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Title: The Bible: The One Year Chronological New Living Translation
Author: Jehovah
Pages: 1720
Words: 789K

Synopsis:

This takes the Bible, all 66 books, and chunks them up by Chapter and Verse into what this set of scholars believe is chronological order. This is translated in the New Living Translation which really isn't a translation but an “interpretation”. It's intent is to be an easy to read and understand version without worrying about literal interpretation.

My Thoughts:

I'm obviously not rating this but that is because I'm not putting the Word of God on the same level as some book written by men. This review is more about the translation, the chronology and the setup of this version of the Bible itself.

I've been reading my Bible through each year since I was 12 or 13. I slacked off for a decade in my mid-20's until my mid-30's and have started again. Mrs B and I read each section each morning or evening and then we talk about what we read, what we thought about it and what we got from it. As such, the One Year line of Bibles have been wonderful, as they're internally divided up by date and we don't have to refer to a external reading chart. Another thing that is important to us is having wide margins to write in, as we don't want notebooks either. We always look for extra wide margins when choosing which Bible to read through for the next year. This had those and we wrote in them a lot. The only downside is that they would sometimes take up an entire margin with one verse from that day's reading and have lots of cutesy little pictures around it. It was extremely frustrating to want to write something and not have the room because some artsy fartsy jackass decided that the margins needed to be filled up by them instead of leaving them open for the reader.

This NLT version was also a nice change up in the version we read. We tend to read as literally as possible and as such use the New King James, the New American Standard and the English Standard Version with a smattering of others as needed. While neither of us would ever study with a version like this, it was good for trying to get something in a new perspective. If you've never read a Bible before, this might be the version to introduce you but it should never be the one you stick with. Just like baby food is perfect for babies and adults CAN eat it, adults need adult food eventually.

Reading chronologically was also a bit different. There are times where histories are repeated throughout the Bible in different books. It is much easier to read them separated than one after another. There were times when we read the same instance 3 times (some of the histories recorded in Kings, Chronicle and either Isaiah or Jeremiah for example) and our eyes kind of glazed over. Speaking of eyes glazing over, the amount they put into each day really seemed to vary. Sometimes you'd read 1 ½ pages and other days you'd read 5 or 6. I found it extremely frustrating to never know how much time I was going to need. There were times Mrs B had to warn me “Long one today. Be prepared” and I would groan deep within myself.

I realize I'm complaining here but it is about issues that are specific to this particular Bible, not the Bible itself. Please don't think I'm complaining about the Bible itself.

We finished this up in September and it has taken a little bit to find our next one. For this time through we're going with the New International Version Journal the Word edition. It is not a One Year Bible so we're going to be using one of the traditional charts for that. It does however have very wide margins and I didn't see one artsy-fartsy drawing in the whole thing. That should balance out it being the NIV (which is another “interpretation” instead of a true translation).