Customer Reviews

The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

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I just received copies of the New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, which is an excerpt of the larger NOAB, 4th edition. I was very pleased with this newest release in a long, distinguished history of Oxford Study Bibles. The physical quality of the book takes a step forward from previous editions. The pages are of a thicker stock, and therefore almost opaque and easy to handle. This is a great improvement on previous editions of the NOA Apocrypha, which used the "onion skin" paper for which Bibles are famous. The font and layout have been well designed to allow for more "white space" on the page to aid reading. The shift to paragraph-style annotations rather than the two-column format is a visual improvement. The fonts are smaller than the third edition that I had been using (the original Murphy-Metzger 3rd edition, not the augmented 3rd), and that's never a good thing with my particular set of eyes.

The annotations are more generous than in previous editions, and I regard this as a great step forward. I used to recommend the HarperCollins Study Bible over the NOAB to my students for this reason, but I think that will now change. In the interest of fair disclosure, I am prejudiced toward this edition, having contributed the introduction and annotations to 4 Maccabees (does anyone out there ever really read 4 Maccabees?). But I stand in much more distinguished company. Three of the authors of annotations are immediately recognized as "deans" of Second Temple Judaism and its literature -- John Collins on 3 Maccabees, Lester Grabbe on Wisdom of Solomon, and Daniel Harrington on Ben Sira. Many others are acknowledged specialists on the book for which they provide annotations, such as Theodore Bergren (the foremost scholar on 2 Esdras 1-2, 15-16) on 2 Esdras, John Bartlett (author of a fine guide to this book) on 1 Maccabees, Daniel Schwartz (author of the new standard in commentaries on this book) on 2 Maccabees, and Lawrence Wills (specialist on tales of Jews in foreign courts) on Judith. The remaining contributors are no less distinguished, including, for example, Amy-Jill Levine (whose prolific and consistently solid scholarship defies classification) on Tobit and the Additions to Daniel.

Congratulations to Michael Coogan and his team of editorial colleagues (Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, and Pheme Perkins) on this remarkable achievement, giving anyone who cares to use this edition such expert guidance on reading and entering into the Scriptures!

It's hardcover, front looks exactly as shown in the picture. Font size is normal, footnotes are at the bottom of the passages; paper is heavier stock than typical, standard bible paper (which is the tissue material type). I ordered it directly from Amazon, arrived within a week with Free Super Saving Shipping. Nothing was damaged during shipping, and it arrived new.

It's about the size of a textbook, and looks like one too. It's very plain; no ribbon page-marker, illustrations, maps, weights or measurements, or anything like that. There are a few blank pages on the back of the book that you can write on for notes or whatever. It also does NOT have the Holy Bible - this book only has the Apocrypha passages, not the rest of the bible. I thought that what I was ordering would be the Holy Bible with the Apocrypha, and it wasn't - so you might want to know that; it didn't bother me that much as I had so many Holy Bibles anyway; but I didn't have any "whole" ones (and I suppose I still don't).