ESV, The ESV Study Bible (Premium Calfskin Leather, Black) asin: 1433502437

Well I did it. I took the luxury Bible plunge - well kind of. I just preordered the top of the line black goatskin ESV Study Bible.

Don't read luxury as "needless bible bling" you find a lot of junk in "Christian Bookstores" but just because you slap a cross on something kitschy doesn't make it a Christian product. In this instance Luxury is a synonym for quality.

As I mentioned yesterday I've been reading the Bible Design Blog and I hit an article on the an article on the new ESV Study Bible. Reading Mark's blog is going to cost me money in the long run. I'm not panicking just yet. I got a good deal due to the Moody Bible Institute Pastor's conference and cut the cover price in more than 1/2. I decided I can live with that.

I've been reading about the ESVSB for over a month and I got to see some mock-up's at the MBI Pastor's conference. Plus thanks to Mr. Bertrand I've been aching to get my hands on a good goatskin bible.

I've been reading the ESV on my Treo 650 for my evening devotions for months now. With all of that said I started comparing what this bible has in line with my list and it looks like the ESV Study Bible is one worth owning. The one downside is that it's large - weighing in at 2,752 pages and a trim size of 6 ½ × 9 ¼ inches.

As far as quality components go, the paper is reputed to be the finest in the world, high-opacity. Smyth Sewn binding - in every format. The text it self is 9-point set in a single paragraphed column (Words of Christ in black!) with 7.25-point notes set in two columns.

ESV, The Literary Study Bible (Hardcover, Black Letter) asin: 1581348088

In January I caught a post on the Logos newsgroups introducing me to the ESV Literary Study Bible. And I just caught it again at Mark Bertrands Bible Design Blog. My first thought was that it would serve me no purpose. My second thought was to remember that the number of literary allusions to the scriptures in English Literature is mind boggling. So I became curious and decided to check it out. I hit the official web site and started perusing it a bit. Among other things I learned by reading the prefacethat this isn't about highlighting the Bible in other literature; it's about highlighting the forms of literature in which God revealed himself. For my taste that sounded better. The Bible is packed with literary styles - it was enough to make me want to read it.

I noticed that I could sign up for a thirty day account for free. This would enable me to have full access to the text, charts and summaries for thirty days. And then I hatched an idea: Why not read through the bible in thirty days? Yes, I mean read through the whole bible in a mere month

After reading a post by Rick Mansfield on the changes in the ESV (from 2001 -> 2007) I began wondering myself what the changes in particular were. I have on hand one of the best Biblical textual analysis programs ever made: Bibleworks 7. When previous versions were upgraded (NET and NLT) I made export copies of the original then recompiled them using the built in module as "original versions" named NEO and NLO on my system. I'm going to do the same thing with the ESV 2001 so that I can compare the old 2001 version with the new 2007 version as I move along in my own study. If you want to do the same, I invite you to follow along.

Make sure you have the original
To see which version you have of the ESV change your browse mode to verse at a time by clicking either the menu feature under "View" or the footprints icon. Hover over The little ESV and the Word Analysis window will change to show the copyright info and should read "ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION (ESV). Copyright © July 2001" If it says 2007 you'll have to roll back your ESV in order to do this little trick.
Of course since I update regularly I already have the 2007 edition installed in BW so what to do? Since I keep all my old patches I had no problem here. Note that if you're not in the habit of keeping your patches I'm not sure how you can accomplish this. And I'm doubly not sure if it's legal for me to post the patch (or the ESO compiled version) here since it would be in essence distributing the ESV without paying royalties. But I can show you how to do this with files you already own.