Johnny Cash Reads the New Testament has been repackaged and re-released this month by Thomas Nelson. The audio book was originally published in 1990; the new product features the entire New Testament in the New King James Version on 16 audio compact discs, as well as 16 full-color rare Johnny and June Carter Cash photographs on the slipcase. At the time of the original release, Cash stated, “I chose the New King James Version because it retains much of the beauty and classic prose and poetry of the original King James Version, yet is easily understood by those who might have said, ‘I’ve read the Bible but don’t understand it.’” Cash’s later music brought him a younger generation of fans, and Nelson says the re-release was inspired by this expanded fan base.
Stanford University Press and the Zohar Education Project will publish The Zohar 6: Pritzker Edition, Volume Six on November 4. The series launched in 2005 and will eventually include 12 volumes of a new English translation of the central work of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. According to the publisher, “The translation and commentary by Daniel C. Matt is based on a newly constructed critical text—the only modern text that draws on many variants in the early Aramaic manuscripts—and brings a hidden treasure of Western Culture to lay readers, spiritual seekers, scholars, and the Jewish community.” Daniel C. Matt was professor of Jewish spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., for twenty years, and has taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His six previous works include The Essential Kabbalah; Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment; Zohar: Annotated and Explained; and God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality. For more information on The Zohar: Pritker Edition, go to www.sup.org/zohar.
Henrickson Publishers, in partnership with the British Library, published earlier this year a deluxe facsimile edition of the 4th century-written Codex Sinaiticus, the world’s oldest manuscript of the Bible, making it accessible for the first time to readers who are not researchers and scholars. Handwritten by scribes in the middle of the 4th century, the Codex comprises the oldest complete copy of the New Testament and half of the Old Testament, both in Greek. It also contains the Epistle of Barnabas and “The Shepherd” of Hermas; the Old Testament includes books considered apocryphal by many in the West: 2 Esdras, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Tobit, Sirach, and Wisdom. Literally translated “the Sinai Book,” the Codex Sinaiticus is named after the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai in Egypt, where it was preserved until it was discovered by a European scholar in the middle of the 19th century. In 2005, the four institutions that share guardianship of the Codex--the British Library, the Library of the University of Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, and Saint Catherine’s Monastery--launched a project to make it available to a wider audience. For more information and to view the digital version of the Codex, go to www.codexsinaiticus.com. The 828-page museum-quality print facsimile retails for $799.00 and includes a 32-page reference guide, which contains the history of the Codex and a concordance.
Zondervan has released new editions of some of its top-selling Bibles to include the text of the latest New International Version, which was updated last year for the first time since 1984. The new Bibles have other changes: The five-million-selling NIV Study Bible has all new full-color maps, charts, photos, and diagrams, a new interior design, online study aids and features, and updated study notes. The NIV Student Bible has updated study notes and a redesigned cover and interior pages. The Quest Bibles—in both Teen and Adult editions—have updated in-text maps as well as notes with the “Top 100” most-asked questions readers have about the Bible. The NIV Teen Study Bible from Zonderkidz, which won the 2009 Christian Retailer’s Choice Award in the Youth/Teen Category and has been the top-selling teen Bible for more than 20 years—has also been reissued for the coming school year with updated NIV text.
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