FREE/BARGAIN — Christian Interest

[Difflugia]

This week's free book from David C. Cook is the Acts volume of the Warren Wiersbe Bible Study Series, Acts: Put Your Faith Where the Action Is.

This one wasn't in my collection, so it may not have been free before.

B&N
Kobo
Amazon

[TrevorViking]

Thanks! New to me as well, had one that only covered chapters 13-28.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

This week's free book from David C. Cook is the Acts volume of the Warren Wiersbe Bible Study Series, Acts: Put Your Faith Where the Action Is.

This one wasn't in my collection, so it may not have been free before.

B&N
Kobo
Amazon

Thanks. I have all of the "Be" series, but very few of the "Bible Study Series."

[GtrsRGr8]

This looks like a good book--it has stellar ratings at Amazon and GoodReads.

There are lots of good ebooks out there, though. It's tough to know which ones to post and which ones to pass on. I've got to confess that part of the reason that I'm posting this one is the novelty of the thing--the audiobook is cheaper, purchased outright from the ebook's webpage, than the Whispersync deal is ($7.83 vs $9.48), even though the ebook is on sale for only $1.99. That situation is unusual, to say the least, in my experience.

The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass, by Mandy Hale.

Description
Smart, strong, independent—single women can live a fabulous life. Husband not required.

Mandy Hale, also known by her many blog readers and Twitter fans as The Single WomanTM, shares her stories, advice, and enthusiasm for living life as an empowered, confident, God-centered woman who doesn’t just resign herself to being single—she enjoys it! Being single has had its stigmas, but Mandy proves it has its advantages too, and she uses wisdom and wit to inspire her fellow single ladies to celebrate and live fully in the life God has given them.

Mandy encourages her readers on subjects such as taking chances, building friendships, letting go, and finding a greater purpose. With her help, readers can stop worrying about happily ever after and discover a happy life instead.

Rated 4.7 stars, at Amazon. 196 pages.

Postscript: You've "got" to read what Amazon says about Mandy Hale, the author, at this webpage.

[GtrsRGr8]

The books are all commentaries, with individual volumes coming from . . . .
- The Old Testament Library.
- Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.
- Belief: A Theological Commentary Commentary on the Bible.

Sale prices are $4.99 for each of the Old Testament Library volumes and $3.99 for volumes in the other two series. Folks, the retail prices of these tomes are as high as $56.00 (yes, $56.00)!

That puts it short and sweet (I hope).

Again, the sale is short--it ends Friday. WJK Sale.


The following is optional reading material:
In addition to reviews at Amazon and GoodReads, I've found Best Commentaries to be helpful in assessing the quality of individual commentaries, as well as sets--the most helpful, in fact. Their reviews (made by individuals who use the site) are right-of-center there, at least for the most part, but they seem to be pretty objective in assessing the quality of the exegesis, etc. in the commentaries.

Be aware that WJK is a left-of-center publisher. However, like Eerdmans, and maybe others, it seems like WJK has taken a step or two back toward the middle, in the last couple of decades or so.

I'm curious about the reason for WJK putting the particular volumes, that they do, on sale. Are there revised commentaries on the books coming along? Is WJK planning to publish or release volumes by other authors to replace the current volumes? I wouldn't be very concerned, though, especially about the second possibility. Sometimes it seems that revised editions are not as good as the originals, and other authors used are not as good as the original ones.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

The books are all commentaries, with individual volumes coming from . . . .
- The Old Testament Library.
- Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.
- Belief: A Theological Commentary Commentary on the Bible.

Sale prices are $4.99 for each of the Old Testament Library volumes and $3.99 for volumes in the other two series. Folks, the retail prices of these tomes are as high as $56.00 (yes, $56.00)!

Oh, my! I've been wanting to read Gerhard von Rad's Genesis commentary for a few years now and didn't realize it was a volume in WJK's Old Testament Library until I checked the sale page. Von Rad was one of the most important of the form critics, applying the principles of form criticism to the documentary sources of the Pentateuch in a way that most earlier critics did not. Indeed, current scholar Joel S. Baden considers von Rad's approach to be distinct from form criticism and instead calls it "tradition criticism:"

The product of the combined efforts of Gerhard von Rad and Martin Noth in the mid-twentieth century, tradition criticism inquires not about the form of the preliterary story but about its content. ... Tradition criticism attempts, in a way not found in form criticism, to attribute a plausible historical scenario to the earliest underlying traditions.

