NIV Study Bible (Red Letter Edition) Fully Revised Edition (2020)

This Bible is colourful and well made. It’s easy to read the main biblical text. However the font style for the notes isn’t as clear as the ‘a’ s have a space gap at the top . I have ALOT of study bibles and I find the notes in this one are not as detailed as say the NKJV / ESV or Harper Collins NRSV study bibles or the NIV \ NLT Life application study bibles. The notes seem like a continuous list of cross references without much expansion on the topic. The book information however, is decent. I find I use this AND also read other study bibles to bump up the study.

The bible is great, before buying it I looked at a video on YouTube by Tim wildsmith, who reviews Bible's. His review covers the bible really well. If you search up NIV study bible review it should come up. Other people complained that it is big, but it's a study bible. . . that's the point. Packed with material and knowledge. If size is an issue you could get the smaller version, or get a filament enabled nlt bible (nlt bible with an app with study notes(google it)). Honestly the study notes are rich, and you can see the effort put into it. I bought a case for it, you can get them on koorong (xl size) I got 1 which has Joshua 1:9 on the front and it's really good.

I'll start with the fatal flaw (you're going to skip to that part anyway): it is huge. Massive. Gargantuan. It weighs nearly 2kg and you'll need the largest of Bible covers to transport it (and I think at present Koorong only carries one of these. ) It's so big that it now lives on my desk in my study and doesn't go anywhere else because it is such a monumental pain (sometimes literally) to haul it everywhere.

Other than that, this Bible is awesome. I have always loved the much-maligned NIV translation, which is balanced and readable and whose translators understand the power of things like rhythm when translating - it's never clunky and never tries too hard to be cool or contemporary.

The pages are glossy and high quality and colourful and don't stick together.

I find the study notes to be VERY good for new Christians or people who don't want a blatantly biased study bible. For others, they may find those notes bland or non-committal, but when there's a contentious issue (e. g. women preaching) this Bible takes a nicely balanced ""Well, some Christians think x and others think y"" approach.

Also maps. There's lots of colour maps.

No ribbon markers, which is a bit of a shame, as you'll definitely need at least one bookmark in this behemoth.

I like this a lot! It provides a lot of background information, and links to other passages, and explains the meaning or significance of most verses. I find it useful that before each book of the Bible, a few summary pages have been included explaining key themes and the context. There are also quite a few images of historical artefacts and locations throughout. It has a hardcover, with a paper cover over that, so I also bought a polyester Bible cover to keep it in. Recommended for anyone who has lots of questions on lots of different passages that they want to deeply study, or enjoys looking at maps and other references.