C. Lewis - C. S. Lewis Bible - New Revised Standard Version

Project Editors

Marlene Baer Hekkert and Michael G. Maudlin

Managing Editor

Patricia Klein

Consulting Editors

Douglas Gresham and Jerry Root

Production Editor

Suzanne Quist

ADVISORY BOARD

Gayne Anackeris vice president of the C. S. Lewis Foundation and professor of philosophy at California Baptist University.

Sarah Arthuris a founding board member of the award-winning Michigan C. S. Lewis Festival and the author of numerous youth resources on C. S. Lewis, including Walking through the Wardrobe.

Devin Brownis a Lilly Scholar and a professor of English at Asbury University, where he teaches a class on C. S. Lewis. He is the author of Inside Narnia, Inside Prince Caspian, and Inside the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Michael J. Christensenis director of the Shalom Initiative for Prophetic Leadership and Community Development and affiliate associate professor of spirituality and religious studies at Drew University. He is also an ordained United Methodist minister and the author of C. S. Lewis on Scripture.

Fr. Andrew Cuneois a priest in the Orthodox Church and has taught English literature at Hillsdale College. He obtained his M.Phil. and D.Phil. in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford.

Lyle Dorsettis the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism at Beeson Divinity School and was the former head of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. He is also the author of And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman and Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C. S. Lewis .

Colin Duriezhas written several books on C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, including The C. S. Lewis Encyclopedia, The Inklings Handbook (with the late David Porter), J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, and A Field Guide to Narnia. He has also appeared as a commentator on C. S. Lewis on DVD and on television, including productions for the BBC and PBS.

Bruce L. Edwardsis professor of English and Africana studies at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and has served as a C. S. Lewis Foundation Fellow at the Kilns in Oxford, England. He is also the editor of C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy .

Paul Fordis a professor of systematic theology and liturgy at St. John’s Seminary, is an internationally recognized authority on the life and writings of C. S. Lewis, and is the award-winning author of Companion to Narnia and editor of Words to Live By: A Dictionary for the Mere Christian and Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis.

Garry Friesenis a professor of Bible at Multnomah Bible College, where he teaches a course on C. S. Lewis. His Ph.D. is from Dallas Seminary, where he did a master’s thesis on Lewis’s view of Scripture. Garry mentors six college students at his house, which has a Narnia theme that brings hundreds every year for a tour. He is an elder at Imago Dei Community and has just finished twenty years’ work on a C. S. Lewis Scripture index with ten thousand entries.

Walter Hooperis a trustee and literary adviser of the estate of C. S. Lewis. In 1963 he served briefly as Lewis’s private secretary, and after Lewis’s death he devoted himself to Lewis’s memory, eventually taking up residence in Oxford, England, where he now lives.

Reed Jolleyis a pastor at Santa Barbara Community Church and contributor to C. S. Lewis: Lightbearer in the Shadowlands.

Don Kingis professor of English at Montreat College, editor of the Christian Scholar’s Review , and the author of three books, including C. S. Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse.

Art Lindsleyis a senior fellow at the C. S. Lewis Institute and is the author of C. S. Lewis’s Case for Christ.

Marjorie Lamp Meadis associate director of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College (Illinois). She is coeditor of Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis and C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children , as well as coauthor of A Reader’s Guide Through the Wardrobe and A Reader’s Guide to Caspian.

Earl Palmerwas the former senior pastor of University Presbyterian Church and is a speaker at the C. S. Lewis Institute.

Jerry Rootwrote both his M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation on C. S. Lewis. He has been teaching college and graduate courses on C. S. Lewis for over thirty years. He currently teaches at Wheaton College (Illinois) and is a visiting professor at Biola University and Talbot Graduate School of Theology. He is the author of C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil and coeditor of The Quotable Lewis.

Revd. Dr. Jeanette Searswas formerly the president of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society and is currently a tutor in doctrine and church history at Trinity College, Bristol, England. She has a Ph.D. in theology (Manchester), was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, and is an Anglican priest, novelist, and author of The Oxford of J. R. R Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Dick Staubis an award-winning broadcaster, writer, and speaker whose work focuses on understanding faith and culture and interpreting each to the other. The Kindlings organization he oversees (www.TheKindlings.com) is inspired by the intellectual, creative, and spiritual legacy of C. S. Lewis and the Inklings.

James E. Taylorteaches philosophy at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He directed the Philosophy Symposium at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s Oxbridge 2008 Summer Institute in Oxford and Cambridge.

Dr. Michael Wardis chaplain of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and author of Planet Narnia and The Narnia Code and coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis.

by Douglas Gresham

It seems to me that many annotated Bibles are exercises in one man, or one committee of men, presenting their own wisdom and the results of their own biblical studies to the public at large, and while I ascribe to them the very best motives in the world, there still seems to me to be just a touch of arrogance attached to such an endeavour. After all, what is being said is “I/We have studied the Bible for years and I/we have achieved such wisdom therefrom that you need to read my/our comments in order to understand the Bible as deeply and as well as I/we do, which it is of vital importance for you to do.”

However, this annotated Bible is very different. This is a case of the understanding of a man who never thought of himself as a theologian but always regarded himself as a rank amateur in such matters, and yet is now, more than forty-five years after his death, regarded as one of the leading theologians of his day. This is a man who never presented himself as any kind of psychologist and yet now is thought of as a man who understood human thinking and humanity better than any other writer of his time. This is a man who never imagined himself to be a biblical scholar and yet who read and memorised a chapter of the Bible every single day. He is a man who left those of us who have read all his works with one everlasting regret, it is that he did not write more, far more, than he did. And it is not he who has put his thoughts and understandings into this work, but a group of fine scholars, many years after his death, for C. S. Lewis, known as “Jack” by his family and friends, has become one of the most studied and respected writers of the twentieth century.