Customer Reviews for Zondervan A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Zondervan A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Get to the heart of the matter with this practical resource that allows you to focus on parsing and grammar instead of paging through lexicons.Complete text of the Hebrew Bible from the Leningrad Codex * Footnoted definitions of Greek and Hebrew words * Greek text underlying the TNIV with comparisons to the UBS4 text * Size: 6.25" x 9.5" x 2.25" * 2256 pages, black leather from Zondervan
Average Customer Rating:
(10 Reviews) 10
Rating Snapshot (10 reviews)
5 stars
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6 out of 6100%customers would recommend this product to a friend.
Customer Reviews for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Review 1 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
excellent combination of Hebrew and Greek Bible
Date:December 10, 2012
Ed Venable
Location:North Carolina
Age:45-54
Gender:male
Quality:
5
out of
5
Value:
5
out of
5
Meets Expectations:
5
out of
5
This Bible has an excellent font which makes it easier to read the Hebrew and Greek. Binding is exceptional quality.
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+1point
1of 1voted this as helpful.
Review 2 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Great tool for Hebrew and Greek students
Date:October 31, 2012
Walter P
Location:Redding, California
Age:55-65
Gender:male
Quality:
5
out of
5
Value:
5
out of
5
Meets Expectations:
5
out of
5
This Bible was a gift to my friend who is a Hebrew instructor at our Seminary & Institute. He and I are impressed with the quality of this product. We would and will recommend this great tool to other Hebrew and Greek students.
thanks CBD,
Walter P
Walter P
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-1point
1of 3voted this as helpful.
Review 3 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
N.T. Wright would approve, at least in principle
Date:October 9, 2012
Quality:
5
out of
5
Value:
4
out of
5
Meets Expectations:
4
out of
5
I met N.T. Wright briefly in January at a worship symposium and asked him how to improve my Greek. He said, "Read the text, read the text, read the text."
He told me to really get the feel of the language. Don't think of Greek just as a code for English; get into the Greek itself. I asked him about reading with a diglot, but he encouraged me to check the English translation only after reading an entire Greek paragraph, and then, only as necessary.
The same holds true with Hebrew. Read the text, read the text, read the text. Reading it out loud is even better, and better still is trying to speak it to others.
Zondervan has published what is to my knowledge the only "reader's" edition of the Hebrew Bible. It's a masterpiece. The font is clear, sized perfectly, and easy to read. It uses the Leningrad Codex. It has no textual apparatus (which could be a distraction in a "reader's edition"), but instead footnotes rarely occurring vocabulary. Not counting proper nouns, editors Philip Brown and Bryan Smith footnote all words that occur less than 100 times in the Hebrew Bible. Here they give "glosses," which give the reader the basic meaning of the word. Aramaic words that occur less than 25 times are listed in the footnotes in the page on which they occur.
For readers who blank on a word that occurs, say, 150 times in the Hebrew Bible, a glossary at the back will allow them to look up even additional words.
Brown used HALOT and BDB to write the glosses.
The only thing to critique in the Hebrew reader's edition is that proper nouns, which are to appear in grey font since they're not footnoted, occasionally go missed. Brown has posted an errata list on his site, many of which have been fixed in recent printings.
Zondervan's Greek reader's New Testament has not met with such universal acclaim. It's a good resource to have on hand, to be sure, but in my view it's not as well executed as the Hebrew reader's Bible.
Rather than being based on the scholarly editions of the NA27 or UBS4, the text is "the eclectic text that underpins the Today's New International Version." The scholars who produced the TNIV, in other words, made different textual decisions in some instances than did the editors of the "Standard Text" of the NA27/UBS4. Where this is the case, a limited textual apparatus notes it. While this could be problematic for textual criticism, the text is not vastly different from the standard one, and is certainly fine for reading.
As with the Hebrew reader's edition, the Greek reader's Bible footnotes and explains words that occur less than 30 times in the Greek New Testament. One unfortunate decision is that, unlike the Hebrew, the Greek footnotes do not have the glossed word in bold. This makes navigating the footnotes more cumbersome.
Font is perhaps a personal preference. While Philip Brown did a magnificent job of typesetting the Hebrew, the Greek font leaves something to be desired. It's not the easiest Greek font I've read. It's not unreadable as fonts go, but it's thin. I got used to it after a while, so it's not unmanageable, but the font in the UBS Greek Reader's New Testament is easier to read. The latter also puts the footnoted glosses into two columns, which makes referencing them quicker.
Not long ago Zondervan combined the Hebrew and the Greek into one mammoth, leather-bound Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible. The volume is large (but how could it not be?) and impressive. It's constructed well. The binding is sewn (rejoice!), so it will last for a while.
