Welcome to day 4 of Bible Geek Gone Wild’s 3rd Annual 12 Days Before Christmas. Today’s contest is sponsored by Tyndale House Publishers. Today’s prize pack includes a copy of the following:

What’s in the Bible? is a 13-DVD series from the creator of VeggieTales, Phil Vischer! Each DVD is filled with original music, animation, puppets, and creative writing that will teach kids about God and his Word.

Contest Details
The object of today’s contest will be to answer the questions that follow below. Following the close of the contest, the winner will be contacted via e-mail. There will be one winner in today’s contest. Good luck!

This contest is now closed. A winner will be announced soon.

Terms and Conditions
* This contest is limited to residents of the 48 state continental United States.
* Contestants may submit one entry per contest per day.
* The winner or winners will be announced following the close of each contest.
* Prizes will be shipped within several days of the close of each contest

The New Living Translation Break Through to Clarity Bible Contest and Giveaway

Visit www.facebook.com/NewLivingTranslation and click on the tab that says “Sweepstakes”

Fill out a simple form, take a quick Bible clarity survey, invite your friends to join and you’ll be entered to win one of our exciting prizes.

With each fan number milestone a new prize will be given away.

Grand Prize

Apple iPad 64G and a Life Application Study Bible
Awarded when the NLT Fan Page hits the fifth milestone
Retail Value: $829.00

2nd Prize  – Already awarded

32G iPod Touch and a Life Application Study Bible
Awarded when the NLT Fan Page hits the fourth milestone
Retail Value: $300.00

3rd Prize – Will be awarded when fan count hits: 3500

Kindle DX and a Life Application Study Bible
Awarded when the NLT Fan Page hits the third milestone
Retail Value: $489.00

4th Prize Will be awarded when fan count hits: TBD

Apple iPad 16G and a Life Application Study Bible
Awarded when the New Living Translation Fan Page hits the second milestone
Retail Value: $499.00

5th Prize Will be awarded when fan count hits: TBD

Apple iPad 32G and a Life Application Study Bible
Awarded when the NLT Fan Page hits the first milestone
Retail Value: $599.00

Prize Eligibility – Recently updated to include more countries

Sweepstakes participants and winner(s) can be U.S. residents of the 50 United States, or residents of any country that is NOT embargoed by the United States, but cannot be residents of Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India.  In addition, participants and winner(s) must be at least 18 years old, as determined by the Company.

Sweepstakes Starts

March 17, 2010 @ 10:24 am (PDT)

Sweepstakes Ends

April 30, 2010 @ 10:24 am (PDT)

Wait, there’s more!

Visit http://biblecontest.newlivingtranslation.com/index.php for a chance to win a trip for two to Hawaii!

Here are the details:

Choose one of six passages of Scripture from the New Living Translation and consider:
How do these verses encourage you to know God better?
What is God teaching you in this passage?
How does this passage apply to your life?

Submit your answer and you’ll be entered to win.

Just for signing up: Everybody Wins! Win a Free .mp3 download from the NLT’s new Red Letters Project. It’s the dynamic, new presentation of the sung and narrated words of the Gospel of Matthew. You win the download just for entering! Or choose to download the NLT Philippians Bible Study, complete with the Book of Philippians in the NLT.

Every day, one person will win the best-selling Life Application Study Bible!

The grand prize: One person will win a fantastic trip for two to the crystal clear waters of the Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore in beautiful Hawaii.

Tyndale House Publishers is launching a new web site.  In honor of this momentous occasion, they are having a 30 Day Launch Celebration.  As a part of the celebration, Tyndale is giving away four books a day in the following categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Bibles, and Kids.  All you have to do is visit the site to sign up.  If you don’t win one day, keep coming back to sign up!  Be sure to join in the celebration, which will begin on February 1st.  You can learn more about Tyndale House Publishers on their web site at www.tyndale.com and from their twitter feed at www.twitter.com/tyndalehouse.

Laura Bartlett from Tyndale House Publishers says:

Advent starts tomorrow! And so do the readings in Holy Bible: Mosaic. Are you going to be reading it?

If you haven’t decided yet, you can try it out for free online: just use this online booklet, which includes the four weeks of advent from Mosaic. (click on the corners of the pages to turn them) Another way to try it out (if you don’t fancy reading online for four weeks) is by getting the print copy of the Advent sampler (for $2) which includes the readings, color artwork, and scripture readings for the week. (Scroll down on this page for more details)

Sean and Keith and I will be reading through Mosaic. Who else is with us?

You can count this Shaun in too.    I’ll be reading along online.

