Customer Reviews

The Old Testament for Latter-Day Saint Families: Illustrated King James Version with Helps for Children

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As one if the editors of this book, it is my firm belief that the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families is a valuable contribution to the Latter-day Saint community. The enormous amount of quality word helps, scriptural and doctrinal commentary, historical background, prophetic statements and application insights is helpful for families, teachers and scriptural students of all ages. The abundant variety of beautiful illustrations, helpful charts and maps has helped make this a best seller in the LDS market.

It is understandable on a certain level why one might criticize the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families as "incomplete," as one reviewer does on Amazon. I sincerely believe that a closer examination of the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families would have made it clear why it seems to "be missing many chapters and verses."

When we put together this book we knew we were under certain constraints. We were limited, by the publisher, to one volume. Originally, in fact, our title for the book was "Selections from the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families." Deseret Book decided that the title should be changed to the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families because we included material on the entire Old Testament. Where we did not provide commentary to help certain blocks of scripture with extensive commentary, we did include summaries and some helpful material.

Our purpose for writing and compiling the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families was to help families, teachers, and scriptural students of all ages to understand and love the Old Testament. Our selection criterion of what parts of the Old Testament to include was based upon a close scrutiny of the various manuals in the Church. If the Church Sunday School manuals, Seminary manuals, or institute manuals included coverage of the Old Testament, then we included extensive coverage in the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families. If portions of the Old Testament were not covered in any of the church courses, we still covered the material with helps and commentary unless it was repetitive material that was covered in other portions of the Old Testament. For example, we summarized parts of 1 Chronicles, as well as 2 Chronicles 30 - 32 because material is covered in 1 and 2 Samuel, 2 Kings, and Isaiah. One major exception to this was our decision not to cover The Song of Solomon with anything other than a summary because of the Prophet Joseph Smith's statement that it is "not inspired scripture" (see LDS Bible Dictionary, s.v. "Song of Solomon," 776). Overall, it was our serious intent to cover portions of the Old Testament relevant and helpful to modern readers.

The vast amount of helps, commentary, insights and beautiful graphics in the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families compares favorably to other noted and quality commentaries on the Old Testament. In fact, I'd be insincere if I did not tell you that I believe it to be the most helpful available resource for the general audience on the Old Testament. The fact that the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families contains much of the text of the Old Testament itself is a wonderful blessing, but this same fact is one that has been used as criticism of the book by one reviewer on Amazon. Commentaries on the Old Testament that do not contain the text of the Old Testament are also selective as to which verses commentary is offered. It is simply not as obvious when these commentaries do not provide commentary on blocks of verses or chapters. For example, as I look through one of my favorite commentaries on the Old Testament, I note that very little commentary is offered for 1 Chronicles except a summary here and there and a reference of where else the material is covered in 1 and 2 Samuel. But because the text of the Old Testament is not included in this commentary, there is no obvious way of noting that these chapters are almost completely skipped.

My intention is not to criticize other books trying to provide assistance with the Old Testament. Our book, the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families, is beholding to many great works written before it. I'm simply trying to respond to the criticism that our book is incomplete.

I sincerely hope that my response and review has been helpful and positive. Most of all, I hope our book the Old Testament for Latter-day Saint Families helps many increase in their love of the scriptures and the Lord.

This book is an excellent book for reading the old testament as a family, and especially with young children. It has many illustrations, as well as definitions and explanations at the bottom of each page. For some, it may be difficult that this old testament is "abridged". I have unabridged bibles, but an abridgement is so nice to have when you don't want to lose your little one's interest in such a fabulous book... they can read the unabridged when they get older. Thanks for all the work to creat something so helpful and useful to families.

We bought this for our beginner readers at home to complement the other two volumes in this series. I was surprised how very much the book is condensed, it ends at Ecclesiastes. Often times we'll read a story or passage and our little reader of this volume can't participate because the story is abridged and/or not present. If it weren't too late, I would really recommend two volumes of the Old Testament to the publishers. We've only had it a couple weeks, but I've noticed the chapter in Proverbs 31 about the virtuous woman being valued above rubies is missing as is some chapters in 1 Samuel as we get to read about Saul.

I do like the book, I'm not unhappy I got it, but I would have happily paid for two complete volumes over one condensed one.

This book has many missing chapters and verses making it quite incomplete. This book is well done excpet for this fact and would have been much better as a two-volume COMPLETE set. I took mine back to where I purchased it, but would buy IF AND WHEN the book is complete with ALL the chapters and verses included. Approximately 1/3 of the Old Testament is left out.