This combination carries with it the great advantage that its user has both the Hebrew and the Greek Bibles under one cover. Now I just have to carry one geeky Bible to church rather than two! Huge benefit.
Another nice thing about this edition is that with Hebrew going from right to left and Greek from left to right, the Greek New Testament starts at the "front" and the Hebrew Bible starts at the "back," just as both would be in their separate volumes.
The introduction to each half explains well how the text is laid out, the footnoting of the vocabulary, and so on. All the glory of Brown's Hebrew edition is there, and the less-than-ideal Greek font is there in the Greek portion. One thing to add in appreciation of the Greek part, however, is that Old Testament quotations appear in bold, with their references listed at the bottom of the page. The eight pages of color maps between the two sections are a nice bonus, too.
The construction of the two Bibles combined is executed quite well. I'm happy to only have to take one original language Bible with me to church now.
**Thanks to Zondervan for the review copy of A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible. They provided me with one in the hopes of my reviewing it on my blog, but with no expectation as to the content of the review.**
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+7points
7of 7voted this as helpful.
Review 4 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Date:June 15, 2011
Ian H
Age:45-54
Gender:male
Quality:
5
out of
5
Value:
5
out of
5
Meets Expectations:
5
out of
5
Great price, great item, If you are an intermediate Hebrew reader, this is the book for you. Clear type, useful page by page lexicon.
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+1point
3of 5voted this as helpful.
Review 5 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Date:February 16, 2011
postitnote
Gender:male
Quality:
4
out of
5
Value:
4
out of
5
Meets Expectations:
3
out of
5
Great Bible-- I am very glad at the definitions at the bottom of each page. However this bible is This is what it says, a 'reader'. I thought it would space to markup keyverses in english between the lines but there is not enough room (my Greek and Hebrew is not strong enough to just 'read' it otherwise).
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0points
1of 2voted this as helpful.
Review 6 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
awesome product
Date:November 26, 2010
Mark
Location:Glasgow, KY
Age:35-44
Gender:male
Quality:
5
out of
5
Value:
4
out of
5
Meets Expectations:
5
out of
5
This Bible is just I wanted. I love it! It is beautiful and a great value for the money. I checked at other places and CBD was by far the best buy.
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+1point
2of 3voted this as helpful.
Review 7 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Date:July 28, 2010
Michael B Vanderzanden
I Was under the asumption that it would have the English under the Hebrew and Greek or in the sideline I am not yet advanced in either to make full use of the book.
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-14points
4of 22voted this as helpful.
Review 8 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Date:June 17, 2010
Denise Hill
The Bible wasn't what I thought it was which was my fault. I have returned it, but was very impressed with the ease of the return policy.
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-2points
0of 2voted this as helpful.
Review 9 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Date:April 17, 2010
Rob Savage
Just received this bible yesterday. The print is beautiful, The binding is superb, This is a bulky bible. If you are like me and learning and/or wanting to learn the biblical languages. This is the Bible for you.
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+4points
4of 4voted this as helpful.
Review 10 for A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible
Overall Rating:
Date:April 16, 2010
T.C. Judd
The intent of this Bible is to increase the reader's ability to pick up the Greek/Hebrew texts and read without a continual need to refer to lexicons and look up unfamiliar vocabulary. For this purpose the Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible excels! Footnotes provide definitions of lesser-used words and comparisons between the text used here vs. the "standard" Greek/Hebrew texts.As far as mechanics of this Bible go, the leather used is finely grained but very thin. While I expect it to loosen/soften up with use, out of the box the cover is fairly stiff. Overall, I would say the leather is of higher quality than that typically appearing as "Genuine Leather" in most contemporary Bibles but not nearly as nice as one would find in a high-end (e.g. Cambridge) Bible. Only time will tell if this thin real leather will stand up as well as the more robust Duo-tone covers used in the separate volumes. The pages are (thankfully) not ultra-thin and are gilded in silver, which nicely accents the black leather cover. The binding of this nearly 2.5" thick Bible is sewn (hooray!), so I expect to be able to get many years of use out of it before rebinding. Also, there are two ribbon bookmarks (hooray!) and a typical complement of maps, which are located in between the New and Old Testaments. A standard Greek font (i.e., NOT italics like USB or the Reader's Greek NT, 1st ed) is used that is slightly smaller than the font of the UBS or large-print Nestle-Aland texts but larger than that used in the standard Nestle-Aland edition. The Hebrew font is larger than the standard size BHS but slightly smaller than the large-print BHS. I find both fonts very readable. The only concern I have about how the Bible was put together is that the cover has square corners versus the more typical rounded corners found on leather bound works. It remains to be seen how well these will hold up through lots of use.Overall, an amazing resource for students of biblical Hebrew and Greek!
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+9points
9of 9voted this as helpful.