NIV, The Books of the Bible: New Testament: Enter the Story of Jesus’ Church and His Return

by Anonymous

Read and Engage with Scripture in a Whole New Way!

The Books of the Bible™ is a fresh yet ancient presentation of Scripture. As many distractions as possible have been eliminated so readers can experience each book the way its authors intended. No more chapter and verse numbers. No more study notes. No more cross references or footnotes. No more red letters. Natural section breaks have been adjusted to reveal the inherent structure, showing the contours of each book in a way that traditional chapter-and-verse Bibles do not.

The books of the Bible are arranged in an order that helps you see the unfolding drama more easily and book introductions are included to prepare you for a more in-depth reading experience. These “invitations” tell the story behind the story, unlocking the context of the book you’re about to read. The Books of the Bible uses Scripture from the New International Version (NIV), an accurate, readable and clear translation with the goal of delivering the same Bible reading experience today that the first recipients of Scripture would have had in their native languages.

In The Books of the Bible, New Testament readers will enter the story of Jesus, his church, and his return. New Testament is part 4 (of 4) of The Books of the Bible series, which is a part of the church wide-campaign, The Community Bible Experience®.

The Bible books included

Luke-ActsThe letters of PaulMatthewHebrewsJamesMark1-2 PeterJudeJohn1-3

Single-column format for a clean, simple, elegant reading experienceBook introductions

Genres: Christian

478 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Humbledaisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as part of the Covenant Community Bible Experience where we read the complete New Testament in 40 days - during Lent, in my case - and in a book group setting.

This edition removes the modern (as in not when the books were written) chapter and verse style of listing as well as creating a better historical order and putting books that had been split back into their original single order. This layout makes reading it more of a "novel" or "letter" experience that lends itself to group reading. In fact, the Community Bible Experience motto is "less like a reference book, more like a love letter."

So, not only is the actual set up of the book different from other modern Bibles, it also encourages you to think over five discussion questions:

What’s something you noticed for the first time?
What questions did you have?
Was there anything that bothered you?
What did you learn about loving God?
What did you learn about loving others?

Covenant churches have two basic points of discussion across the denomination - “Where is it written?” and “How goes your walk?" - and this book's style and layout made this so easy to use. I highly recommend this and look forward to a similar version of the books of the Old Testament.

[Julia LaRue]

rating this feels weird to me so I’m choosing not to haha
BUT walked through this book this spring semester as a city group leader and it was a challenging way to read scripture! I was constantly tempted to use outside resources and constantly reminded to simply dig into what God has for ME in His word.
as someone who regularly refers to commentaries at the slightest confusion, this book challenged me to think contextually and think for myself.
it’s the Bible - but no verses or chapters or footnotes or typical book order :)

[Julia Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super helpful way to read the New Testament. The books are reordered to help digest easier when reading it as a whole, and includes great intros into each book to give more context. This was a great companion to my Lenten practice and will probably return to it.

[Jess M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a challenge to read the New Testament in 90 days and I used this book for parts of the challenge. I didn't read the entire NT from this book but I did read many books/chapters from it.

Identical information can be presented in different ways and our brains will process that information in a different way. The format of this book, arranged by date written, no verse or chapter numbers and no reference numbers/notes, can lead to unobstructed reading. This will be GREAT for some people's brains and could be much easier for them to read. That's what we want, right? For all types of learners to more easily read the Bible. If you want to read the NT in it's entirety for the first time OR again, try this book!

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronological reading of the new testament. No numbers or chapters. Novel style reading is really interesting and enlightening.

[Kevin Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

No chapter or verse numbers breaking up the text is always a nice way to read the New Testament.

[Stacy Atherton Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hesitate to give a Bible less than 5 stars because, well, it's a Bible, but I really didn't like this version all that much. It was interesting to have the books placed in a different order (I believe it's the order the books were written and in a more letter-esque format), but it came across as more PC than a typical NIV or older version. For instance, there was a lot of "their" when referring to one person. If you want to not go with he or she, that's fine, but change it from a singular subject to match the pronoun. That's just my humble bit of two cents....

I read this aloud to my kids during homeschool, though we didn't finish it in its entirety.

[Gerald Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is volume 4 of 4 in the Community Bible Experience, a new way of laying out the NIV Bible. This contains what is usually known as the New Testament with the books printed in a different order to the traditional form. There is a short introduction to each book which gives some background into who was being written to and the main point of the letter or gospel. The sequence of the books is related to the date of writing rather than the largest letters coming first which is how they were ordered when they were pulled together into a single book. Chapter and verse numbers, which were not in the original documents, have been removed and it is printed in single column format which is how books are printed nowadays. This gives a better flow and I enjoyed reading it. The only downside is that without the verses it can be a bit more difficult to find particular passages. Looking forward to also reading the three volumes that make up the Old Testament next. The Psalms are still grouped with the numbers at the start but again without verse numbers. If you have never read the bible or haven’t looked at a recent translation then this is a good way to start.

[Savvy Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so cool! While it was required for a class, I enjoyed reading it so much. Reading the Bible on true story-form like it was intended is so eye-opening. It lead to so many revelations in scripture that I had never noticed before. It makes reading the Bible easier and more clear. It also made it simpler to study the narrative of the New Testament as I was learning about it in class. This may be my new favorite way to read the Bible!

[Anna Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this! I mean it’s the New Testament, so of course I loved it, but I thought the way the different books were grouped together was great. It was really neat to read Matthew then go into Hebrews. The way it’s written like a story was really helpful as well, instead of having verses and chapters. I LOVED the invitations to the books. I thought they were super helpful and insightful.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this series of Books of the Bible! So easy to read and so much easier to understand.

[The_J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truth and Light into a world afflicted with Darkness