

Volume VII: Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature; Daniel; Additions to Daniel; Hosea; Joel; Amos; Obadiah; Johan; Micah; Nahum; Habakkuk; Zephaniah; Haggai; Zechariah; Malachi

Volume VIII: General Articles on the New Testament; Matthew; Mark

Volume IX: Luke; John

Volume X: Acts; Introduction to Epistolary Literature; Romans, I Corinthians

Volume XI: II Corinthians; Galatians; Ephesians; Philippians; Colossians; I & II Thessalonians; I & II Timothy; Titus; Philemon

Volume XII: Hebrews; James; I & II Peter; I, II & III John; Jude; Revelation

The one drawback, as noted by another, is that one must have the CD to use; it cannot be completely loaded on the hard-drive as a stand-alone. For me, this is not a major inconvenience, but might be for some, so please note the issue.

If you still have XP or Mac with lower OS than 10 then this is a good program. You can get around the requirement of having the CD with you in the drive to run the program by buying a program such as Power ISO which is basically a virtual cd-rom. You can then make an ISO image of the cd-rom and have that stored on your laptop and just by right-clicking on the image of the cd you can mount it to the virtual cd-rom and both protect your cdrom and save having to bring it with you everywhere.

it is a little challenging to get used to using the program but once you get the hang of it it is quite handy and much easier than carrying 12 volumes of books everywhere you go!!

THIS NEEDS A PATCH FOR MAC OS10 AND HIGHER AND FOR VISTA!!!!!

...There is no question about NIB. You know it's the best.

As for the CD ROM edition, I have a big problem. I MUST run it from a CD drive. You can load the program into the hard drive but NOT the DATA to run it without the CD. I called them and they confirmed. My notebook computer (the light weight IBM ThinkPad X series) comes with external CD ROM that I don't usually carry it with me to reduce weight. So I have everything I need in the hard drive, including the entire Libronix Digital Library System, 1,000 MB of data. But now, I am not allowed to put this 85 MB of data into my hard drive. Even if I have a built-in CD drive on my notebook, I will still prefer to run it from the hard drive and not to carry the CD with me because I could lose it. I think it's just an outdated paranoia, which will hinder the widely usage of the great NIB, and prevent the growth of the software company itself. What a shame!

The reputation of the NIB was well known to me - I was very excited about having a digital copy that was eminently more portable than the 12-volume hard copy version. I was extremely disappointed, however, with the quality of this product. The reasons are twofold:

(1) Macintosh use is not supported! I am still able to run the disc through a windows emulator, but that is already cumbersome and an unnecessary inconvenience.
(2) For all you PC users out there who scoff at Macs and choose to laugh at item (1) and think I got what I deserved, know this: the Folio Views software required to view the NIB text is one the most user unfriendly applications I've ever had the displeasure of using. It feels like it was written for Windows 3.1. I don't care what OS you use - nothing is going to make this thing look good.

The contributors to the NIB are extraordinary (this is the only thing that kept me from giving a one-star rating), but the makers of this CD-ROM should be ashamed of themselves. In this reviewer's mind, lugging around all 12 volumes of the printed publication is preferable to using this $500 coaster. I give this an enthusiastic two thumbs down.

I bought this years ago and used it quite a bit, until my computer died and I bought a Vista computer. It didn't work with VISTA. But, I just got off the phone with Abingdon and they have a Vista version and are offering a free exchange.

Send the original disc to Abingdon Press Tech Support, ATTN: VISTA EXCHANGE, 201 8th Ave. South, Nashville, TN 37203. Include your name, street address and phone number and they will send you an upgrade for Vista.

I wish I would have bought the books. This fine resource is greatly diminished by its incompatability with my VISTA laptop. At this point, it's totally useless to me. When I initially tried the CD-Roms in my laptop, I wrote the company, naively assuming that they would provide a simple update patch (or something). No response. Not even an "we're working on it. We realize many of you have upgraded since this software was created." Nothing. $500-some bucks down the drain. On another note, I purchased the very expensive LOGOS software when I graduated from seminary in 2006. It worked on XP but not VISTA. But guess what. They provided a patch (or whatever) to enable it to work on my VISTA laptop. It was an easy fix. No hassle. No big deal. I find it very unfortunate (to say the least) that NIB's publisher would put out a product and not provide an upgrade to keep up with the advances in the technology so that they could maintain a happy customer base.

All reviews so far have been about the incompatibility of the CD-ROM. The page on Abingdon Press' page has this:

system requirements: The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible:
is compatible with the latest service pack installs of Windows XP Professional, XP Home, 2000 Professional, Vista, and Windows 7 in all language versions
requires Microsoft .NET 1.1 or greater
is not supported for Apple computers. It can be installed on a Macintosh computer by using Windows emulation, but this type of installation is not supported.

Some may be buying earlier versions, discounted from other vendors. There are also different versions of Win7 which will have a 'Virtual Machine" while Win7 Home does not. The Virtual Machine can allow XP and even earlier 16 bit software to run on Win7, but you can also get Virtual Machine from Microsoft and others to run the XP versions, provided you have a legitimate copy of XP (basically an XP partition on the hard drive.)

If the problems reported about requiring the CD-ROM, it's probably the earlier version. I thought I experienced that same problem with the CD-ROM of the New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible on a Win7 machine. I believe Win7 fixed that problem, or I did by the way the files were transferred (copied instead of drag and drop.)
The process of using the Dictionary is a bit difficult to understand as well (reported in another review;) not totally intuitive even to a researcher's mind, but very workable.

We were using Windows ME, but that laptop recently died. Went to put this software on Windows XP, and install files don't work. Otherwise, we thought it was a great product. We miss ME, even with its blue screen of death, at least you knew the software would work.

First, this item is in the wrong place or incompletely labeled by Amazon.com because it took me a long time to find it. It is a "CD-ROM Edition" of the NIB. I hope they will change the listing here to include the word "CD ROM," otherwise those who are looking for the CD ROM version of NIB would have a very hard time to find it on Amazon.com.

There is no question about NIB. You know it's the best.

As for the CD ROM edition, I have a big problem. I MUST run it from a CD drive. You can load the program into the hard drive but NOT the DATA to run it without the CD. I called them and they confirmed. My notebook computer (the light weight IBM ThinkPad X series) comes with external CD ROM that I don't usually carry it with me to reduce weight. So I have everything I need in the hard drive, including the entire Libronix Digital Library System, 1,000 MB of data. But now, I am not allowed to put this 85 MB of data into my hard drive. Even if I have a built-in CD drive on my notebook, I will still prefer to run it from the hard drive and not to carry the CD with me because I could lose it. I think it's just an outdated paranoia, which will hinder the widely usage of the great NIB, and prevent the growth of the software company itself. What a shame!

We wish we had purchased the print editionsince the CD is much too difficult to learn and to use. However it is the standard in the field. [eace, Ted Good