How useful is Baker Illustrated Reference Collection (6 vols.)?

Do you own this and how often do you make use of it if you do please?

Baker Illustrated Reference Collection (6 vols.)

https://www.logos.com/product/41860/baker-illustrated-reference-collection

I am considering buying it for a read along while studying the Bible or using it in our weekly Bible study as a go to reference. Currently I tend to just open Walvoord Bible Commentaries

https://www.logos.com/product/133/the-bible-knowledge-commentary

and wonder if the Baker collection would be a good addition. I wanted the Zondervan Illustrated (https://www.logos.com/product/20158/zondervan-illustrated-bible-backgrounds-commentary-new-testament-and-old-testament) but it was easier to purchase them over time in book form instead.

Blessings and thanks for your insight.

Joshua in Rhode Island
www.fbcep.org

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Comments

RyanB

Hi Josh,

I suspect opinions will vary on this since it's so subjective. I have all three sets that you've mentioned above and, for me personally, I find that I use the Zondervan Illustrated Commentaries significantly more than I use the other two sets. For some reason the books in the Illustrated Reference Collection just don't appear as relevant search hits often enough for me to really use them that much and when they do I'm often disappointed. Again, that's just my opinion. If you have a specific passage you'd like to compare, I'd be happy to help.

Ted Weis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/767193#Comment_767193

The "Visual Guides to..." books by Beck are outstanding. They'll help you appreciate the story in relationship to the geography and its setting.

JoshInRI

Ryan and Ted..thanks. Would you say the Visual Guide is worth breaking up the set for and ONLY get those? Poor student here.

RyanB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/767224#Comment_767224

I think what may be best would be to buy them and check 'em out and see if they meet your needs. I don't particularly care for them, but Ted finds them very helpful.

They are definitely not as thorough as the ZIBBC set, but they are significantly cheaper. With Logos' 30 day return policy you have nothing to lose.

Mark Barnes

I have this collection. I'm a big fan of the Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook for giving really helpful overviews of books of the Bible with lots of background info. It's written for people in the pew, not pastors.

The Commentary is similar, but goes into a bit more detail about the text, and a bit less overview/background. It's still helpful, but there are better one-volume commentaries IMO. The Dictionary is OK, but you probably have a lot of dictionaries already. I'm not sure it will add much.

The Guide to Everyday Life is better. That gives a really good overview of a few hundred topics, again written for the lay person. It brings a lot of information together in an easy-to-read format, and is more readable than a dictionary. It's ordered by topic, but there's no headword index, so it doesn't show up in the Factbook or Topic Guide. That's a big shame.

The Visual Guides are similar, but they're ordered by Bible passage, not topic. They're cover various chunks of the Bible in a fair amount of detail. Again, they're very readable, and great for background. The downside is that they won't show up in passage guides, etc. so it's easy to forget you have them. You'll also find that if you have the Zondervan Illustrated Background Commentaries, then there'll be a lot of overlap.