Well, I'm surprised to say that I loved it! A year ago I wasn't expecting to be saying that after finishing it.
You see I've always looked down my nose at The Living Bible as a "kids" translation. That's probably because when I was growing up in the Nazarene Church adults used either the King James Bible or the New American Standard Bible and children and teenagers used The Living Bible (TLB). So when I was a teenage my parents gave me a copy of "The Way" which was The Living Bible with cool, hip, groovy, far out graphics (to go along with our bell bottoms and tie died T-shirts no doubt). Candidly, I never read it much - except in church meetings.
Later then I became genuinely born again (as opposed to a lukewarm member of a mainstream Christian church) the first thing that I asked my folks for was a "real" Bible - which meant the New American Standard Bible. I devoured it. After that, I was given a “Walk Thru the Bible” edition of the KJV Bible and I devoured it even more than I did the NASB. And then it was onto just about anything and everything else after (including a Catholic New Jerusalem Bible which I really loved). Left in the dust was The Living Bible.
Until now.
I like to use thought for thought translations for my devotions and word for word translations for my scholarly work – and I love these One Year Bible, I own several. So I after I bought a TLB for a Mormon Missionary that I was reaching out to I thought that I should probably reacquaint myself with it too.
And I was pleasantly surprised.
Despite its well known deficiencies (some TLB translation decisions are a bit too loose and skew more toward commentary rather than pure translation) I fell in love with the clarity and approachability of the TLB text. I intend to start using it a lot more.
And, as usual, this One Year Bible Chronological edition was wonderful. It kept me on track throughout the year (I finished it in about 13-months) and reading the text chronologically helped me gain a deeper understanding of some of the passages – the Old Testament prophets in particular.
I’m moving onto to the Orthodox Study Bible as my next devotional Bible (new English translation from the Septuagint for the Old Testament, New King James Version (NKJV) for the New Testament) but at some point I fully expect to be returning to the One Year Chronological Bible The Living Bible edition again.