Pocket Bibles

Many useful pocket editions of the Bible have been published by the Pocket Testament League:  www.ptl.org

The one that particularly connected with my Three Books and my Route66Adventure the 4 (or 5) Corners version was the below one “Freedom” and the Gospel of John.

Of particular, initial interest, are the three individuals that encounter Jesus in John Chapters 3 (Nicodemus), 4 (The Samaritan Woman at the Well), and 5 (The Paralytic Man at the Pool).

Nicodemus (after whom my Triumph has been named) was capable, important, and powerful, but he did not know God; he is an example of a man lost in his religion.  The nnamed Samaritan Woman was lost morally, a bookend opposite of Nicodemus in many ways.  The unnamed Paralytic was lost both in terms of his physical abilities but even more significantly in his social relationships (all physically deformed people were thought to be so because of God’s judgment on their particularly heinous sin) and in his self-perception (it isn’t clear whether he really wanted to be healed, given that his paralysis was an essential aspect of his self-perception).

Below are the passages from John on these three individuals.

You can access the entire Pocket edition by a service of the Pocket Testament League, here: