In De infographic Bijbel toont Karen Sawrey ons de Bijbel zoals we die nog nooit hebben gezien. Met behulp van meer dan honderd krachtige infographics wordt er inzicht gegeven in het Oude en het Nieuwe Testament en komen de eeuwenoude teksten tot leven. Dit is de Bijbel voor een nieuwe generatie.
The Infographic Bible is a colorful book full of useful details. However, the type face is so small and the font color so light, it is often hard to read and understand the information included by the author. The book, thus, becomes more of a coffee table book, than a useful reference book.
One must begin by stating that this is not a Bible — but a set of images designed to convey information to the reader. The images do stand out and are vivid. They draw the reader’s attention immediately to the pictures. But the font chosen to accompany the illustrations is so small as to make them difficult to read. Contributing to this is that the colors chosen for many of the fonts do not contrast well with the page background. Finally, it must be noted that though the images are designed to convey information, there is no data to support the claims made by the illustrations. “Sources” are given, but it appears that the data gleaned from the sources comes in a variety of ways. Sometimes it is directly inferred from the sources, but at other times it is only indirectly drawn from the sources referenced.
Several improvements would make this book more useful.
1. Be sure that all data is thoroughly referenced using standard footnotes 2. Reduce the size of the graphics and increase the size of the fonts 3. Provide the book in an electronic format that would allow images and fonts to be enlarged 4. Allow a book designer to review the finished book to ensure that information is clear and readable — this includes both the sizes and the colors used throughout the book.
I had looked forward to reviewing this book, but was disappointed with the final product. ______________ This review is based on a free copy provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions expressed are my own.
This book is an imaginative and thought provoking way of viewing the story and information of the Bible. Most of it I found really good, but two things were rather jarring and brought down the number of stars. 1/ As other reviewers have said, the print in the some of the graphics is so small as to be unreadable, particularly when it's in a light shade as well. 2/ Some of the information included is just plain wrong, and when I find myself editing a brand new book, there's something wrong. Silly mistakes like saying that Ammon slept with Absalom's wife, rather than their sister; or Salome not being Zebedee's wife, but a different person altogether. I found myself looking for the mistakes by the end. Over all, good, but could be better.
“The Infographic Bible: Visualizing the Drama of God’s Word” by Karen Sawrey is a marvelous new book from Zondervan. Unique and very impressive, the aim of “The Infographic Bible” is to help people understand the Bible through visual learning.
This book is filled with what seems to be every type of graph, diagram, and illustration imaginable! Covering important topics of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, “The Infographic Bible” contains graphics ranging from simple to complex, and will take varying levels of concentration and effort to decipher. Some of the more difficult ones have a key to help with understanding. In order to preserve the visual nature of this book the text has been made very small. I would recommend having a magnifying glass handy for reading some parts of it.
Some of the graphics in this book are difficult to understand. Yet, once you do, using this book alongside your Bible-reading becomes a very powerful study tool, and brought light to things I had difficulty grasping from just reading the text of the Bible. This is definitely not a replacement for the Bible, but when used as a supporting tool, it brings the Bible to life in an amazing way.
I would absolutely recommend “The Infographic Bible” to anyone wanting to enhance their Bible studying, and better understand Scripture. You definitely won’t be disappointed with the amazing amount of thought, effort, and work that was put into creating this sensational Bible study tool.
I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
The Infographic Bible is a fascinating compendium of Bible facts. Beginning with a timeline of the Bible books as they were written and presenting the various theories about who and when they were written. That takes care of about four pages and two infographics of the hundreds within the book.
There are charts and graphs of prophecies and their fulfillments. There are graphic presentations of the Israeli judges and kings, how good or how bad they were. There are several pages devoted to the book of Psalms--who wrote them and their topics.
The New Testament has graphics of all Jesus' teaching, all His parables, and who He taught and how.
Throughout the book follows the unifying theme of God's love, mankind's rebellion, and God's work to reconcile and redeem mankind.
The book had some annoying flaws. The graphics tend to be in sepia and brown tones, and low contrast. Several pages had white lettering on a beige background. Some of the line charts were so crowded as to be unreadable. Much of the lettering is very small and hard to read. These failings reduced my rating from 4 or 5 stars to three.
Update: I re-read the book slowly and carefully and I could read all the text. So I bumped the rating up to 4 stars.
Nonetheless, I learned much while reading through it. I will go back to it again to see which prophecies were fulfilled during Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. My final summary of the book is valuable, despite its weaknesses.
This is a great resource for anyone interested in the facts and figures about Biblical people, places, and events. I have two minor issues with this book: the print is sometimes too fine to be readable, and some information is lost in the center binding.
When is a Bible not a Bible? When it’s an information-packed book filled with visual charts, graphics and infographics about the Bible!
