Know the Word Study Bible, from Thomas Nelson Publishers

The New King James Version of Scripture is gaining a very good following. While holding to the consistency of the original King James translation of Scriptures the New King James brings the English into a more modern readable text. The original King James was very nice for the poetic and wisdom scriptures and many of us remember its grace of text from our early childhood memory work. But the Old English from the 17th century was a bit dated for most readers today. They had a hard time understanding the Thee's and Thou's. So, this new work is very nice indeed and provides a good readable translation.

The Study Bible portion has two segments. The first is the Topical Articles that are included. Each of the topics has an outline that walks you through the scripture and gives you a good understanding from scripture of the topics. There are 21 topical studies ranging from The Trinity to End Times (listed as last things). Each topic has a short outline in the contents and gives you the page numbers to guide you through the Bible to the Study notes and the Scriptures that are part of the topic.

The second portion of the study Bible is that each book of the Bible begins with a Summary and a section on "How to Study" the particular book that you are going to be reading. As part of the introduction it also gives a short "Highlights" section that will help you be familiar with what you are going to read.

Finally, as you read through the Bible there will be explanatory notes on the scriptures that you are reading. These are the familiar short commentary on key verses of each chapter, much like you find in every "study" Bible that you may have worked through.

I think that Thomas Nelson has done a very good job in providing a Bible for people new to scripture and wanting to get a handle on the contents, story line and background of the Bible. This would be an excellent gift for any young or new Christian that you might know.

Enjoy!