Review
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Title: NIV First-Century Study Bible
Editor: Kent Dobson
Publisher: Zondervan
Genre: Bible Study
Year Published: 2014
Number of Pages: 1850
Binding: Imitation Leather
ISBN: 978-0310433750
Price: $89.99 (USD)
Reviewed by Les Blake for the Association for Mormon Letters
(Note: A quick check with amazon.com shows other editions, including a Kindle edition for about ten bucks. It’s worth checking out. JN)
One thing is for certain regarding Zondervan’s *NIV First Century Study Bible,* it is a beautiful production. This edition of the Bible contains artfully rendered word studies, chronological timelines, art, artifacts, diagrams, geographical photos, footnotes, explanatory essays – all formatted around the text itself, making for easy reference and organic study. This edition is not a rigorous academic survey of the ancient world, but is tailored more toward everyday readers of scripture seeking to supplement their study by familiarizing themselves with the context from which the text originated.
Readers seeking historical-critical interpretations of Biblical stories and events may feel disappointed by this book. Likewise, readers seeking strictly conservative readings of scripture may also feel disappointed, because the editor, Kent Dobson, gives air time to both. Though Dobson acknowledges the existence of the Documentary Hypothesis (see the introduction to Genesis), the synoptic problem (see the introductory essay to the NT “Four Gospels, One Jesus”), questions of authorship (see commentary on the Pentateuch, Isaiah, and Paul’s epistles to name a few), and textual inconsistencies that, in my opinion, are best addressed by higher criticism, he almost invariably toes the traditionally conservative line.
As a word of caution, it must be acknowledged that Dobson does not wield the academic background that one might expect from someone setting out to create a Bible meant for study within an ancient context. He has no graduate degrees and he acknowledges that he does not know Hebrew, Greek, or any other ancient languages. He has spent time studying in graduate classes in Jerusalem, and took “a crash course in historical-critical scholarship.” Despite not having, ostensibly, the deep education that a project like this demands, I would argue that the resulting study is remarkably effective, given its intended audience.
That audience consists of modern Bible readers who are largely unfamiliar with this type of contextualization. In Dobson’s words, “this commentary is not an attempt to give any kind [of] comprehensive treatment of either the Jewish world or of the ancient Christian world. My hope is that it whets the appetite for more.” Dobson, I feel, largely succeeds in laying the groundwork for more informed, historically grounded readings of the Bible. Our studies of the Bible, which are all too commonly void of this type of grounding, Dobson says, have failed to make manifest “many of the most powerful insights from the wealth of cultural background data and literary studies.”
I’d like to address two Biblical passages that have been, historically, of interest to LDS readers, and comment on how the *NIV First Century Study Bible* might accent traditional LDS views.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4
In this passage Paul addresses speculation among the Thessalonians that “the day of the Lord” had already come. He cautions them, “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”
Since the “rebellion” rendered here is from the Greek “apostasia” this passage has proved meaningful in Mormonism by helping establish a framework for an epoch of Great Apostasy, and the “man of lawlessness, the man doomed to destruction” being Satan himself, the Son of Perdition. The Study Bible footnotes for these verses flesh out a context in which the rebellion spoken of was imminent, if not already begun (as the Thessalonians perceived) and that Paul perceives as imminent as well, “the secret power of lawlessness is already at work (vs. 7).” Dobson historicizes the “man of lawlessness” not as Satan, but as a concept “rooted in Old Testament images of a king who exalts himself as divine (see Isa 14:13-14, Eze 28:2, Da 6:7)” and postulates several historical figures that Paul may have alluded to including Pompey and Caligula, each of whom sought in his own way to “set himself up in God’s temple.”
Ezekiel 37: 12-17
The NIV text renders these verses as follows: “…This is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken and I have done it, declares the LORD.’ The word of the LORD came to me: ‘Son of man, take a stick of wood and write on it, ‘Belonging to Judah and the Israelites associated with him.’ Then take another stick of wood, and write on it, ‘Belonging to Joseph (that is Ephraim) and all the Israelites associated with him.’ Join them together into one stick so that they will become one in your hand.”
These verses have long been used by Christians to bolster the argument that Ancient Israel actively believed in bodily resurrection. Mormons are no exception, believing further that past and present prophets have always understood the doctrine of the resurrection.
Dobson, in a short essay about resurrection, however, acknowledges the historical understanding is that the doctrine of an afterlife was a late development in Israel. “It is sometimes difficult for contemporary readers,” Dobson explains, “to understand that in the minds of the faithful in the Old Testament faith did not guarantee some kind of blissful afterlife…Most likely, notions of resurrection and eternal life developed after the Babylonian exile.” Dobson points to the influence of Zoroastrianism as potentially leaking influence into this chapter, and posits that by the time of Ezekiel’s writing, this passage “seems to suggest a clear belief in bodily resurrection.” Making room in Biblical history for a late development of such a fundamental doctrine might prove a little disconcerting for some traditional Mormons.
Mormons also use these verses in a way unique in Christendom, as evidence that the Book of Mormon was prophesied as the stick of Ephraim. The NIV also clearly references a stick “of wood” as opposed to the KJV “stick.” The addition “of wood” lends itself to the historical critical interpretation of these sticks being scepters or ruling rods, symbolizing the gathering of the splintered kingdom into a unified Israel once again. Mormons widely take the KJV reference of mere “sticks” to mean scrolls (as in scrolls of scripture, one of which is the Book of Mormon). This is yet another small example in how this edition of the NIV along with commentary could play to a Mormon reader.
I feel more than ever, especially after spending time in this Bible, that the LDS Church is at a crossroads when it comes to their approach to the Bible. As Grant Hardy has said, “…it is time to take another look at where we are in our study and knowledge of the scriptures, particularly in relation to other Christians….It may be that our devotion to the KJV has reached the point of diminishing returns, that it is starting to be more of a hindrance than a help.”(1) In Hardy’s article he suggested that BYU professors be invited “to write a detailed commentary on the NIV or NRSV for LDS readers.” If that challenge were to be taken up, and the resulting commentary looked, in form and tone, similar to the *NIV First Century Study Bible,* I would consider it a large success and a huge step forward for LDS understanding of the Bible (even if not as far along as I would prefer in incorporating historical critical scholarship).
In conclusion, when I read the Bible with my children I don’t use the LDS version of the KJV. Why? Because they simply don’t understand it (and I would argue that most average adults don’t either). But I can use the NIV, and I’m certain that many of the resources in the *NIV First Century Study Bible,* especially the visual material so crucial to teaching, will be a valuable resource in my home. It will allow my family to engage with and challenge the Bible. And as Dobson notes, “when we attempt to interpret and even challenge the Bible, we are participating in a conversation that goes back to antiquity.”
Footnotes
1. Hardy, Grant “The KJV and the Future of Missionary Work.” *Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought* 45:2 (2012): 28.