The NIV Radiant Virtues Bible Gift Set includes a hardback version of the Radiant Virtues Bible and a spiral-bound journal with a matching cover. This Bible is the newest in Zondervan’s “A Beautiful Word Collection” and both it and the journal are designed to help you study the virtues of faith, hope, and love.
ISBN: 9780310456971 Printed in China
Zondervan provided this Bible gift set in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to give a positive review, only an honest one. All opinions are my own.
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This Bible is available at (includes some affiliate links)
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Table of Contents
Construction and Materials
The NIV Radiant Virtues Bible Gift Set comes with a hardcover Bible and a coordinating journal. Both are packaged in a cream clamshell-style box with a thin piece of cardboard between them. The set all together weighs 4 pounds, 2 ounces.
The Bible in The Radiant Virtues Bible Gift Set is a blue hardcover with golden tan lettering on the front and spine. It has a sewn binding and one attached golden tan ribbon marker.
The end pages are thick paper that has been printed gold. It measures 8.25″ x 6.5″ x 1.5″ and weighs 2 pounds and 5 ounces.
The paper is white and in the mid to upper 30s gsm. Since it is so white there is some show-through but it isn’t really noticeable except for the artwork in the margins. The whiteness of the pages also means you’ll want to stick to art mediums and pens that don’t usually bleed or seal your pages before writing and drawing on them. There is thicker paper bound in at the front and back with special features printed on it.
Blue hardcover is the only option for the Radiant Virtues Bible gift set but the same blue hardcover is available separately, and the Bible by itself is also available in pink cloth over board or navy leathersoft.
Typography and Layout
The Radiant Virtues Bible has an 8 point NIV Comfort Print font. 7 lines of text fit in the height of a penny.
It is a red-letter edition. It’s a nice shade of red, bright enough to distinguish from the black and dark enough to be easy to read. The red shows nicely through the blue and yellow but it is just a touch harder to read with the pink highlighting.
It is laid out in a two-column paragraph format. Like most NIV Bibles, lists look lists, poetry is set in verse format, and quotes are offset. The header contains the guide verse in the outside corner with the page number just inside that.
Footnotes run the full width of both columns and contain translators’ notes and references for quotes.
The outer margins are two inches wide with 40 evenly spaced light lines in all the margins that don’t contain artwork.
Radiant Virtues
Using I Corinthians 13 as its inspiration this Bible focuses on the virtues of faith, hope, and love.
Verses about these three topics are highlighted throughout the Bible. Faith in blue, hope in yellow, and love in pink. This helps show how these themes are woven throughout the Bible.
There are also 52 devotionals that cycle through the three virtues, beginning and ending with love. These devotionals are designed to help you explore all three virtues and their place as part of God’s Word and plans. Each devotional has a prayer, a journaling prompt (usually with questions), and a colorable piece of artwork using part of the Bible passage. These can be used to help you reflect on the lesson and/or dig deeper throughout the day or week.
A one-page letter describing the Radiant Virtues theme and how it is implemented and a list of all 52 devotionals is included in the front of the Bible.
I really like the focus of these study materials. All of us need encouragement at one time or another. Studying the faith, hope, and love described in the Bible can encourage us, help us be better Christians, and help us learn a lot about our God.
These devotionals seem particularly well designed for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time every day. You could read your weekly devotional on your least busy day and include a version of the prayer each day that week while you pray. Then, you could color the picture while thinking about the verses, respond to the journaling prompt, and even do further study when and if you have time that week.
Artwork
Some of the artwork in this Bible is from other Bibles in the Beautiful Word Collection and some were designed just for this Bible.
There are full-page, full-color illustrations at the beginning of each book.
Full-page illustrations for you to color that go with each of the 52 devotionals.
And full-color illustrations in some of the margins spread throughout the Bible. There are also these little leaf drawings in some of the margins.
Almost all of the artwork (besides the leaves) is word art. I like the decorated scriptures for a Bible that I’m going to be studying from over illustrations that are just pictures. Coloring word art is not everyone’s favorite though.
I like that the leaves tie into the decorations on the extra feature pages but for my personal use, I would have rather had the extra space for journaling or artwork. Especially since they are on quite a few pages.
Other Features
Calendar
There are 12 blank calendar pages on thicker paper in the front. These could be used to keep track of your studies, or for scheduling and organization. The welcome suggests making plans to implement faith, hope, and love actions here.
Since they are blank this Bible can be started in any month of any year, which is nice especially for gift-giving, or those of us who don’t always start things on January 1st.
Prayer Pages
On the same thick paper are 7 pages for recording prayers. I see these as being most useful for writing out special prayers or keeping a log of when you started praying for someone and when God answers.
Reading Plans
Four different reading plans are included in the back of the Bible. These are useful for those who want to do more than just the 52 devotionals but want everything in one place.
The reading plans are
- 30 Days With Jesus
- 30 Days of Great Faith
- 60 Day Overview of the Bible
- One Year Through the Bible
All have check-off boxes for you to keep track of where you are. The one-year plan has you reading from only one book each day.
I like that they have included more than one plan do fit more than one kind of study or reader.
Shareables
There are 8 thick pages of full-color shareables in the back. These have perforations to make them easy to detach from the Bible and each other.
In total there are 2 full-page cards, 10 half-page cards, and 3 bookmarks. These are designed to be used as reminders for the reader or to share with others who need the encouragement of God’s Word for faith, hope, and love.
Index of Artists
An index of all the artwork is included that includes the names of all the artists and the pages where their artwork can be found. While I like knowing all the artists, this list would be more useful to me if it included Scripture references.
Matching Journal
The NIV Radiant Virtues Bible Gift Set includes a nice coordinating journal. This is great for those who don’t like writing in their Bible or who need more room.
The journal has a thick board cover and the double ring spirals through square holes.
The paper is thick, white, and fairly typical of nice journals.
Every few pages have either Faith, Hope, or Love and the phrase “What are you doing to be radiant today” printed at the top.
There are 13 full-color pictures spaced fairly evenly throughout the journal.
The journal also has a cardboard insert with a pocket on both sides bound into the front.
Comparisons
The Updated Beautiful Word Bible
This Bible has about the same footprint but is 1/2″ thinner than the updated NIV Beautiful Word Bible.
The paper seems to be about the same gsm in both so the main reason for the difference in thickness is the font size. The Updated Beautiful Word Bible has a font that is nearly 2 points larger than what is in the Radiant Virtues Bible.
Some of the artwork is the same but not all. The Updated Beautiful Word Bible does not contain any line art or any devotionals.
NIV Beautiful Word Coloring Bible
The Beautiful Word Coloring Bible is also 1/2″ thicker than the Radiant Virtues Bible but it has a smaller font, seven point instead of eight.
The reason it is thicker is that the paper is thicker, which is nice because you might want to use more types of art mediums since all of the illustrations are line art.
Again some of the artwork is the same and some are different.
All three are nice Bibles with the main deciding factors being how large of a print do you need, do you want devotionals included, and do you prefer colored artwork, the artwork you can color yourself, or a combination of the two.
Final Thoughts on the NIV Radiant Virtues Bible Gift Set
The NIV Radiant Virtues Bible Gift Set is a nice Bible and journal combo. It would make an excellent gift for anyone looking for a Bible with a devotional included. It would be especially nice for someone who has already been considering a Bible from the Beautiful Word Collection or who would benefit from the uplifting Faith, Hope, and Love theme.
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This Bible is available at (includes some affiliate links)
and many local Bible bookstores
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Photography by Lucinda Brown
Zondervan provided this Bible gift set in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to give a positive review, only an honest one. All opinions are my own.
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