The Mosaic Bible is beautiful. That was my first thought after pulling it out of the envelope. The front cover reflects the message of unity throughout the ages perfectly. The back cover is adorned simply with the Apostle's Creed. The contents of this volume continue this theme.
The first section is comprised of the Weekly Meditations (over 300 thicker pages, with full color illustrations at the beginning of each week). These sections each include five scripture readings (at least), historical and global contributions, original meditations that “connect the weekly theme to the modern world,” and white space for note-taking, sketching or journaling. The historical and global contributions are my favorite as these sections include “content from every continent and every century of Christian history.” Full-color artwork, excerpts from influential Christian thinkers throughout church history, quotes and stories from ordinary believers and other worshipful pieces all work together to bring us into contact with the history of our church and closer to our God. These are organized to be used in connection with the church year (liturgically) or you can use them thematically, organically or create your own plan. I also enjoyed the “Tesserae,” which is essentially the index for the weekly meditations. They organized this in two ways, which, while interesting, may have been a bit of overkill. If you are interested in more from the contributors in each weekly section, you can go to the Tesserae and find the source material for the quote/art/story/essay, either by week or by century it was produced in. The second way is kind of fun to look at, but not altogether necessary.
I wanted to try to follow the church calendar with the Weekly Meditation section, but found it to be rather difficult to figure out which week it was when I started (because the church calendar is different from year to year). Thankfully, Tyndale has created a companion website, http://www.holybiblemosaic.com/, which alleviates this difficulty. Just click on the “Calendar” tab and there you have the current week! I think the website is a brilliant idea as it is also a place to find numerous resources and, my favorite part, the community forum to discuss the Bible itself and that week's Meditations.
After the Weekly Meditations section comes the actual NLT Bible. The scripture is arranged in two columns per page, separated by a thin center column reference system. These cross-references are based on relevance to the referenced verses' meaning rather than just individual word connections. In addition, there is an original-language word study system connected to the NLT Word Study System with Hebrew/Greek Dictionary and Index located at the back of the Bible. “There are word studies for 100 Hebrew words and 100 Greek words.” The pages in this section are very thin and the type is rather small, so I could see how it might be difficult to read for some.
Lastly, as previously mentioned, there is a robust NLT Word Study System with Hebrew/Greek Dictionary and Index followed by a Dictionary/Concordance and four pages of full-color, standard biblical maps.
Overall, I am very pleased with the Mosaic Bible. Initially I wasn't sure if I liked the Meditations all at the front, but I've grown to like the separation. The scripture stands alone, as it should, without any interruption. The concordance/dictionary and word study system make this a great study Bible, too.
I, too, like a study Bible/devotional Bible where all the Bible text stands alone, separate from helps and meditations. That way, the reader can interact with the Holy Spirit first, then see how the Spirit worked in the mind of the writer. Otherwise, I'm distracted and read the human's thoughts first or exclusively.
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