Review

Title: Literary Study Bible, English Standard Version
Publisher: Crossway
Year Published: 2020
ISBN: 978-1433568718
Number of Pages: 2032
Price: $39.95

Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle for the Association for Mormon Letters

Of the making of Bibles, there is no end.  Sure, I mangled an old adage, but in the case of Bibles, this is true.  Publishers have struggled to produce a Bible that is both readable and accessible.  Thomas Wayment, a well-known LDS scholar, has been producing a very fine modern rendering of the New Testament that strives for this goal.  Hopefully, this will move LDS readers away from a slavish dependence on the KJV.

The English Standard Version (ESV) has successfully filled this need.  Since its introduction several years ago, it has gained significant traction in the evangelical world.  It currently ranks number four (behind the New International Version, the KJV, and the New Living Translation).  Reading the ESV is incredibly comfortable for those accustomed to the KJV.  The cadence is close to the KJV, but the translation is infinitely more accurate than the accustomed-to King James Version.

The publisher states: “Combining 1,200+ study notes related to the literary features of the Bible, the ESV Literary Study Bible helps readers understand God’s Word more fully, in all its richness and beauty.” (from Amazon page)

This is a good introduction to this fine work.  Getting more out of Bible study requires some sense of the background and context of the stories in the Bible.  Let’s look at a few examples of the notes in this volume.  First, in reflecting on the way Ecclesiastes seems familiar to modern readers, the following note appears:

One reason the book of Ecclesiastes seems familiar to the modern sensibility is that much of it is couched in the mode of protest literature, which is the dominant mode of modern literature.  The first paragraph of chapter 9 is an implied protest against death, with emphasis upon how death comes equally to the righteous and the evil and how it brings people to oblivion. (p. 1019)

This was a revelation to me.  I’ve never understood Ecclesiastes as “protest literature.”  It helped me place this enigmatic book of the Bible in context.

Now let’s look at one of the most familiar anecdotes from the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  Here’s the note from this Bible:

Jesus’ raising of Lazarus belongs to a biblical genre known as the death-rebirth story, and it is the last of the seven great signs that punctuate John’s gospel.  The famous story unfolds by the following sequence: prologue, in which Jesus is told about Lazarus’s illness (vv. 1-14); Jesus delays (generating narrative suspense about why he “fails” to respond to a dire need) and then journeys to Bethany, accompanied by mysterious sayings about the situation (vv. 5-16); Jesus’ discourse with Martha in which he leads her to recognize the truth about Jesus’ being the resurrection and the life (vv. 17-27); Jesus shares Mary’s grief about the death of Lazarus (vv. 28*37); Jesus raises Lazarus from death to life by the power of his word and restores Lazarus to his family (vv. 38-44); and the religious leaders react with extreme hostility to the raising of Lazarus (vv. 45-54). Jesus is the center of the action throughout the narrative, and we do well to pay close attention to the portrait of Jesus that emerges from this story; We see Jesus’ humanity in his loving compassion for the dying and grieving and his divinity highlighted in his miraculous power over death. (p. 1664).

You might ask why I highlighted this note.  Simply put, I learned a lot.  I never heard of the story type “death-rebirth.”  It set me to wondering where else this kind of narrative appears.  And I was reminded that Jesus, not Lazarus, is the central person of the story.  In short, it demonstrates how this Bible analyzes the various biblical pericopes and aids in helping readers focus on the real importance of each story.  We tend to get lost sometimes in pursuit of trivial points.  Reading any scripture is helped by focusing on the major point.

I think Latter-day Saint readers will love this Bible.  In LDS circles, the Bible is studied on a regular cycle, and this is good.  But the studies tend to focus on themes of interest to those readers.  Larger biblical themes and messages can be lost.

If I were to point to a single nit about this Bible, it is that the text is presented in single-column format.  I never feel that I’m reading a Bible when it is in this format.  But that’s just me.

I’ve thought that a Literary Book of Mormon might be a valuable addition to the corpus of LDS literature.  Context is everything.  But here we have a Literary Study Bible, utilizing the very fine ESV (in my opinion, the most accurate rendering of the Bible).

This volume is a treasure.  It should be used by LDS readers if they want to gain a deeper appreciation for the Bible, its context, and its literary styles.