JPS Torah Commentary (available via Logos)
This multi-volume set provides an invaluable opportunity for Christians reading the Old Testament. The JPS commentary offers Jewish exegesis from the Tanakh (the Jewish name for the Hebrew Bible). This resource gives insight we might easily miss with our own readings, and it also provides a wonderful resource for dialogue with our Jewish friends.
These volumes are most readily available via the Logos Bible Software program. If you don’t own Logos, you should. Base packages are affordable, and they even give away a free book download each month (available at logos.com/FBOTM). Can you imagine having whole shelves of your book case empty, with your reference books now loaded on your laptop, iPad or phone?
Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life, Jack Levinson (Paraclete)
If you’ve struggled finding a book on the Holy Spirit that was thoughtful, richly theological, accessible and imaginative, you’ve found it. Levinson, a theologian at Seattle Pacific University, provides a great gift in his exploration of the Old and New Testaments’ teaching on the Spirit. This is no dry treatise, but words alive — words both insightful and inciting.
Winn Collier (www.winncollier.com) is pastor of All Souls, a congregation with Baptist ties in Charlottesville, Va. He is a columnist and the author of three books.