In celebration of the gift of our Savior, my custom at this blog is to give you loyal readers and subscribers Christmas presents. So I shop online for free gifts that I think you would enjoy and benefit from. So tear into them!
A Great Bible Study Resource
I blogged about the New English Translation. You can refresh your memory about it here. The thing is, it is free. You can download the entire Bible here.
That downloadable text does not include the notes, howe er, which are the best feature of this project. Instead of giving theological commentary or background information, these notes discuss the translation issues in the verses, explaining the nuances of the original Hebrew and Greek and why the translators chose the rendition they came up with.
The good news is that the notes are free too! You can access them on the website. The entire New English Translation of the Bible with parallel notes is right there. Not only that, the generosity of the publishers is such that if you click the pull down menu where it says “NET2,” you can also get the notes alongside six other translations, including the ESV!
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library
I am giving you an entire library of hundreds of volumes, including standard multi-volume reference sets!
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library is an online collection of Christian classics in the public domain. A project of Calvin University, it includes the church fathers, medieval authors, Reformation theologians, Bible commentaries, sermons of noted preachers, meditations, and more.
The collection includes 15 of Luther’s most notable works. Twenty-seven books by G. K. Chesterton. And, what impresses me most, some of the most foundational reference books for the study of Christianity. All 10 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers are here, as are the 28 volumes of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. This gives us all the writings of the church fathers! Here too is the two-volume set The Creeds of Christendom plus the the 13 volume New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.
By the way, the “ethereal” in the title of the collection does not mean mystical in the New Age sense. Rather, deriving from the old scientific term “ether,” it means “lacking physical substance.” This is a massive library that takes up no space and has no weight, existing in the mysterious realm of electronic bits and bytes, in a “cloud” that is nevertheless freely accessible with any computer or cell phone.
Free Homeschool Resources
For you homeschoolers, I give you Lutheran Homeschool Marketplace & Press, a site operated by my wonderful daughter Mary Moerbe. She describes it as ” a place to compile digital resources, share tips, and even sell digital material that has worked in one family for the benefit of others.”
Some of the material costs a little, but quite a lot of it is free. Check out the wealth of material on Free Lutheran Educational Resources.
Mary also offers Free Non-Lutheran Resources, material that is not specifically Lutheran as such but that Lutheran homeschoolers could still make use of.
And, of course, those of you who are not of the Lutheran persuasion could also find useful curriculum, activities, and tips from both categories.
Free Kindle Classics
Apparently, today there isn’t much of a market for the greatest books of all time, so Amazon is willing to give Kindle versions of them away for free. Retired English professor that I am, I am curating a very short list of books for you. These are not only books that you should read–Amazon gives a lot of those for free also–but books that are not too demanding and are highly enjoyable to read:
Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm. Not a children’s book! This is the original version with the scary, gory, and shocking parts. Bird peck out the eyes of Cinderella’s evil step-sisters. This is why children love it.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Not just a children’s book! It is hilarious!
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Not just a girl’s book! It is funny, amazingly well-written, and brilliant!
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Written in 1931, the author anticipates virtual reality, reproductive engineering, feel-good drugs, and other facets of life today that we assume are brand new. And he shows why they are bad.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandré Dumas. An absorbing tale of adventure, revenge, justice, and forgiveness.
I also wanted to give you books by P. G. Wodehouse, which are guaranteed to cheer you up in your darkest moods, but the works of this comic genius, while listed among the free Kindle classics, cost as much as 49 cents or even 55 cents, and so violate my criteria. What kind of gift would that be if you have to pay for it, even as much as a single one of those pennies that are no longer made?
Photo by Nicole Michalou : https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-looking-excited-from-her-christmas-gift-5778896/ via Pexels
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