Bible Geek Gone Wild’s 2nd Annual 12 Days Before Christmas Promotion will be running from December 13th through the 24th.  Be sure to stop back later in December and try your hand at some of the contests for a chance to win fabulous prizes.  Here are a few of the vendors who will be sponsoring prizes for this year’s contests.

If you’re a publisher or vendor who’d like to participate in this promotion, please drop me a note through my contact page.

Format:  Hardcover
Page Count:  944
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Publication Date:  2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 141431034X
ISBN-13: 978-1414310343
List Price:  $39.99

Many thanks to my friends at Tyndale House Publishers for sending along a review copy of Philip W. Comfort’s New Testament Text and Translation Commentary.

In the media today there is much noise from Bart Ehrman and others about the supposed widespread corruption of Biblical manuscripts and the overall unreliability of the Bible.  While many of these types of books are full of interesting conjecture, the message they’re delivering needs to be read with a wary eye and received with much caution.  Many Christians do not take these sorts of anti-Biblical claims very seriously, but in reality they do have a negative impact on both the Christians and non-Christians in the culture around us.  As opportunities arise to engage others in conversation on these topics, we should be ready to address their concerns with a proper mixture of boldness, honesty, and respect.  That’s all fine and good, but what if you have a strong conviction for the reliability of the Bible, but don’t necessarily feel equipped to speak intelligently about these anti-Biblical claims?  Rather than avoiding these types of conversations, I’d encourage you to equip yourself with the tools you’ll need to speak intelligently about Biblical manuscripts and their relation to our modern English translations.  One such tool I’d encourage you to add to your library is the New Testament Text and Translation Commentary by Philip W. Comfort.

The aim of the New Testament Text and Translation Commentary is to show how and why our English translations differ, especially when there are variations in the underlying Greek manuscripts.  The bulk of this book is comprised of the actual commentary itself, but readers will want to begin with the introductory material and appendices.  Working through these materials prior to working with commentary will give the reader a basic understanding of the art of textual criticism and will better prepare them to make the best use possible of the commentary.  The topics covered in the introduction and appendices are as follows:

•    Introduction
o    1.  The Practice of New Testament Textual Criticism
o    2.  Significant Editions of the Greek New Testament
o    3.  Significant English Versions
o    4.  Abbreviations
o    5.  How to Use the commentary
o    6.  Glossary
•    Appendix A – Scribal Gap-Filling
•    Appendix B – Aland’s Local-Genealogical Method
•    Appendix C – Metzger’s Judgment of Variant Readings according to Text-Types
•    Appendix D – The Importance of the Documentary Considerations

The commentary follows the canonical order of the New Testament, beginning first with the gospel of Matthew and ending with the book of Revelation.  The English translations commented on in this volume are:

•    King James Version (KJV)
•    New King James Version (NKJV)
•    Revised Standard Version (RSV)
•    New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
•    English Standard Version (ESV)
•    New American Standard Bible (NASB)
•    New International Version (NIV)
•    Today’s New International Version (TNIV)
•    New English Bible (NEB)
•    Revised English Bible (REB)
•    New Jerusalem Bible (NJB)
•    New American Bible (NAB)
•    New Living Translation (NLT)
•    Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
•    The NET Bible (New English Translation) (NET)

The significant versions of the Greek New Testament interacted with in this volume are:

•    Textus Receptus (TR)
•    Westcott and Hort’s The new Testament in the Original Greek (WH)
•    United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (3rd & 4th editions) (NU)
•    Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (26th & 27th editions) (NU)

As I stated above, the aim of this commentary is to show how and why our English translations differ, especially when there are variations in the underlying Greek manuscripts.  The commentary lays out where there are differences in the English translations and shows which Greek manuscript \ variant they follow.  Comfort offers many insightful comments throughout the book, helping the reader understand how a particular Greek text or variant reading underlying the English translations may have influenced the translators’ decisions.

Serious Bible students from interested laypeople to seminary students and even pastors will benefit from the New Testament Text and Translation Commentary.  My own New Testament studies have been greatly enhanced by this volume.  I’m sure it will become a mainstay at your desk as much as it has on mine.  Readers who enjoy this book will also want to check out these other Tyndale House Publishers’ titles by Philip W. Comfort:

•    The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (Carol Stream, IL:  Tyndale House Publishers, 2001)
•    The Many Gospels of Jesus (Carol Stream, IL:  Tyndale House Publishers, 2008)

Philip W. Comfort (D. Litt. Et Phil., University of South Africa) is a professor of New Testament at Coastal Carolina University and Senior Editor of Bibles and Bible Reference at Tyndale House Publishers.  He has published several books on Bible translation and textual criticism.

