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| Amplified Topical Reference Bible (Bible Amplified) | 
 enlarge | Creator: Zondervan Publishing House
Publisher: Zondervan
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
Buy New: $18.76
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 49008
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1920
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.6
ISBN: 0310934745
Dewey Decimal Number: 220
EAN: 9780310934745
ASIN: 0310934745
Publication Date: October 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A new, topically oriented edition of the popular Amplified Bible.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Quality Bible October 25, 2008
Well made hard back Bible. The amplification gives in depth understanding to the Scripture. Better for study than general reading.
Verily Admirable And Useful August 8, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
For those who do not know exactly what the Amplified Bible is I will give a short introduction to the translation. After that only will I dwell in the details of this particular edition, which is in particular the leather-bound Topical Reference Bible. In the end I will briefly give my general view on what Bible to own considering the translation methods applied.
A reader looking for a Bible should be aware of the difference between dynamic, free (paraphrase) and literal translations. I will only discuss the problems a translator has when trying to produce a literal translation; the Amplified Bible (AMP) is, afterall, first and foremost an attempt to produce a very literate translation faithful to both the original (SL) and the target language (TL). The problem with translating is of course that when we translate either on a word-level or on sentence-level we will most likely lose meaning on the word-level of words that either have various meanings or are ambiguous in the context. Even the most literate translations such as the King James Version (KJV) and the New American Standard Version (NASB) have this problem if they are unable to find an exactly rich and variable word in TL; in my opinion this is a paradox in itself and impossible, as a SL word is not only understandable by its grammatical but also by its semantic properties, to which the cultural identification has an immense effect.
What the AMP has done to avoid this problem is to give a rather ingenius way of glossing words that can have various meanings in the English language: with parentheses "()" AMP gives "additional phases of meaning included in the original word, phrase, or clause of the original language" (Introduction, ix). Brackets "[]" are used to "contain justified clarifying words or comments not actually expressed in the immediate original text, as well as definitions of Hebrew and Greek names". For example, I will here include the familiar passage from John 3:16:
"For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life."
The word even is given in brackets and thus indicates that the word is a clarifying word not immediately present in the original Greek text but not in conflict with that text; often this is used to clarify a personal pronoun or a direct reference to Christ (as in John 1:1ff, where the "Word" is glossed with "Christ" in brackets). The so-called amplification occurs with the words "begotten", "believe in", "perish" and "eternal" and the additional meanings are given in parentheses. What this passage does not include is the use of italicized words. When whole sentences are italized they often indicate passages that are not found in the oldest manuscripts (often footnoted); if conjunctions are italized they are connected to an amplification: not present in the original text but necessary to connect two or more amplifications of a translated word.
Now I will move to discuss the present edition. This edition includes an introduction to each book and also gives an outline of the structure of the book in question. At the end of the Bible, after the Book of Revelation, is a bibliography and the Glossary section. The Glossary section is very useful if you are interested in a word-level meditation, as it gives you a list of words that are most often amplified with such and such words. As an example, it gives the word "discernment" and after it the words that are most consistently amplified with it (the words are "comprehension" and "understanding"). Then there is a concordance of 192 pages from the word "Abandon (Abandoned)" to "Zion (Zion's)". This is the place from where you can search for individual words within passages. Whilst never complete, this is a very exhaustive list and very useful.
The most useful feature of the Topical Reference Bible is the Topical Index after the Concordance. This is the most useful and informative section after the Bible itself and it works as follows: this index gives you, for example, "Aaron" as the first entry. Then it lists three categories (A, B, C) that are named "Family data", "His priesthood" and "Significant events". These categories include sub-categories that, as an example of his priesthood, refer to his duties: they are listed as "to teach God's decrees", "to offer prescribed sacrifices", "to officiate on the Day of Atonment" and "to make atonement in special situations", each after which the proper passage in the Bible is given. This spans for 175 pages from Aaron to Zophar, from individuals to topics such as animals in the Bible with proper passages given, baptism, Heaven, judgement, patience, Rome, etc. Consider that you want to know what the Bible in general speaks of sin, for example. Then you go to the Topical Index and it gives you a great reference tool; it is useful to read it through even as it stands, as the short descriptions are very useful. This is very helpful when you need to convince either yourself or your friend in argument that thus it stands in the Bible.
