2,032 pages (in 4 Volumes) /
2017 (3,500 BC – 90 AD)
I received a gift from a dear friend last Christmas and in April decided to start reading it. The Holy Bible: The NIV Sola Scriptura Bible Project is a publication of the Bible that forces the reader to focus exclusively on the text of Scripture itself, without any other distractions.
The foundation of this project is the Protestant Reformation and the call to return to the roots of our faith by embracing Scripture alone (sola scriptura) as our highest authority. From the webpage:
“In this set of reading Bibles, the Old Testament is ordered according to the traditional shaping of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Torah, the Former and Latter Prophets, and the Writings. The New Testament is reorganized by placing each of the four Gospels at the head of four groupings that together bear witness to the central story of Jesus… the NIV Sola Scriptura Bible Project also removes the chapter and verse numbers, red letters, and cross-references present in most modern Bibles.”
In my personal devotions, I found that I’d read some of the historical accounts for long periods of time as one might read a historical novel. Likewise, it became natural for me to read minor prophets and New Testament epistles in their entirety in a single sitting, allowing unifying themes to jump out at me more obviously. The publishing project also clearly invested thought into ensuring the paper quality and the font type and size maximized the reading experience.
I’d recommend this set (or the ESV’s version, in six volumes) as a means of reading through Scripture in a year. While I plan to finish reading this set in the next couple months and will return to it in future years, I’ll switch between various devotional reading plans from year to year.
