Understanding the Tools we use for bible study

1. Text

We need a good medium for study.  This could be an online bible, a physical bible, a printed out copy of the passage under study or an electronic version in something like a "Word"document.   While you can do some anotations in your personal bible it is difficult to complete a full study with concludsions in a published bible.   

I prefer to either have a double spaced printed page that I can mark up or an electronic file like a word document.    In the last ten years or so I have used a Word document that is accessable on my phone, tablet or computer.   Prior to that I would copy and past and then print out the text under study so that I could mark it up.   

Either way you want to have lots of room for the various notes that you will be making.

Obviously you should have a good study bible in a version that you can read and understand easily.    I highly recomend the NIV as a good starting point.   Reading other versions is helpful also to see how the various translators have chosen to express what was written in the origional language.   Each version of the bible was made for a paticular purpose and it is good to understand when an why a version was developed.

2. Marking up device

Refering to the previous chapter we need to have a means to make the anotations and comments.   If you are using a physical piece of paper then I would suggest the following.   

Highlighters

Coloured Pencils

If you are going to be working on a computer then you need to become familiar with how to use the electronic Highlighters as well as the comments functions.   This amounts to the same thing as with a physical sheet of paper.

In both instances you will need a way to quickly mark something that catches your eye and also a means to make a note on a word or phrase.

3. One volume Commentary

Haveing a one volume commentary of the whole bible is essential.  Often study bibles have one of these built in.   We do need to be careful of any  commentarys because the moment you read any of them you have limited your own imagination and perhaps spiritual inspiration.   There is a place and time for commentaries and we will use them a couple of times in the process.

4. Bible Dictionary

Again many study bibles today come with built in bible dictionarys.   These are essential to understand biblical ideas and history.   The internet is also full of information that can be used to understand a bit more about a word, concept, place or object etc.   We must be careful however with using unverified sources like the internet.

5. Bible Atlas

There is nothing like having a map to show you where you are.   Often physical location will give us clues as to what the context is.   The thing about bible maps is that they are different for each time period.   The map from the time before Abraham will look very different from one that depicts St. Pauls journays.

Maps can be found in books, online and in the back of most good study bibles.

6. Critical Commentary

Going beond the one volume commentary is the critical commentary.   These are usually published in one or two volumes per book of the bible.   They will have a vast range of theological perspective and you will need to have somethign of an understanding of where the author is coming from.  i.e.  conservative, radical, modern, liberal, universal etc.

That being said there is a point in the study where a reading of all the commentaries that you can get your hands on will give you an idea of every interpretation that has ever been made of the passage under study.   

If your interpretation does not fall somewhere on the continum then you might want to check your work.

7. Concordance

A concordance is a kind of reverse index of all the words in the bible.   You can look up a word and then find all the occourances of it in the bible.   The basic one that has been used for yeasrs is "Strongs Concordance"  with todays electronic aids it is easy to do this with any of the bible sites on the internet.     We use this tool if we are looking for where a subject or word has been used before.