Recently, I came across an eBay listing for the Disciple’s Study Bible. I don’t need one because I got a copy in the late eighties for free while working in a Christian book store, but I was interested because I hadn’t thought about this Bible in years. I even carried this Bible with me to church briefly in my last year or two of college.

The Disciple’s Study Bible was a project from Holman Bible Publishers two decades ago that took the NIV text and added study notes based around a core set of doctrines. Although there was enough content in the Disciple’s Study Bible to make it a self-contained resource on its own, the real value of it could be found when using it in conjunction with the accompanying workbook and leader’s guide. The workbook itself had 65 individual lessons for use in private or group settings.

The three resources together made a very beneficial tool for discipleship, especially in Southern Baptist Churches because the notes were written from a Baptist perspective. Further, other resources such as the Holman Book of Biblical Charts, Maps and Reconstructions were cross-referenced with the notes in the Disciple’s Study Bible. In the early nineties, I had often considered leading a discipleship class at church using these tools, but had never done it, primarily because it meant at least a $50 investment on the part of any student who would have signed up for it.

After seeing the Bible on eBay, I looked on Amazon to only confirm that the Disciple’s Study Bible is now out of print. I wasn’t overly surprised to learn this as I had not seen it on store shelves for quite some time. It is still available used on Amazon ranging in asking price from $35 to $250 according to the edition.

I pulled my copy of the Disciple’s Study Bible off the shelf along with the workbook and flipped through both. Honestly, it’s been years since I looked through either, but as I surveyed the content, I thought to myself that it would be very useful in a church discipleship context. And then it struck me that the Disciple’s Study Bible would be a perfect fit for Lifeway’s in-house translation, the Holman Christian Standard Bible. This would mean that B&H could produce the Bible without having to pay licensing fees to another company as had been done when it was based on the NIV.

So I shot off a message to B&H Publishing customer service and suggested that the Disciple’s Study Bible be retooled for the HCSB. Evidently great minds think alike because I got a response back this morning letting me know that there are indeed plans to re-publish the Disciple’s Study Bible in the HCSB, and it is slated to be released late in 2009.

Since there is a revision to the HCSB slated for 2009, I would assume that the new edition of the Disciple’s Study Bible will contain the newest text.

Tags: HCSB