Brief Description:
Originally released in 1988 as the Liberty Annotated Study Bible, this study Bible is the
product of the faculty of Liberty University. It is probably the most distinctively
fundamental and Baptist study Bible on the market (my apologies to Dr.'s Rice and
Criswell). The text is the King James Version as found in the Open Bible, with which
it shares a number of its features. Thomas Nelson Publishers ended up with it around
1993 and renamed it the King James Study Bible. It can be purchased in regular
or wide margin editions. The wide margin Bibles do not have maps at the back (there
are many in-text maps) or the concordance. There is a companion two volume
commentary (Old Testament in one volume the New Testament in the other), now sold by
Thomas Nelson as the King James Bible Commentary, which was the Liberty Bible
Commentary. The study Bible actually has more information in it than the
commentary.
Advantages: Extremely well laid
out, this is probably the best all-round study Bible on the market. Couple this with
the current selling price of less than $30 and you have a winning combination.
Outside of the regular footnotes, there are specially marked doctrinal footnotes,
personality profiles and archaeological sites. Each of the doctrinal footnote boxes
contains a description, illustration and an application to the Christian's life, an area
where most study Bibles (the good, doctrinally sound ones anyway) seem to fall
short. Excellent charts, indexes, a concordance and maps round out this Bible.
Very true to the fundamentalist and Baptist positions, including separation, which doesn't
find its way into very many other study Bibles.
Disadvantages: Low
price translates into a cheap binding, with the wide margin editions particularly prone to
tearing apart. A little less consistent than some of the "single author"
study Bibles in the way the information is presented. The book outlines are skimpy.
Recommendation: An
excellent study Bible available at a low price. For someone who is only going to
have one Bible, this one probably gets the nod over the Ryrie, as it is a Baptist work and
stays true to the Baptist distinctives as taught in Scripture.
