Bible Study - Choosing a Bible

Choosing a Bible nowadays could become quickly a headache due to all types of translations, sizes, interior presentations, readability, hardcover/paperback, with or without commentaries, etc. Each one of us has different tastes and different needs, so don't count on me to resolve your headache ;-).

However, I could suggest a list of requirements that would hopefully help you to narrow down your choice. My list of requirements is of course not exhaustive. You certainly have criteria that I haven't considered.
I am presenting here the list of requirements in decreasing order of importance for my personal needs:

1. Catholic Bible or non-Catholic Bible ?
   Being a Catholic Christian, this question was not difficult to answer. The main difference between the two categories of Bible being that seven books are missing in most non-Catholic Bibles: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. All the books that are part of the Bible is called the Canon. The Modern Catholic dictionary (by John A. Hardon, S.J.) defines "Canon" as: the catalogue of inspired writings known as the Old and New Testaments, identified as such by the Church.
   
   
2. Bible with or without commentaries ?
   Do you want your Bible to show only the biblical text, or do you want it with commentaries that would help you to understand the Scripture?
   
   
3. Which Bible commentaries ?
   Bible commentaries explain to us what verses in the Bible mean. In other words, Bible commentaries interprets the Bible for us. There are a lot of Bible commentaries on the market, how do we know if they interpret correctly? Personally, I look for Bible commentaries that are faithful to the teaching authority who identified over 1600 years ago the list of inspired writings and who gave us the Canon of the Bible.
   
   
4. Extensive or short commentaries ?
   How much of commentary do you want? Extensive commentaries can go deep in explaining the connection between the New Testament and the Old Testament and give us much more detail about the Jewish tradition, about the Mediterranean cultures 2000 years ago, the historical contexts, etc.
   
   
5. Reading Bible or Study Bible ?
   Do you want a Bible just for reading purpose or a Bible for studying the Sacred Scripture? If you want a Bible for reading, you might try to look for a Bible that is easy to read. If you have answered this question, you are almost done with the next question.
   
   
6. Literal or dynamic translation ?
   There are mainly two types of Bible translations. One is the literal translation which tries to preserve the order of the words of the original language and thus makes it more difficult to read. The literal translation is usually appreciated by people studying the Scripture. The second type is the dynamic translation. In this second case, the translator tries his best to capture the meaning of the text and translates it to the new language without the constraint of preserving the order of the words. Thus, the dynamic translation is easier to read.
   
   
7. Biblical text and commentaries in the same book ?
   Do you want the commentaries presented together with the biblical text or would you rather have them separately in several different books? If you randomly consult the commentaries, if you read the Bible at home and if you have enough space to spread out books, then it would not be a problem for you to have biblical text and commentaries printed separately. In my case, I like to read the commentaries all the time with the biblical text. And I also read whenever I need to wait (for my car to be fixed, for baby sleeping in the car, while taking public transportation, while getting in line at the post office, etc.). So having both biblical text and commentaries in one single volume is quite a convenience.
   
   
8. Bible and commentaries are presented in a handy format ?
   Like I said in my previous requirement, I often take my Bible with me, and I would use my idle time to read my Bible, so a medium size Bible is desired for easy transportation and carrying around.
   
   
9. Quality of printing font and paper ?
   Regarding the printing font and the paper used for your Bible, you may want to compare many Bibles. Some low quality thin paper make it almost possible to read through the next page, this is very tiring for your eyes. Some Bibles seem to "squeeze" as many words as possible on a single page also make it difficult to read.
   
   
10. Binding quality: leather, hardcover or paperback ?
    Would you take notes and highlight in your Bible? If that is the case, I would definitely recommend to buy the highest quality of binding that you can afford. Many years down the road, you will not want to lose your study notes in a Bible that would fall apart due to your extensive use of it.