Well, maybe not a war. I don’t really hate Bibles with study notes, and even recommend their use for appropriate purposes. They’re great for giving you background information, pointing out connections, and so forth. When they tell you what the text says, they are not so great. At a minimum, use more than one, and…
… In the Tanakh, faith does not mean believing in spite of the evidence. It means trusting profoundly in a person, in this case the personal God who has reiterated His promise. (from The Jewish Study Bible: featuring The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, page 35.) I think that’s an excellent statement of what faith…
I did the Old Testament/Psalms portion of my lectionary reading today from the Jewish Study Bible. The notes draw attention to the difficulty in separating Psalm 107 into the next book. The division between books 4 and 5 of the Psalms occurs between Psalm 106 and 107. But these divisions are later than the text…
Aside from numbering problems, Psalm 40:7-8 appears to be quite straightforward on first reading in Hebrew (where it is verse 8-9). The numbering problems include chapter numbering (39 in the LXX), and verse numbering (8-9 in Hebrew, 7-8 in English). Of course, we all know that verse numbering is not inspired; it is often positively…