Zondervan provided me with a free copy of this book for reviewing purposes.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own (and/or those of my family).

The Young Women of Faith Bible

The Young Women of Faith Bible is a study Bible designed for 8- to 12-year-old girls.  Its general editor is Susie Shellenberger, who used to run Brio magazine.  (Maybe she still does.  I’m out of the loop on that one.)  Our opinions on this were mixed and, to be honest, it’s not one of our favorite products ever.  But I think that many of you will find our preferences here just quirky and will love this Bible, so I’m just going to tell you what we liked and disliked and you can decide for yourself if our issues are issues for you.

Translation

My first hesitation was the translation.  The NIV is not my favorite.  It’s not awful, but I prefer a “formal equivalency” translation (word-for-word translation style) over a “dynamic equivalency” translation (phrase-by-phrase translation style) like the NIV.  The NIV is very readable, but when using it I often find myself thinking, “I wonder why the writer used that word,” only to find out the original writer didn’t.  It’s just the nature of the translation style.  In our household we most frequently use the NKJV.  It’s a high-quality formal equivalency translation, and we’ve never had any difficulty with reading/understanding it.

I was surprised, though, to find that this was the first thing my preteen commented on when I asked her what she thought of the Bible.  She said she wished it came in NKJV, because that’s what she finds familiar.

I was disappointed to learn, as we read through the preface, that the NIV has been updated again – and I don’t like the changes.  For instance:

“A related shift in English creates a great challenge for modern translations: the move away from using the third-person masculine singular pronouns – “he/him/his” – to refer to men and women equally.  This usage does persist at a low level in some forms of English, and this revision therefore occasionally uses these pronouns in a generic sense.  But the tendency recognized in day-to-day usage and confirmed by extensive research, is away from the generic use of “he,” “him,” and “his.” In recognition of this shift in language and in an effort to translate into “common” English that people are actually using, this revision of the NIV generally uses…a “they,” “them” or “their” to express a generic singular idea.”

This “move away” is a result of ignorance and poor education.  Whether people choose to use it or not, “he,” “him,” and “his” are all neuter terms in English as well as masculine, and using plural pronouns to refer to the singular is flat-out incorrect.  God’s people should hold to a standard of excellence and not stoop to the lowest common denominator.  No one is going to be confused by proper English.

Another odd/questionable change was to completely remove “Selah” from the text and simply footnote it.  The reasoning is that “its meaning is uncertain” and “it may interrupt reading and distract the reader.”  I find this absurd logic for removing a recurring word from Scripture.  We don’t know for certain what some animal names refer to in Leviticus, either, but that doesn’t mean we just delete them from the text.  And I don’t see how “selah” is any more distracting or any more of a disruption to reading than the non-inspired section headers; the translators didn’t see any need to omit those.

I was most disappointed that this revision of the NIV makes such pervasive changes and yet is not set apart in any way to inform the reader of what rendition he’s getting.  Unless you read the translation notes in the preface, there’s no way of knowing this isn’t the same NIV you’ve been reading for years.  (Ariel says it should be called the NNIV, the New New International Version.)

The “Packaging”

However, if you are comfortable with this translation, this particular edition has a number of features that make it very user-friendly.  My daughter still had mixed opinions of some individual elements – based, I think, primarily on her own comfort zone and level of familiarity – but other elements were simply quite helpful.

She had mixed feelings about the section headers.  She said they were kind of helpful but also “in the way,” sort of.  I think she means they were a bit distracting and/or impeded the flow of her reading.  (She’s familiar with section headings in small, non-contrasting print that are used kind of like dictionary “guide words” at the top of a page.)  She found it helpful to know what she was about to read about, though, so I think this is a matter of being familiar with a particular Bible.

The book introductions are nicely done for young people.  Ariel particularly appreciated that the name of each book was on its own page and large so it stands out, making each consecutive book easier to find than they otherwise would be.  (In some Bibles, one book just sort of runs into the next.)  These intros are almost list-style rather than long paragraphs, too, so it’s easy to read and easy to get an idea of the book at a glance.

Sidebars are clearly-defined and don’t impede the reading of the text.  That is, they look sufficiently different from the main text that the two don’t run together.  (Ari does wish that they happened to all fall at neat stopping points so she doesn’t have to flip back to read them!)

Scattered throughout the text are memory verses.  Essentially, these are pull-quotes.   Ariel said these are “a little helpful.” Sometimes they chose the verses she’d choose to pull out; other times their choices of the most notable verse in a passage was different.  Of course, this is to be expected.  Even from one year to the next, the same person might choose a different verse.  I think they offer a handy starting point.

The other major feature of the Young Women of Faith Bible is the journaling boxes.   The exact format of these boxes’ content varies, but each provides some sort of food for thought and then a prompt for journaling about it (responding).  Some are short vocabulary studies.  Some are examples of real-life modern dilemmas and Scriptural bases for dealing with them.  Some are…well, you get the idea.  We like these, but thought it was a little weird that they’re designed to journal directly in the Bible.  Ariel says they’d make more sense as a separate journal.  Obviously, you can use them this way if you prefer, reading them from the Bible but then doing the actual journaling in a separate notebook.

And a minor detail: Ariel doesn’t care for the cover.  The colors, etc. are not her style.  (I think they’re too “bubbly” for her taste.)  I like the cover, though!

Oh – and the concordance.  I know a concordance seems like such a basic part of a Bible that we take it for granted, but I really like the way this one is formatted.  The main word for each entry is in the dark pink, while the remainder of the entry is plain black text.  This makes it a lot easier to find the word you’re looking for, in my opinion, than in most Bibles where the entries just all run together because it’s all black text.