The edition I am reviewing is the leather-bound edition, and I can say that the leather is of excellent quality. The only negative side of this edition is that there is no zipper to protect the pages, but its absence allows the book to open more widely; I should also address this issue with a positive comment that even though my relationship with books forces me to handle them with care, occassionaly when I have placed this badly in my backpack the pages have never been damaged in any way. This is, of course, a subjective point I am making: I am sure that if you handle this book (or any other for that matter) roughly you will tear the thin pages apart.
You might have discerned as much already, but I truly recommend this edition. The glosses are abundant and helpful, and the Topical Index, whilst not completely exhaustive, is exhaustive enough. As a translation this is not as poetic as the KJV or the JPS (the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the Tanakh), but this will not be a problem if you know it before purchasing; after all, what matters is that the translation is truthful to the Word of God. What you get is a very informatively supplemented Bible that is more than sufficient to your Bible study without too obvious or too intrusive footnotes. It has its own aims, but its main viewpoint is to prove it biblically, that is, to retain the harmony between the interpretation and Scripture. As an example is the identification of the Angel of the Lord with Christ pre-incarnate, not necessarily the most talked about feature in any Bible studies. Here the passages in the Torah are annotated accordingly and it always relies on the Scriptures; in the Topical Index there is an entry for the Angel of the Lord and a subcategory in the end that reads "How can we identify him as God (Jesus)?" What follows are references to the passages in which such information occurs.
No matter how much I enjoy this edition, I would recommend you not to be content with only a single edition yet if you thought you needed only one translation I would recommend this one. Thanks to the Internet and places such as the Bible Gateway you do not have to purchase every single edition, but I still recommend to obtain at least some different editions. I am a Finn and my first language is Finnish, thus I own three translations in Finnish; in English I have the KJV, NASB, AMP as well as the evocative JPS (it of course rearranges the books in the "Jewish order"). Of other languages I own an Italian translation. What I am trying to say is that even if you were to purchase the AMP now, always take heed of other translations. If you are looking for a full concordance, an exhaustive one bordering on suffocating in its enormity, this will not do. Yet if you grow into this translation you will have an excellent benchmark to evaluate other translations that might be free translations (The Message and The Living Bible are two examples). From the English translations I read this Amplified translation and the KJV the most, and then the JPS for the Hebrew Bible passages.
In short: if you are looking for an Amplified Bible, buy this one. If you are looking for a Bible to own without any previous translations, buy this one or the dual-edition with the KJV. If you are looking for a study Bible, this is more than sufficient, yet if you are looking for footnotes that guide you through as if this were an Arden Shakespeare edition, look for a more thorough edition. In fact, if you are looking for a study Bible, the King James Version Thompson Chain-Reference Study Bible is hard to beat. If you are a literary-type of a person looking for a poetic translation, do not buy this but the KJV or the JPS translation of the Tanakh. Yet the AMP has been worth its price and more for this particular writer and has been in as heavy use as the KJV.
Amplified Topical Version December 28, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The reference material is an excellent addition. Great for Bible Study. The Leather cover is soft and really good quality.
An EXCELLENT and EASY TO UNDERSTAND Bible. December 8, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The Amplified bible translation is in my opinion the easiest to understand translation of the Bible available. Written in common modern English, the words chosen in translation are both easy to understand and chosen with a view towards the proper emphasis as taken in context. Combining this with a topical reference, it is easy to study almost any subject you can imagine. All in all an EXCELLENT translation and highly recommended.
Awesome! November 12, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
If you do a lot of Bible study, I believe that a topical bible is a very useful tool! The Amplified Topical brings exact meanings and a historical context to the research you are doing. Likewise, If you need to locate something in a hurrry, the Topical bible is arranged in a way that makes this possible. NOTE:This does NOT replace a concordance. This is more of a topic tool, rather than a word search tool. It is subject based and narrows your scriptural search down drastically! Be blessed!
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