Living by the Book/Living by the Book Workbook Set (40 page)

As I say, a concordance is probably the most essential tool to have for Bible study. If you don’t have anything else, get yourself a good concordance. It is well worth the investment.

As I say, a concordance is probably the most essential tool to have for Bible study. If you don’t have anything else, get yourself a good concordance. It is well worth the investment.

I’m amazed at how many people will use a Webster’s dictionary to look up words from a book or magazine article but never dream of consulting a Bible dictionary when they run into a strange word in the Bible. Bible dictionaries provide loads of helpful information on subjects in the text. There are some excellent ones on the market.

You see, in recent years a great deal of light has been shed on biblical studies, particularly as a result of archaeological discoveries. In fact, we know more about the Bible now than in all of the history of interpretation. Much of this knowledge is available to you in Bible dictionaries.

A classic is
An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words,
the life work of a scholar named W. E. Vine. Thanks to him, you don’t have to know Greek to study the New Testament, because he gives you the background of the words. He tells you what they mean, how they are used, and all of their variations. We’re going to use Vine in the next chapter when we talk about word studies.

Another, more recent work, and one that I use extensively, is
The New Bible Dictionary
, edited by Dr. J. D. Douglas. It is packed with helpful material. Suppose I come across the name “Babylon,” and I don’t know anything about Babylon. I look it up and discover all kinds of information. The book even has an illustration of a ziggurat, which was a worship center. It also has a street map showing the city’s layout. That kind of input becomes enormously valuable in interpreting passages such as Genesis 11 (the Tower of Babel), and books such as Nehemiah, Daniel, and Revelation.

Again, suppose I run across the term “Ark of the Covenant.” What was that? Consulting a Bible dictionary, I learn that it was a box that was used in Hebrew worship, in a place called the Holy of Holies. There is a lot more to
the story. But the term “ark” is also used of Noah’s ark, the vessel that carried Noah and his family and all of the animals through the flood. Yet I’ve known people to see a picture of the box the Ark of the Covenant—and say, “No way. You couldn’t get all of the animals in that thing.” But if they had looked it up, they would know that there were two different arks.

A related resource to the Bible dictionary is a Bible handbook. It is sort of a one-volume encyclopedia.

I frequently use
Eerdmans’ Handbook to the Bible
. It is beautifully done with four-color photography and covers more than three hundred important biblical events. It goes book by book through the entire Bible, providing all kinds of background material.

For instance, maybe you want to know something about coins and money. The biblical text mentions the drachma and the denarius. What were these units of exchange? You can look them up and discover their modern equivalents.

Or maybe you want to know about clothing and shoes. What did the biblical characters wear? What did their clothes look like? What were they made of? You can consult
The Handbook of Life in Bible Times
and find out.

How about food? There are many passages in which food is mentioned, but it was altogether different than the food we have today. You can look it up and find a whole section on food and drink, on food and its preparation.

After you consult a resource such as this and get the background, you start to find all kinds of insights into the Scriptures that eluded you before. This kind of detail makes the Word of God come alive.

Geography is one of the most helpful sciences to Bible study. And yet most people completely bypass the significance of place in the account. For instance, the cities that Paul visited—Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome—are just dots on a page to most readers. Yet these were major metropolitan centers with populations in the hundreds of thousands, every bit as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as any in our country today.

I spoke with a professor at an Ivy League school recently. “What do you teach?” I asked him.

“English literature.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “How are you making out?”

He said, “It’s the worst assignment I’ve ever had.”

“Why?”

“Because my students come with no knowledge of the Bible,” he explained. “
How
in the world can you study English lit without a background in the English Bible?”

Good question. In an earlier generation, that was considered a part of basic knowledge. Today, we are without it. That’s one reason why you need to have a good atlas. It fills in the story behind the places mentioned in Scripture.

One of my favorites is the
Moody Atlas of Bible Lands
. It’s a beautiful presentation, with pictures and diagrams. It tells about various things such as the climates and soils of the Middle East. It gives you some idea of the topography. For instance, when we looked at the stilling of the storm in Mark 4, we said that the Sea of Galilee was 690 feet or more below sea level. Where do you learn that? In a resource such as the
Moody Atlas
.

