Customer Reviews

The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, College Edition

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version has three separate ISBNs. Take a look at the following differences to help you differentiate:

ISBN 978-0195289596 is the college edition. According to Oxford University Press, this simply means that this version does not have the concordance. This will have fewer pages than the other two versions.

ISBN 978-0195289558 is the hardcover edition.

ISBN 978-0195289565 is the hardcover index edition, meaning there are little tabs on the side of each page, indicating books of the bible.

I found this information by contacting Oxford University Press Customer Service. There's a toll free number that's easily accessible. Simply use your favourite search engine to find their site, then click on their "Contact Us" link. Hope this helps people out there!

I LOVE the Oxford Annotated and use it along with the HarperCollins and New Interpreter's for my work in seminary and at church, and I have recommended the Oxford to literally hundreds of people. When I found out that a new edition had been released, I announced it in our church newsletter and I went ahead and bought 15, meaning to sell them to our members at cost or to give them as gifts. Why 1 star? It's because

1) THE PAPER ON WHICH IT IS PRINTED IS A BAD JOKE. Just like the New Interpreter's, you cannot open and close the thing without having the pages bend back upon themselves. The pages become crumpled with even the gentlest use.

2) CONTENT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU CANNOT READ THE PRINT. There are two factors at play here. The font is miniscule and the paper is virtually transparent. How they printed this in the first place is a miracle of science.

3) PEOPLE NEED THIS BIBLE IN THEIR HANDS. I gave this Bible to two separate people who had said that they wanted one. I asked them to be honest and let me know if they thought that they would have trouble reading it. Both of them handed their copies back to me saying "No, thank you." - even with the Church picking up half the cost.

Dear Whoever Makes These Decisions:

I work hard to convince people that they need to get a first-class, academic Study Bible. It is a hard sell because they are so bound to their "relevant", "real world", (Shall I go on?), quasi-scholarly, agenda-driven, anything but the NRSV, Devotional Bibles. Please believe me when I say that those of us who care about the wonderful work that you do are willing to carry around larger, heavier Bibles if what we get is stronger, more opaque paper, and larger fonts. We would be HAPPY to pay more if you would improve the printing and bind the books so that they can stand up to the years of use that the Oxford Annotated, HarperCollins and New Interpreter's warrant.

I would be DELIGHTED to see a post from a representative of Oxford University Press, HarperCollins, or Abingdon Press saying that you plan to reexamine your printing decisions. For what it's worth, whichever of you guys comes out with a physical product that approaches your outstanding scholarship, will have my order and another 100 to go with it.

P.S.: Anybody want 15 unreadable Bibles? I'm selling them cheap.

The Good. The binding on this Bible is very good. The genuine leather feels wonderful in the hands. The construction is what we've come to expect from Oxford.

The Bad. The print in this edition is horrible compared to the wonderful print in the Third Edition. I miss the easy on the eyes type and the justified margins of the Third. The print in the Fourth is bold but smaller and crowded and hard on the eyes. The theological revisions are OK at best. Again, I miss the scholarship of the Third Edition. I immediately noticed that the commentary on the "homosexual" passages has moved decidedly to the right in the Fourth Edition (which is fine for those who hold to a more conservative evangelical cultural position).

The Ugly. I wish that Oxford would once again offer their genuine leather Bibles with a choice of thumb index or not. I really do not like thumb indexed Bibles at all and would love to have the option to get an Oxford nice Bible without them.

This is the WORST bible in terms of binding and workmanship one could imagine.

The pages are so thin that its virtually impossible to mark without bleed through.

The pages are starting to fall out and need to be taped after only a few months

of careful reading. I DO NOT recommend this bible for daily use. You would

think that oxford press could come up with a better constructed bible.

The type is faint, small, and difficult to read.

For scholarly content I would give this bible 10 stars.

However the atrocious workmanship of the edition does not even

rate 1 star in my opinion.

This is the newest release in a long, distinguished history of Oxford Study Bibles. 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 unfortunately smaller than those used in the third edition that I had been reading (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 in this volume. Among the contributors to the annotations on the Apocryphal books one finds 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. The same quality of contributor holds throughout the Hebrew Bible and New Testament: many of the contributors have written commentaries, or at least academic books, on the Scriptural text for which they provide annotations here.

One small physical drawback: the complete Bible has the typically thinner paper stock, with "bleed through." You'll be limited to making your own annotations in pencil or ink, not highlighter or marker.

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!

I knew the pages were going to be thin based on the other reviews; yet, it seemed a good trade off for the amount of information contained. It was a good choice, but the pages are so thin that it indeed makes the book functionally difficult. You can't thumb through quicky- or you are sure to rip or bend a page.

It is a little difficult to read because you can see the next pages type though the page.

The notes however get five stars, the book will be a good desk supplement but I am certainly going to get a more functional one.

EDIT: I am a highlighting addict and due to the thin pages, highlighter - even the lightest touch - bleeds right through. However, after some experimenting I found a brand that does not bleed through. It is Zebra Zazzle yellow. You can find them here on Amazon searching with "Zebra Zazzle Highlighter."

This is the 4th ed. (2010) of a Bible tool that has become an institution in its own right(1st ed. 1962, 2nd 1977, 3rd 2001). The 3rd ed., using NRSV, was completely new, with 4 editors and 42 other contributors; this 4th ed. has 56 contributors, 28 of them new to this ed.

The unqualified Goal of this work has always been: to be academically reputable. Scholarship, not religious inspiration, is the purpose of introductions, notes, and essays. Academic institutions from around the world are represented (not listed in the book; must be searched on line). Religious affiliations range from Orthodox Protestant through Roman Catholic, Jewish, to non-affiliated. The editors maintain soberness of tone and uniformity of format. Aimed at college and university courses in Western scriptures, this is a consumate scholarly work. Its only serious competitor in this category is the Harper/Collins Study Bible.

New Oxford Annotated Bible retains its status as a "go-to Study Bible" for those wishing to better understand cultural and historical settings of the communities for and from which Hebrew and Christian scriptures originated. (Those desiring to similarly understand how the Bible may be received by various cultures today will benefit on consulting "The Peoples' Bible" in turn.) With a new, tighter binding and readable page layout, though with a font-size verging on too-small for its annotations, this will be an edition that continues to appeal to those in academic settings and communities of faith.

Among contributors enlivening the fourth edition are both long-established scholars, such as Terence E. Fretheim, writing on the book of Numbers, and those newer to the field, such as Julia M. O'Brien, who anotates a number of the briefer prophets. Commentary retained from the previous edition sometimes implies certainty on key texts which, for other scholars, are best left open-ended (on, for example, the NRSV's questionable shift from "do not kill" to "do not murder" in the Ten Commandments). Neil Elliott's valuable, set-in-its-context-of-empire commentary on Romans remains. Four-and-a-half stars.

I have used three different study bibles in the last two years and this was by far the best. There are so many extras that are in here that make this an exceptional learning tool. Please note that there are many different versions of this bible so make sure you are ordering the exact ISBN for the bible you are looking for. Call the customer service line at Oxford Press to get these details for each version and the ISBN.

I use this Bible for my religion classes, since I have had more than one professor recommend a version of The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. If you want a Bible that is very well put together and carefully researched then you definitely want this one! The print is easy to read and the notes are very detailed.

This is an excellent Bible for believers or scholars alike. The pages are very thin, so you have to be careful with them, although I do not see this as much of a problem. I also wish there was more room in the margins for taking notes, but overall a fantastic buy!