Unfortunately, von Rad's volume on Deuteronomy isn't on sale, but I'll console myself with Sara Japhet's commentary on the Chronicles.

[Difflugia]

The 90-Minute Bible Summary by Elmer Towns and published by Destiny Image is free.

Kobo
Google Play
Amazon

A Reader’s Guide to Every Book of the Bible

This book is perfect for anyone seeking a comprehensive, yet compact synopsis of the greatest Book ever written.
Each short chapter is a user-friendly guide to a specific Biblical book. Highlighting important words, key verses, and primary themes, this vital resource brings simple clarity to complex ideas.
Also includes related prayers, to help you dialog with God about your reading.
Use this book as a reference and resource for:

• Personal Bible study
• New believers or unbelievers who are seeking to know more
• Ideas for teaching/preaching outlines
• Bible study groups

Bring clarity and purpose to your Bible reading today!

[Difflugia]

The Proverbs volume of Warren Wiersbe's Be series, Be Skillful is free at B&N and Kobo, but oddly, not at Amazon.

B&N
Kobo

Here's a link to Amazon to check the price. It's $9.99 at the moment.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

The Proverbs volume of Warren Wiersbe's Be series, Be Skillful is free at B&N and Kobo, but oddly, not at Amazon.

B&N
Kobo

Here's a link to Amazon to check the price. It's $9.99 at the moment.

Google Play.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Google Play.

I always forget about Google Play. I'm all about their scans of public domain books, but keep forgetting that they sell them, as well.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I always forget about Google Play. I'm all about their scans of public domain books, but keep forgetting that they sell them, as well.

I don't blame you for forgetting about them. In my opinion, browsing for books and looking for markdowns on their site is very difficult. You've got to know what you want before you go to the site, and then use their search (which is a good one, BTW (I wonder why? )). If not, you can end up wasting a lot of time.

[GtrsRGr8]

I ran up on this site, Inscript.org, the other day. They have about _3 dozen_ Bibles in English alone, as well as one or more in each of a huge number of other languages.

When I say "Bibles," I'm including translations that have some, but not all, of the books of the Bible. For example, I noticed several English translations of the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the (mainly) Hebrew text of the part of the Bible that Christians consider the "Old Testament."

Advisory: the site appears to be a resource hog. My high-powered laptop is not available, so I had to use this smartphone to access the site. The smartphone, which usually doesn't give me any problems, froze up quite a bit when I tried out the site. But it was worth the hassle to learn about the access to so many translations of the Bible that the website gives us!

[GtrsRGr8]

I had just about quit posting Palgrave's "Daily Deal" because it seemed that most of them were predictably politically-oriented (left-wing), and sometimes pretty radical at that.

In the last few days, Palgrave actually have had Daily Deals that seemed to be non-political and truly educational (For example, one a few days ago was on Motherhood in Antiquity, a buy for me). Today's (ending on August 17) deal seems to fall into that category, too. I think that many Christians of a scholarly or intellectual bent will genuinely be interested in it.

Theism and Atheism in a Post-Secular Age. By Morteza Hashemi.

The price of today's Daily Deal is the usual for Palgrave's Daily Deals--$9.99. The stated list price is $89.00 for PDF and ePub formats (it seems that both are included (would you believe that the price for Amazon's Kindle mobi is $96.38?!).

I couldn't find any ratings for the book, but that's not uncommon for scholarly/academic books. Also this 250-page book was published just a couple of years ago (2017, first edition).

Description
This book examines the post-secular idea of ‘religion for non-believers’. The new form of unbelief which is dubbed as ‘tourist atheism’ is not based on absolute rejection of religion as a ‘dangerous illusion’ or ‘mere prejudice’. Tourist atheists instead consider religion as a cultural heritage and a way of seeking perfection. What are the origins of these new forms of atheism? What are the implications of the emergence of a type of atheism which is more open toward religious teachings, rituals, arts, and world views? Hashemi argues that public intellectuals must consider that it is a sign of a post-secular age in which believers and non-believers go beyond mere tolerance and engage in a creative process of co-practice and co-working.

