The Lexham Bible Guides are set to cost
hundreds of dollars, possibly thousands, given that it costs $420 just for the
letters of Paul and $110 for Genesis at pre-pub prices. Are they worth it?
There has been good discussion of some of
the issues here: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/57188.aspx?PageIndex=1
However, I thought I would give my views,
based on the Ephesians
volume that has already shipped. The
format is likely to be the same throughout the series.
On exporting to Microsoft Word, there are remarkably
few pages of text, once the large slides and a little of the extra spacing have
been removed.
The first page is the title page and series
preface. This is followed by a two-page
introduction to the book, consisting of an overview of message, themes, genre,
composition and historical setting, plus a one-page structure of the book. The introduction is clear and well-written,
but there are no links to external sources and there is no discussion of
controversies, scholarly debate or alternative views. Therefore, it is no better than a very short
introduction in a well-written commentary.
This seems like a lost opportunity and something that might have been
expected.
The discussion of the text is broken into
sections, each covering roughly one chapter.
They each have the same format: overview, structure (extracted from the
introduction), place within the book, place within the canon, issues at a
glance and application overview. The
overview has one external link, but this is the only link to any other resource
(other than the Bible) outside of the issues at a glance. Again, there is no discussion of alternative
views or scholarly debate.
This means that the ‘issues at a glance’
section for each chapter is the only unique part of the book. Each of these sections has the same format: a
list of the issues and keywords, followed by a short paragraph or two outlining
the issue or keyword background and a few links to carefully chosen resources
that discuss the issue. The keywords
have two to four simple links each, but the issues themselves have a sentence
or two outlining the author’s view to help you to decide whether to click and
have between two and ten links each. Of
course, the links will only work if you already own the resources. The sample
pages provided are fairly typical.
There are 39 issues and 24 keywords discussed
over the six chapters, with eight of the issues relating to the armour of God,
and the first few issues include a discussion of letters (expanded since the sample
screenshot was taken), authorship and authenticity, and the letter’s destination.
The 12 dictionaries and encyclopedias that are
linked are: three IVP black dictionaries, AYBD, BDAG, BEB, EDB, EDNT, NDB, NIDNTT,
TDNT and WSNTDICT (Zodhiates). The 10 commentaries
that are linked are: Anchor Yale, BECNT, EBC (First Edition), ICC, Interpretation,
NICNT, NIVAC, PNTC, WBC and ZECNT. See http://community.logos.com/forums/t/57188.aspx?PageIndex=1
for details. This seems a likely list
for other Bible Guides.
Only the ‘issues at a
glance’ section provides information and links that you may not find in a good
short commentary. The keywords are
fairly obvious keywords and an even greater supply of links can be quickly
found by right-clicking on a word in a Bible, selecting Bible Word Study and consulting
the Lemma section. The links to
commentaries can be found by running a Passage Guide and consulting the
commentaries section. The Bible Word
Study and Passage Guide offer links to resources that the Bible Guides have not
selected and allow the user to prioritise their favourite resources. This leaves only the succinct summary of
issues as a unique selling point.
Therefore, in short, and
as stated elsewhere, these Bible Guides are helpful in summarising issues and
providing links. However, I suspect that
for most Logos users who have invested in the linked resources, it will not be
worth spending further thousands of dollars on the few succinct summaries that
these guides provide. For those with few
of the linked resources, the usefulness and worth of these guides will be even
lower. Whether the slightly cheaper Pastorum
Series will be better value is yet to be seen.
