The Beginner’s Bible By Zonderkidz

The Beginners Bible is a simplified storybook Bible, aimed at young children, ages 2-6. It covers over 100 stories from the Old and New Testaments with cute cartoon illustrations to go alongside it. Each story is a brief summary of what the Scriptures say.

The Beginnger’s Bible is probably one of the most recognized story Bibles, as it’s been around for many years in many editions. This review is for the 2005 copyright edition.

The goal of this story Bible is to retell many well-known stories to young children in simple language. This story Bible does include a great number of stories while using simplistic text, but there isn’t any connection between stories, in fact, it feels like a collection of completely unrelated stories. Nothing ties together. Creation story. Noah. Abraham. Everything is separate.

For the most part, the stories themselves are recounted accurately, although obviously with remarkable brevity. Because of that, sometimes important details are omitted. The few blatant innacuracies I saw included:

It claims Jesus was born in a stable.
It says Saul changed his name to Paul, which he did not. He simply used the Roman version of Saul.
Paul “baptized many people.” 1 Corinthians 1:14-16 says otherwise.

The text does talk about sin and people needing a Savior,

“Father, if it is your will, I am ready to give my life so that all the people who trust in me will be saved from their sins.”

However, there is one confusing sentence that, without further explanation, sounds like works righteousness,

“Everyone wants to be part of his kingdom. But the angels will come and separate the godly people from the ungodly people. The godly people will live in heaven with me forever.”

I do not love the overly cartoon-like illustrations as I feel it makes the stories seem less real, but that’s a personal preference. Overall, while this is a widely used and generally accurate retelling of Scripture, I feel there are better choices available.

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