|TOP|The winners of this year’s 2006 Christian Book Awards have been announced by the international Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA).

As the highest-ranking book among the category winners, the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer) scooped the award for the 2006 Christian Book of the Year.

The book has already won the 2006 Christianity Today Book Awards earlier this year in the Biblical Studies Category, with Christianity Today’s editors describing the dictionary as a “landmark volume for the church’s engagement with Scripture”.

Other book award winners were:
• Bibles -- The Message Numbered Edition by Eugene H. Peterson (NavPress,
ISBN 1576836738, Pub Date: October 2005)
• Christian Life -- A Sacred Sorrow by Michael Card (NavPress, ISBN
1576836673, Pub Date: February 2005)
• Children & Youth -- Teen Virtue by Vicki Courtney (B&H Publishing Group,
ISBN 0805430563, Pub Date: April 2005)
|AD|• Fiction -- The Ezekiel Option by Joel Rosenberg (Tyndale House Publishers,
ISBN 1414303432, Pub Date: July 2005)
• Inspiration & Gift -- Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success by John Wooden and
Jay Carty (Regal, ISBN 0830736794, Pub Date: March 2005)


"These six winners represent the wide variety of excellent books available from Christian publishers," says Mark Kuyper, President of ECPA.

"From contemporary page-turner fiction to significant theological works, the Christian Book Awards recognize the best within our industry. ECPA publishers are producing more varied and sophisticated titles than ever before, as proven by this list of winners."
The Christian Book Awards were established in 1978 as the Gold Medallion Book Awards by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

The books are awarded based on excellence in content, literary quality, design, and significance of contribution.

The Christian Book Awards are one of the oldest and most prestigious awards programmes in the religious publishing industry.