Hebrew Bible Journals will be a multivolume presentation of the Hebrew/Aramaic biblical text. Most biblical books would comprise their own volume, with a few smaller and related ones combined. These would be divided into three roughly equal main sections (following the general arrangement of Zondervan’s The Books of the Bible, NIV/ The NIV Sola Scriptura Bible Project [2011, 2017] and Tyndale’s related Immerse: The Reading Bible [NLT, 2017]).
The Covenant History (The Torah and “Former” Prophets), in 10 volumes:
- Genesis
- Exodus
- Leviticus
- Numbers
- Deuteronomy
- Joshua
- Judges
- Ruth
- Samuel (1+2)
- Kings (1+2)
The Prophets (The “Latter” Prophets), in 6 volumes:
- Minor Prophets I (Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Micah)
- Isaiah
- Minor Prophets II (Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah)
- Jeremiah
- Ezekiel
- Minor Prophets III (Haggai, Zechariah, Joel, Malachi)
The Writings, in 10 volumes:
- Psalms
- Lamentations
- Song of Songs
- Proverbs
- Ecclesiastes
- Job
- Chronicles (1+2)
- Ezra-Nehemiah
- Esther
- Daniel
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been working on these texts off and on for some years now. Currently, I have completed drafts of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Judges, Ruth, Isaiah, Jonah, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel.
As an example of the format and style that Hebrew Bible Journals will use, here are the first seven pages of Genesis (not including the facing blank pages for notes/translation). These are largely prose narratives, with direct speech colored (gold: divine/supernatural; blue: human).
And here are the first seven pages of the Psalms, showing the treatment of poetry:
I’ll be exploring options for print-to-order publishing of Hebrew Bible Journals. Currently, I’m thinking I’ll use Amazon’s KDP platform due to its ease of use and broad accessibility. This should allow me to make individual volumes available as soon as possible without a need to wait for the whole project to be complete. (But I’m very open to suggestions for other options!) Aesthetically, I would love to eventually see the complete set published with the volumes of each of the three sections (The Covenant History, The Prophets, The Writings) bundled together in their own slipcases.
Stay tuned, and thanks for stopping by!