"Coming Soon...

Coming soon to the Mantis Bible Store:

...John MacArthur New Testament Commentaries (28 Volumes) "



I noticed this footnote while browsing the Bible Store.
Is this great resource going to be released in the immediate future, or is it still a ways off?

Thanks

Jeff

It's very close. We'll be releasing it in groups of volumes.

The first release(s) could be as soon as this weekend, or as long as a week away.

Thanks!

We released a huge set of MacArthur New Testament Commentary volumes today -- 17 in all. Check 'em out!

I was very excited to make the purchase!

I am having some navigation problems, however.
It doesn't appear that the Commentaries are in any way linked to the Bible verse.; i.e. it operates as a separate book. I thought all Bible commentaries are linked to the selected verse.

Secondly, even within the book it is extremely difficult to find the commentary for a particular verse or passage. Each book is broken down into many "parts," but there is no way to know what passage/verse each part corresponds to. It is like hit and miss guesswork trying to find comments to a particular verse.

Am I missing something obvious?

Jeff

No, you're not missing anything. The "Parts" are the chapters each print volume is broken into (we may change the name back to "Chapters", I'm not sure.)

As it says in the description of each MacArthur Commentary, we had to implement these as "Books" instead of the normal Mantis Commentaries. This is because MacArthur can write many many pages on a single verse, and it would be pretty impossible to navigate through the commentary for a verse if we did it the other way (you'd scroll on forever with no "break".)

We will be updating the commentary series, however, in the near future, to help this situation. One idea we are working with is a free "pointer" book that acts as a commentary which has links to the relevant portions of each Mac Commentary. You could install this and then it'll show up in the Analyze Verse screen, giving you links to where the commentary is found.

The other thing we'll be trying to do is to create an overview page for each volume showing what is covered by each one, a table-of-contents as it were.

Each "part" corresponds to a passage within a chapter.
Couldn't you just link the Bible verse with the beginning of the corresponding passage in the commentary?

Obviously it is too long for Analyze Verse or inline viewing, but couldn't the commentary be accessed directly?
This is how Olive Tree handles this commentary.

Thanks

Jeff

We have just updated all the headers to make it easier to navigate each MNTC volume. Just tap "Check for Updates", then "Get Updates" and restart the app when finished.

This should help quite a bit.

That definitely helps.

Thanks,

Jeff

I am still having a very hard time navigating within the MNTC and now with the Pillar NTC.
Adding the headings helped a little, however it is still extremely difficult to find commentary on a particular verse.

For example in the Pillar Commentary on Romans (PROM) there are 88 "Commentaries" or chapters which do not have a numerical correspondence to anything.
Within the Commentaries or chapters there are often dozens of subcommentaries or verses that also have no numerical correspondence.
It would seem that at the very least the chapters and verses could correspond with the Book; now it is so confusing.

To go back and forth between the Bible and the Commentary is almost impossible.
Even if you only go "straight ahead" in the commentary, my previous place is not specifically remembered.

It seems that even though the commentaries are often very long, it would be preferable to connect them to the verse like the other commentaries; or at least make it a user option.
The Guzik Commentary, Wuest Word Studies, CWS, etc. are often extremely long, yet very manageable as commentaries linked to the text; particularly with the shake to close feature.

It is very frustrating to have the fantastic ( and expensive) resource that is so difficult to use.

I hope I do not sound too negative in my comments.
This is really the only flaw I see in an otherwise amazing program.

Jeff

We are working on a free update that is a volume that ties these collections to the Bible text. Thus you would have a volume called MNTC that would contain links between all NT verses and the related MacArthur Commentary entries.

We hope to have these available for MNTC and PNTC in the coming months.

Thanks

That would be a welcome addition.

Correction: we hope to have these available in the coming weeks, not months.

Great!