Bijbel Shopping

I went to Selexyz Donner today, in the search for a Dutch Bible, specifically for a Statenvertaling Bijbel (or Authorized Version: the approximate equivalent in construction, date, and authority to the King James Version).  Selexyz Donner is one of the largest bookstores around.  It sells new and used books, music, cds, etc., and has a restaurant as well.  The store literature says that there are 10 floors of books but when I went only 9 floors had books--the top floor was under construction.  They had piles of "Asterix and Obelix" books in Dutch (and by the way, in Dutch the little dog's name is Idefix, like it ought to be), along with tons of other comic books.  The also had shelves and shelves of maps for every bit of Europe and every bit of the Netherlands--for seeing while walking, while biking, while driving, and while riding trains.  You can also buy cardboard model kits to build some of the famous buildings of Rotterdam, including the slanty-sided one that I saw on the way in to town.

 The "religion" section was pretty small, compared to what you would see in an American bookstore and Christian books are all shelved under "theologie," not religion, and that section is also quite small.  However, I did find Bruce Gordon's new book Calvin in paperback and WAY cheaper than the price I got it for this spring.  They also had Joel Bekke's book Calvinisme in Dutch--I could not figure out whether this was a book that was written in Dutch or if it was merely a translation of an English book.

I was not able to find a Statenvertaling Bijbel after all.  All they had was the Herziene Statenvertaling Bijbel which is the significantly altered 2010 revision of the original.  It does not have a very good reputation with Bible scholars, though, so I passed.  They did have a version which the New Testament of both versions side by side and even I could see that there were significant changes in translations.

There are a couple of Christian bookshops around town so I will probably stop at one of them when I get a chance, to see if they have the right Bible.  I would have started with one of them except that they are kind of far away, on different tram lines, and it has been raining.

I did buy a map of Rotterdam, though, since Zuid Rotterdam, where I live, is too far away to be included on the free maps that the University hands out to new students.  The map is pretty massive and would definitely be difficult to try to read on a street corner somewhere (it is about the size of a wall map) but it will be handy for planning purposes.  Since I couldn't find the maps at first, I decided to practice my Dutch:

"Heeft u een Rotterdam kaartje, alstublieft?" I asked.
"Say that again?" replied the store clerk in English.





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