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My Five Favorite Study Bibles
It wasn’t easy choosing just five
Last year, I did a two-part series with some suggestions for those who wanted to study the Bible but weren’t sure where to even start (you can read those here and here). One thing I mentioned then was the benefit of finding a good study Bible, calling it the single most important tool you can have to study the Bible. I still believe that to be true, which is why I’m a little surprised it’s taken me so long to do a story specifically about my favorites. I’m finally correcting that now.
If you Google the phrase “study Bible,” you will get roughly 14 bazillion results, so don’t do that; it will just confuse you. It’s a bit more manageable if you confine the search to Amazon (with only 90,000 results), but not much. That’s because the options available include literally everything, including a specific denominational focus, a specific target audience (men, women, teen, etc.), multiple available translations, and even the binding of the book itself.
The binding will have the greatest impact on the price of the study Bible for a simple reason: a hardcover version will obviously cost considerably less than a leather binding. Using The Life Application Study Bible as an example, the hardcover has a list price of $49.99, the bonded leather costs $79.99, and genuine leather runs $129.99 (all are…