Another useful reference is the
Zondervan Pictorial Bible Atlas
. In the center it has transparent overlays for the maps that add pertinent information to the basic geography. There’s also the
Macmillan Bible Atlas
, which is probably the most scholarly and accurate, based on up-to-date discoveries.

A good study Bible will have maps included in the back. But if you really want to investigate the geographical context, invest in a comprehensive atlas.

Have you ever sat under the teaching of someone who has mastered a portion of the Word and thought,
Wow, wouldn’t I like to have him sitting beside me next time I come to the Scriptures
. Well, a commentary does essentially that. It offers you the insights of someone who has perhaps spent his whole life studying the text. A commentary can’t do your study for you, but it certainly is an excellent means of evaluating your own study.

There is no end to the number of commentaries available, especially on popular books such as the Psalms, the gospels, Romans, and so forth. But how
do you know where to begin? I suggest that if you are just starting out in the process and just starting to build your library of tools, get a good, single-volume, general commentary—one that covers one or both of the Testaments in one, or at the most, two volumes.

A helpful tool with which I’m familiar is the
Bible Knowledge Commentary
, produced by several members of the faculty at Dallas Theological Seminary, where I teach. It comes in two volumes, one on the Old Testament and one on the New. It covers every book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. For every book it presents the background in terms of the author and purpose, an outline, and a discussion of the text, particularly the difficult passages.

In addition to a general commentary, you may want to consult a specific commentary on an individual book of the Bible. For instance, a series called the
Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
includes a volume on Ecclesiastes. Did you ever bump your head on the ceiling of that book? Maybe you’ve even been asked to teach it, but you didn’t know enough about it to teach it. A little commentary such as that one can help you get your bearings.

Perhaps, though, you’re ready for something a little deeper, with a little more detail. You might try the
Expositor’s Bible Commentary
, a twelve-volume series by Frank Gaebelein. You can start with one volume to suit your study needs at the moment, and then add to the collection as you work your way through the books of the Bible.

Commentaries can be a blessing and a curse. The downside is the tendency to start depending on them rather than familiarizing yourself with the biblical text. There’s nothing wrong with commentaries, but remember that ultimately they are just one person’s opinion. They are certainly not inspired.

At the same time, a scholar who has spent a lifetime investigating the biblical text can frequently get you past the barriers to understanding. His comments can also help you evaluate your own personal study.

I could go on and on listing secondary resources and study helps. For instance, there are several periodicals on archaeology available, such as
Biblical Archaeology Review
. They are written at the popular level and have invaluable information on research affecting biblical studies.

Another fruitful area for secondary study is the vast collection of literature that survives from the biblical era. Contemporaneous histories, political theory, law, poetry, and drama fill in a lot of detail about the cultures of the day. In this connection, you might also want to consult historical studies by more recent scholars, such as Will Durant’s studies of Rome and Greece, or Alfred Edersheim’s classic,
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
. Another fascinating look at comparative history is Bernard Grun’s
The Timetables of History
, which is a giant time line spanning the centuries.

You can find more tools listed in the back of the book under “Additional Resources.”

An absolute ocean of valuable resources is available to you, both in print and on-line. So where do you get started? Which ones should you go to first?

I suggest you start with a good study Bible and a companion concordance. For my money, those are crucial. If those were all you had, you would already be in good shape. You would have the text of Scripture and a list of all the words. So you could navigate freely among the passages, using the skills you’ve learned in Observation and Interpretation.

Then, if you obtained a good Bible dictionary, a Bible handbook, an atlas, and a simple, one-volume commentary, you’d be in business. You’d have the basic tools of the trade, a basic library with which to work. You could add to it as time goes by, and you could supplement those materials through on-line searches. But you’d have some good resources to start with.

A word of warning, though, as you power up those tools: Beware of relying too much on secondhand information. The use of extrabiblical resources should never be a substitute for personal Bible study, but rather a stimulus for it. The order is always the same: First the Word of God; then secondary sources.