The table of contents is sometimes the best way to get a feel for a book. Here it is:
- Introduction
- Ever-changing Images of God–Man Relationship: From Jesus to Feuerbach
- The Emergence of a New Type of Atheism: Tourist Atheism
- The Necessity of Unmasking Atheism
- Pilgrim Atheists and the Myth of Warfare
- Tourist Atheists as Players
- Tourist Atheists’ Religion as Act
- The Revival of the Comtean Dream?
- The Primacy of Training over Truth: From Rorty to Sloterdijk
- A Post-Secular Reading of Public Sociology: A Way to Co-Practice
- A Précis of the Main Arguments of the Book

Link.

ADDENDUM: Both the PDF and ePub formats are included--I just purchased the ebook above, and was able to download both.

[GtrsRGr8]

I'd like to take an informal poll. In your opinion, what is the overall best free online Bible site?

The winning site will be one which has a good number of good English translations, is easy to use, has good functionality, has few bugs and freeze-up issues, etc.

For the sake of this poll, I'd like to exclude apps and online versions of desktop programs like Logos/Verbum and WordSearch Bible, and any other desktop software that has app versions. I would also like to exclude sites like Olive Tree.

So, that leaves sites like Bible Gateway, Bible Hub . . . . well, that pretty much exhausts the ones that I can think of at the moment.

Thanks.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I'd like to take an informal poll. In your opinion, what is the overall best free online Bible site?

My vote is for Bible Hub, hands down. Aside from just the selection of Bibles, the interlinear pages are better and easier to use than anything else, including software I've paid for. In my opinion, the others pale in comparison.

The ones I didn't vote for:

Spoiler:

• Bible Gateway, which you mentioned. Nice interface, the ads have become a bit intrusive.
• Biola's Unbound Bible. Great search interface and has downloads (plain Unicode, not formatted as ebooks).
• ESV.org is Crossway's online ESV. The site offers free access to the ESV, the ESV Global Study Bible, and a Greek interlinear. You can still buy access to a few other ESV-based study Bibles or get access on a subscription basis, but I haven't really seen it marketed in a long time.
• The United States Conference of Cathoic Bishops offers the New American Bible (a modern Catholic translation) online. They used to have the catechism online as well, but I no longer see a link to it.
• The Holy See has the Catholic RSV, papal writings, writings of the Church Fathers, and a ton of other Catholic stuff online at clerus.org. The site is no longer be actively maintained, though, and it's littered with broken links and images.
• Jehovah's Witnesses have Online Bible with two editions of The New World Translation (1984 and the 2013 revision) and a few other translations (ASV, KJV, "Bible in Living English"). There's also a decent Greek interlinear.
• Mormon scripture, including KJV, Book of Mormon, D&C, Pearl of Great Price, Topical Guide, and Bible Dictionary.

I'm not sure why you excluded online versions of desktop apps, but I sometimes use these in exactly the same way that I use Bible Hub. None of these would beat Bible Hub, but I prefer Biblia and Tecarta to any of the others above.

• Biblia.com is the online version of Logos software. If you login using your Logos account, you get access to all of your Logos resources. Otherwise, you still have access to a pretty impressive list of Bibles, including several Greek New Testaments and a Latin Vulgate. Multiple windows can be linked, so you can scroll multiple translations at the same time. If you don't have a Logos account and create a new one, you get access to a few more.
• Tecarta Bible now has an online version. Most modern English translations are online for free and a big selection of contemporary study Bibles is available for a 7-day trial period. I don't know if the trial is tied to cookies or IP, but something about my browser settings means my trial period never expires. One benefit of Tecarta (which is the same as the app) is that you can read study Bible notes alongside a different translation (NIV Study Bible with the ESV or NRSV, for example). There are no translations with the Apocrypha.
• Jehovah's Witnesses have Online Library, which is the online version of their desktop software.