If you are looking for an exciting way to learn more about the Bible or to teach the Bible to others, then The Infographic Bible – Visualising The Drama Of God’s Word by Karen Sawrey is an essential book to add to your biblical reference library!
The Infographic Bible is a beautifully designed, creatively colorful book that you will find captivating and jam-packed with more information that you could possibly imagine. More importantly, it conveys important information about the Bible and about Christianity in ways that would be hard to unlock by simply reading the Bible in traditional ways.
Once you open The Infographic Bible, you’ll find it difficult to put it down. As a teacher, you could build entire lessons around the infographics contained in this book!
The Infographic Bible is 8.5” x 11” inches, but just a note – there is so much information contained on some of the charts, you will need your reading glasses to see it all! Also, while I love owning this book in hardcover, I’d also like to have the charts in electronic form for use in a classroom setting.
Regardless, I love the concept of the Infographic Bible and can’t wait to dig into this book more!
I originally published this review on my blog. To read more of my reviews, please visit Create With Joy.
Great book. While I've learned many of the facts presented over the years, seeing them in graphic form was eye-opening. Karen Sawrey and her team of contributors have created a Bible resource that will be referenced time and time again.
I only have two quibbles with the book. The first Sawrey herself notes in the introduction: the size of the type due to the amount of information being conveyed. There are some instances where the type was so small it was almost unreadable. The second took place in the binding process: a number of pages have graphics or type getting lost in the book's gutter, leading the reader to wonder what information has gotten lost in the margins, unless the reader is willing to crack the books spine. Even then, I sense some of the type/graphics would still be lost.
Those problems aside, I'll probably keep returning to The Infographic Bible because it's such a beautifully informative book
In what the book sets out to be, I think it does fairly well. From the intro the author says that this book is meant to point towards the Bible and encourage readers to go read the Bible.
Many of the infographics are visually appealing and display data from the Bible in new and interesting ways. I like that there is an overarching structure which seeks to tell the big picture narrative of the bible and helps you place each graphic along that narrative.
Some of the downfalls are: 1) some notes/text is very small (as other reviews have noted) 2) a fair few of the graphics are so congested they don't really convey anything meaningful at all 3) some of the information presented was wrong (as mentioned in another review)
It's certainly an interesting collection, but after reading it I'm not sure that it has much aided the deepening of my understanding of the bible.
Een heel mooi boek, het heeft me echt nieuwe inzichten gegeven en (voor mij nog onontdekte) verbanden in de Bijbel laten zien. Soms zit er een stukje interpretatie van de auteur in, maar dat staat goed aangegeven onder elke pagina. De ene infographic spreekt wel meer aan dan de ander, maar zo het boek door geeft het wel een compleet beeld van de Bijbelse thema’s. Er is één infographic waar ik wat vraagtekens bij heb, over de plekken waar de eerste zendelingen naar toe zijn gereisd. Ik vraag me af hoe betrouwbaar dit te achterhalen is. Ik kan dit boek echt aanraden, hij krijgt een permanent plekje in onze boekenkast.
When I say "finished reading", I really mean finished "flicking through" as this isn't really a book for reading from cover to cover. I love the idea of an Infographic Bible, but this issue is a bit of a disappointment. It is certainly packed with information, but a good infographic should make the information easier to understand; however most of these are too complicated to be of much value. Having said that there are some useful images, and there are some which I might want to refer to if a specific question came up.
If you love the Bible and love infographics/visualizations, you'll love this book. A wide variety of diagram styles are used. Here are some of them:
Across-the-Bible analysis: • A pie chart covering all the verses on the character of God. • An arc diagram "All Prophecies about Jesus". • A checklist of "Prayers in the New Testament"
Specific periods in the Bible: • Timelines: "The Land is Promised"
Iconography & illustrations of aspects of the Bible • "Song of Songs" • "The Bible’s Big Picture"
I personally liked the diagrams more than the iconography.
The Infographic Bible Visualizing the Drama of God's Word is a lovely fabric covered hardback book that is packed full of information and scripture. This would make a wonderful gift or a great addition to your own library. The Infographic Bible is a book that you are sure to go to again and again.
The visuals are overall really beautiful and creative, but the content of some of the pages was questionable. Sometimes the scripture references didn't make sense or it felt like I was being told irrelevant information; it could have been made better if majority of the content linked clearly to Jesus, who fills all in all.
Really brilliant idea, unfortunately spoilt by the presentation. On too many page the text in the middle could not be read due to the way the book had been bound. Larger margins in the middle would have helped.
This infographic Bible is BRILLIANT. It beautifully and creatively illustrates elements of Scripture and helps you to understand and visualize concepts, context, and meaning SO well. (Swipe to see a video flipping through it!) I’m blown away by the intricacies of these graphics and am so glad a resource like this exists for the more visual among us— it’s incredible!