You may download this review as a PDF: 

Buy this book on Amazon:  New Testament Text and Translation Commentary

Format:  Softcover
Page Count:  96
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Publication Date:  December 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414325606
ISBN-13: 978-1414325606
List Price:  $7.99

Many thanks to Laura Bartlett at Tyndale House Publishers for sending along a review copy of James from the Life Application Bible Studies series.

If you’ve ever lead a small group in your home or taught a class at church, you know how difficult it can be to find study materials that are both appropriately thorough and also affordable.  Many of the options available today require both a book and a study guide.  When you’re doing a study on a specific book of the Bible, you may encounter some challenging and potentially confusing situations when your students are all working out of different Bible translations.  As a leader and teacher, these are just a few of the concerns you will have to take into consideration when planning for your next small group or class.  If these concerns sound all too familiar, I’d encourage you to consider one of the titles in the Life Application Bible Studies series for your next class or small group.

Each book in the Life Application Bible Studies series comes with the full text of the Biblical book on which the study is based from the New Living Translation.  Also included are the notes, charts, maps, character profiles, etc. as they appear in the much larger Life Application Study Bible.  This is in my opinion the most important feature in this series.  The members of your class or group will have the fortunate opportunity to be working from the same Bible translation.  Following the Biblical text, you’ll find the study lessons.  There are thirteen separate lessons in all, making this study suitable for a class or group meeting over the course of three to four months as many of our classes do.  Each of the lessons is broken down into the following parts:

•    REFLECT on your life
•    READ the passage
•    REALIZE the principle
•    RESPOND to the message
•    RESOLVE to take action
•    MORE for studying other themes in this section

These parts are found in each of the thirteen lessons and are each made up of several questions.  Sufficient space is given in the text to record your answers to each of the questions.  These thought-provoking questions will be appropriate for both personal as well as group study.  All things considered, the Life Applications Bible Study series is an affordable Bible study option, delivering everything you’ll need, including the Biblical text and study guide, all in one place.

Download a PDF of this review here: 

Buy this book on Amazon: James (Life Application Bible Studies: NLT)

Format:  Softcover
Page Count:  2224
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Publication Date:  October 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414314116
ISBN-13: 978-1414314112

Many thanks to Laura Bartlett at Tyndale House Publishers for sending along a review copy of 24/7:  A One Year Chronological Bible.

If you’re like many of my friends, you probably made a new year’s resolution to read through the Bible in a year.  While I hope the majority of you have made good on your resolution thus far, inevitably some of you are struggling or may have stopped doing it all together.  When it comes to disciplines like reading our Bible each day and prayer, our minds are only too ready to help us come up with many excuses why we didn’t get to it yesterday, won’t be able to do it today, and what it is that will probably prevent us from getting to it tomorrow.  For many of us, reading through the Bible in a year is a bit of a struggle and we need all the help we can find to allow us to stay organized and on track.  If any of this sounds familiar, you are a perfect candidate for 24/7:  A One Year chronological Bible.

This new Bible from Tyndale is designed to help you read through the entire Bible in a year.  The text of the New Living Translation is divided into 365 daily readings.  Each of these readings should take you approximately 15 minutes to complete.  While there are a number of one year Bibles produced by Tyndale House Publishers, there is something that makes the organization of this Bible unique.  Rather than being organized like a traditional Bible with the books in canonical order, the events of the Bible are arranged chronologically by the order in which they are believed to have taken place historically.  Be sure to take the time to read through the introductory material for an explanation of the chronological organization of the Biblical text.  Also take note of the general timeline and the explanation for the historic Christian symbols found throughout this book.  Tyndale commissioned woodcuts of 12 historic Christian symbols, one for each month of the year.  Each symbol graces the pages of the readings for its associated month.

This is a fairly compact Bible, measuring approximately 5” by 6 ½”.  I felt this made it comfortable to hold when reading.  Also it is small enough to either stow away in a laptop bag or keep on the nightstand beside your bed.  Depending on your preference, this book is available with either a paperback or hardcover binding.

If you’re looking for a way to be more deliberate about reading through the Bible in a year, this affordable and compact, chronologically organized Bible may be just what you’ve been looking for to help you stay on track and see that new year’s resolution through to completion.

You may download a PDF of this review here: 

This book is available from Amazon.com: 24/7: A One Year Chronological Bible

Thanks are in order to Laura Bartlett at Tyndale House Publishers for the following review copies.  Reviews to follow soon.