The Essential IVP Reference Collection. (Briefly Noted).

The Essential IVP Reference Collection. (InterVarsity, $169.99). This CD-Rom contains thirteen large volumes published previously by InterVarsity, plus several English versions of the Bible. The monographs include a one-volume commentary, seven Bible dictionaries (primarily focused on the NT), a Bible Background Commentary on each testament (relating the text to the ancient world), an atlas, a treatment of the "hard sayings" of the Bible, and a dictionary of Biblical Imagery. IVP tends to be on the conservative side, especially evident in the fundamentalist solutions to the "hard sayings," but the various dictionaries contain essays by well-known Lutheran exegetes like Frederick Danker and Robert Smith, and many of the evangelicals are of world-class stature--James Dunn (on Romans), Ralph Martin, I. Howard Marshall, and F. F. Bruce. The price is right, though it remains to be seen how pastors and others will take to a library in electronic form.