HarperCollins Study Bible: Fully Revised and Updated – Student Edition

Editors: Harold W. Attridge (General Editor, Revised); Wayne A. Meeks (General Editor, Original)
Hardcover: 2128 pages
Publisher: HarperOne
Year: 2006
ISBN:9780060786830

Buy: HarperCollins; Amazon

Positives

• Excellent running commentary by world-class biblical scholars.
• More notes than other study Bibles based on critical research.
• The lack of a solidified confessional stance allows for less apologetically motivated notes than some other study Bibles on the market.
• Helpful essays added to the revised edition.
• Relatively thin for a study Bible of this magnitude.

Negatives

• Maps. The maps are terrible, looking like blurry photocopies from the previous edition. It’s not just my copy because this is a common criticism.
• General formatting: In order to get a thin feel, the font is quite small and cramped with very little margin space for note taking. The notes are not as clearly distinguished from the biblical text as in the New Oxford Annotated Bible.
• The “Student Edition” is nothing more than a cooler-looking cover and it lacks the concordance of the non-student edition, in order to have more blank “Notes” pages.
• More cross-referencing between topics found in various places would be helpful.
• Intermittent topical excurses, as found in many other study Bibles, would be helpful.

Revision. The back cover indicates the revised edition includes “completely new introductions and notes for select biblical books, plus a full revision and updating of all others–over 25 percent new or revised material.”  The Introduction to this volume has a paragraph on the differences between the original and this revised edition:

The present revised edition of the HarperCollins Study Bible has updated and expanded the annotations with the latest perspectives on the biblical text derived from historical, archaeological, and literary sources. The notes also provide more complete information on the ways in which various biblical books echo other parts of scripture. A series of introductory essays offer reflections about the contexts within which biblical books are currently read.

I find the decision to only give completely new introductions for select biblical books. Why were these books chosen over others? I suppose the research is moving faster regarding some books over others (or, perhaps in some cases the original work was not completely up-to-date in the first place?). The only books that we know for certain have been revised are those with two authors assigned (see my previous post on HCSB contributors). Here is a list of those books that have apparently been revised–to some extent–by a second author (for those books that have only one contributor, I can’t tell whether the original contributor revised his or her own content):

Genesis: originally done by Joel W. Rosenberg with apparently a completely new introduction (and notes?) by Ronald Hendel.

Joshua and Judges: originally done by Robert G. Boling (who died in a car accident doing research in Jordan in 1995) and revised by Richard D. Nelson.

Esther and the additions to Esther: originally done by W. Lee Humphreys and revised by Sidnie White Crawford.

Ecclesiastes: originally done by Raymond C. Van Leeuwen and revised by Kent Harold Richards.

Lamentations: originally done by Werner E. Lemke and revised by Kathleen O’Connor.

Daniel: originally done by Pamela J. Milne and revised by John J. Collins.

Hosea: originally done by James Luther Mays and revised by Stephen L. Cook.

Joel: originally done by Richard A. Henshaw and revised by Marvin A. Sweeney.

Amos: originally done by Gene M. Tucker and revised by J. Andrew Dearman.

Obadiah: originally done by Richard A. Henshaw and revised by Ehud Ben Zvi.

Micah: originally done by Philip J. King and revised by Carol J. Dempsey.

Wisdom of Solomon: originally done by David Winston and revised by Thomas H. Tobin.

Sirach: originally done by Burton L. Mack and revised by Benjamin G. Wright III.

Letter of Jeremiah: originally done by Richard J. Clifford and revised by Jeffrey C. Geoghegan.

Mark: originally done by C. Clifton Black and revised by Adela Yarbro Collins.

Luke: originally done by David L. Tiede and revised by Christopher R. Matthews.

John and the Johannine epistles: originally done by David K. Rensberger and revised by Harold W. Attridge.

James: originally done by Sophie Laws and revised by Walter T. Wilson.

1 Peter: originally done by David L. Balch and revised by Paul J. Achtemeier.

Comparison with New Oxford Annotated Bible. The back cover of the book boasts that there are “[t]wice as many notes as the leading study Bible.” Beyond sounding like a dish soap commercial, this comment has me wondering what precisely is the leading brand of detergent study Bible. Seeing as the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NOAB) weighs in at 15,200 on the Amazon rank, while the most popular edition of the HCSB ranks at 34,182, I suppose that’s the answer. Well, the note on the back cover invites us to compare the HCSB to the NOAB, so that’s what I’ll do. [I have just noticed that the New Interpreter's Study Bible actually slightly beats the NOAB on the Amazon sales rank at the moment, but I'm doubtful this would have been the "leading study Bible" in mind for Harper at the time of publication.]

Perhaps it is my predisposition (NOAB has been my standard hard copy Bible for some time), but I prefer the notes format in the NOAB to the HCSB. The HCSB goes for a two-column approach, which aligns with the two columns of biblical text. There are two things setting apart the notes from the biblical text in the HCSB: (1) smaller font and (2) a solid gray line. I actually appreciate this format within poetic portions of biblical text, such as the Psalms or parts of the prophets. But when combined with prose, there simply isn’t enough to distinguish the notes from the text of the Bible. It hurts the eyes a little bit. The NOAB, on the other hand, leaves the notes in a wide single column in contrast to the double column format of the biblical text. The NOAB has no need for a solid line to separate the text from the notes.

The typeface of the HCSB is about a point or two smaller than in the NOAB (for both the main biblical text and the notes), making it somewhat more difficult to read–but allowing for “twice as many notes.”

Content. The real reason why someone buys this study Bible is not format per se, but content. The book opens with five essays, which are new to this edition:

1. Strategies for Reading Scripture by John Barton. (This essay does a wonderful job of distinguishing and balancing the concepts of “critical” and “canonical” readings of Scripture.)
2. Israelite Religion by Ronald Hendel.
3. The Greco-Roman Context of the New Testament by David E. Aune.
4. The Bible and Archaeology by Eric M. Meyers.
5. Archaeology and the New Testament by Jürgen Zangenberg.

All of the introductions to the biblical texts that I was able to read through were very well done, though they could have been a tad longer given the complexities they address. The running notes are really where this volume shines. The notes are what makes the study Bible worth buying, even with any other shortcomings. On average, I would say the notes take up about 20-25% of each page, though there are a few rare pages with no notes and a several that hit 50% or more of the page. I believe the prize for most notes on a single page goes to the Proverbs duo (Camp/Fontaine) for about 80% of a page taken up by notes within Proverbs 1. All notes that I have seen have been extremely helpful and even more detailed than what you might find in the NOAB (though, of course, having both in front of you is even more helpful).

Each book’s introduction and notes is a kind of mini-commentary. Given this reality, therefore, some conclusions by the contributors may not align quite perfectly. Or one contributor may have mentioned important concepts to which another contributor should refer (sort of like a Bible dictionary might point you to other relevant articles), but this reference does not always occur. It would have helped to have some cross-referencing between introductions, particularly when major issues have been touched on in other introductions (such as the documentary hypothesis, the synoptic problem, or pseudonymity).

Actually, it might have been nice to have “excurses” included within the books: little mini-essays on topics pertinent to the passage at hand. That way, the notes could reference the excurses as necessary (e.g., “see Imprecatory Psalms, page 810″; “see Emperor Worship, page 2093″).

Of course, the greatest portion of “content” within the HCSB is the biblical text itself, in the NRSV translation. The back cover claims the NRSV is “the most accurate English Bible translation.” I can understand the marketing impulse here, but such an unsubstantiated claim is questionable.

Charts and Maps. The HCSB has several helpful charts and tables. Some of these charts are in between books or sections of books (such as parallel passages in the synoptic Gospels), while others are embedded within the text of certain biblical books (such as suggested fulfillments of Acts 1:8 within the book of Acts). The first chart of the study Bible is a very helpful historical timeline. One of the handiest charts is found in the back: “Quotations of the Jewish Scriptures in the New Testament.”

The maps, however, may be my least favorite part of the entire study Bible. HarperCollins was kind enough to also send along their newer HarperCollins Atlas of Bible History by James B. Pritchard. The maps embedded within the biblical texts of the HCSB are strangely out of focus–as if they had been photocopied from the first edition into this one. For the crisp and beautiful layout of their Atlas of Bible History, I would hope for more in the HCSB than blurry maps. The NOAB, by the way, has quite elegant maps. The maps at the back of the HCSB are in color and are not blurry, but still not quite as attractive as those found in HarperCollins’ atlas.

“Student Edition.” I do have one lingering question: What difference does the “student edition” make other than having (what I think is) a more attractive cover? I have the “college edition” of the NOAB and never figured out what that meant. Apparently, the only difference between the “student edition” of the HCSB and the normal revised edition is the lack of concordance in the “student edition.” The “student edition” trades the concordance for a little over ten additional blank “Notes” pages in the back — which are also an attempt to make up for the lack of margin space to take notes with the text. Don’t “students” appreciate concordances? It seems to me that a “student edition” should be more pleasing to the eyes, with helpful excurses, and perhaps even some color: something more akin to the study Bibles published by Zondervan perhaps.

The Bottom Line. As far as format goes, I personally prefer the wider single column notes and more elegant maps of the New Oxford Annotated Bible to the double column notes, smaller font, and blurry maps of the HarperCollins Study Bible. In my opinion, the trimmer size of the Bible in comparison to the NOAB is not worth the cramped font. What I would like to see out of a future edition of the HarperCollins Study Bible (particularly its “student edition”) is something more akin to what they have done in the revision of the HarperCollins Atlas of Bible Lands, which is light-years ahead of its original edition in its attractive and approachable presentation.

The primary reason a person should purchase the HCSB over the NOAB is in the extent of its notes. The NOAB excels in its maps, charts, and provides more extensive essays and introductions. But most readers, I imagine, will want to use a study Bible to actually . . . study the Bible. That is, study the biblical text itself. Thus, the mini-running-commentary proves more helpful in the day-by-day and longer term usage of a study Bible. Here the HCSB has an edge on the NOAB–two times more of an edge, if we take the back cover at its word. Both study Bibles have excellent scholars contributing (though the HCSB has a few more “household names” for those familiar with biblical scholarship) and the notes in both are well done for the most part. The HCSB just provides more notes, which helps the reader understand the text a little bit better.

Therefore, if you’re looking for the best running commentary notes in a study Bible, this is probably the best study Bible based on critical scholarship. If the presentation and format are important to you, then you may want to look into the NOAB. If you’d like a study Bible that holds a more confessional stance without neglecting critical scholarship, the New Interpreter’s Study Bible might be the one for you. Personally, I would recommend all three to round out your Bible study.