Most Bibles today contain a dizzying array of features. Reference notes, red lettering, and numbers everywhere. Community Bible Experience features a very different kind of Bible—one that reads less like a reference book and more like a story.
The Books of the Bible is a revolutionary presentation of Scripture that strips away centuries of added formatting, providing for a clean, uncluttered reading experience. The result is a Bible more like the original Scriptures:
- No chapter or verse numbers
- No study notes or cross-references
- No red lettering
- No footnotes
Removing these features of the modern Bible allows for a very different reading experience—so you can get swept up in the narrative drama of the gospels. So you can read Paul’s letters as actual pieces of correspondence. So you can be captivated by the poetry and prose of the Bible.
Chapter and verse numbers help us find things in the Bible, but the Bible isn’t a reference book. It’s a story. It’s a collection of inspired books that were meant to be read and savored.
Now you can. The Books of the Bible was carefully designed to help you immerse yourself in Scripture:
- Natural section breaks
The Books of the Bible reveals the natural arrangement of each book, something traditional chapter-and-verse Bibles don’t do. - New book order
For example, you’ll read Luke and Acts together, as two volumes of a single work. Instead of reading Paul’s letters from longest to shortest (how they appear in most Bibles), you’ll read them in a more historical order. - Invitations to each book
The introductions (or invitations, as we like to call them) tell the story behind the story of each book, unlocking the context and helping you understand its literary form and structure. - Single-column format
The Bible was mean to be read as a collection of books, so we think it should look like one. That’s why we put the text in one column. Clean, simple, easy to read. Like a book. - NIV text
The Books of the Bible features the New International Version (NIV), the most widely read contemporary English translation of the Bible.
