The KJV Study Bible (Holman) | An Analysis

Study Bibles can be a great tool, but one must be very careful with the notes!I recently received an email inquiry about the KJV Study Bible, edited by Holman (LifeWay). The reader really liked the full-color resources as well as the variety of tools included in this study Bible. I would agree that they are impressive.Its contributors (to the notes) appear to be a mixed bag, some good, some mediocre. The publisher is the same as the Holman Bible, but it looks like they may have just purchased the rights to publish the Bible, rather than produce it.Some of the passages I wanted to look at were not included in the sample I was able to look at. I would like to see what they do with the six days of creation– do they take it as literal, or give an either/or approach? This would tell me a lot about their theology.I did see two things that concerned me.  First, in a chart on “Sources and Authorship for Genesis,” they took an “oral history” view of Mosaic authorship, which I think is weak. But worse than that, they said, “Moses wrote a theologically driven early history of earth.”  This statement makes me concerned about their position on the six-day creation, since “theologically driven” can be a code-word for “not literal.”  The chart went further to say, “…centuries after Moses wrote Genesis, mindful priests updated the text…”  This draws a question about how much of it they believe Moses actually wrote, and would cause many readers to doubt some of the Mosaic authorship.In the note on Ezekiel 37 (the valley of dry bones), the Bible notes declared, “The Jews who live in Israel today should not be viewed as fulfilling this prophecy.” I totally disagree with that position, and no other position was even presented as a possibility.So, while I love the full color and some of the good resources, and even found that I agreed with some of the notes, I have fears that there are many problems that one would run into if they were not insightful to see the nuance of some of the theology.Here is a link to my article on Study Bibles