Quick Start Guide
to the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
“Even though the Bible was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. When we take our Western, modern culture and impose it on the text, we’re putting in meaning that wasn’t there, and we’re missing the meaning that the text has.”
—Dr. John H. Walton
“Sometimes people get frustrated with the Bible because the difficult figures of speech and the images and the customs they read about seem foreign to them. But when we explain those, then we open up the text of the Bible in a fresh, new way to understand what the text of the Bible is really addressing. Ultimately, everything in the Bible was written in particular times and cultures. So even though everything in it is for all time, not everything in it is for all circumstances. The better we understand the circumstances a passage originally addressed, the more confidently we can reapply its message to appropriate circumstances today.”
—Dr. Craig S. Keener
Welcome to the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. You have in your hands a comprehensive, multiuse tool that has been designed specifically to enhance your understanding of and appreciation for the cultural backgrounds that form the footings on which the foundation of God’s Word is built.
About the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
This study Bible has been purpose-built to do one thing: to increase your understanding of the cultural nuances behind the text of God’s Word so that your study experience, and your knowledge of the realities behind the ideas in the text, is enriched and expanded.
This study Bible contains the full text of the New International Version of the Bible along with a library of study features designed to help you more completely grasp what the text is saying. These notes introduce and explain a wide variety of information on the Biblical text, providing deeper insights for individuals who are ready to devote themselves to serious study of the text.
What Help Do These Study Features Offer?
Each of the features in the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible has been developed with the goal of allowing readers to immerse themselves in the culture, the literature, the geography and the everyday life of the people to whom the Bible was originally written.
• Book Introductions answer questions about who wrote the books of the Bible, to whom, and when, as well as informing readers about the larger cultural and political context in which a book was written. In the Old Testament, dates of writing and specific authorship for each book are less clear than in the New Testament, where such information is marginally less controversial, although still debated. That’s why the Old Testament introductions include “Key Concepts” and the New Testament Introductions include “Quick Glance” information to help readers orient themselves.
• The Old Testament includes a helpful chart that explains the nuances of meaning contained in Hebrew words that don’t have exact equivalents in English. That chart is called “
• Also included before the Old Testament is a helpful article entitled, “
• The New Testament includes a reference feature entitled “” that is designed to help clarify and further define the cultural contexts behind these terms. It’s included as a background feature to define and explain terms that often repeat in the New Testament notes.
• The NIV Center-column Cross Reference system aids in deeper study of the Bible’s themes, language and concepts by leading readers to related passages on the same or similar themes.
• Over 10,000 study notes have been placed close to the text that they amplify and explain. These have been designed to provide the reader with a deep and rich understanding of the nuances that the original readers and hearers of the Bible would have intuitively understood. They focus on the land, the literature, and the political and cultural contexts that the Bible’s authors lived in, and emphasize how the people of Israel were both influenced by, as well as how they were called to be different from, their surrounding culture.
• Full-color in-text , and diagrams, along with some 320 , summarize and explain important background information and ideas from Scripture.
• Front and end matter features include author information, an author’s introduction with helpful questions and answers about this Bible, more information on the NIV translation itself (in the ), and many other helpful study tools.
• The is a tool designed to help readers who remember a key word or phrase in a passage to locate the verses they are looking for. Words and names are listed alphabetically, along with their more significant verse references.
• at the end of this study Bible complement the color maps in the interior of the Bible to help readers to visualize the geographic context of what they are studying.
Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with these features as you begin your study. We’re confident that as you expand your understanding of the social, economic, literary and political culture in which the Bible was written over the course of many centuries, that your understanding of and love for God’s Word will increase all the more.
—The authors and editors
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible