Many believers develop a desire to study the Bible deeply. Over the centuries dedicated scholars
have worked to discover everything they possibly could about Holy Scripture. Much of it is now
available to you online at no cost, or in downloadable software, or in print.
I predict that you as a new believer, if you pursue Bible study, will be positively astonished
by the depth and breadth of helpful tools which are provided from the generosity of Christians
all over the Earth.
The Good News is so good, believers feel compelled to share whatever they can with others.
Thank God for them all and may He bless them and their efforts to help you come fully into the
Kingdom and live the abundant life Christ came to bestow upon you.
"I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."
[ John 10:10 New King James Version ]
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Bible Concordance
A concordance is a word index of the Bible. It contains every word (excluding articles a, the, etc) that appears
in the Bible's text. For each occurrence of a word, it gives the book, chapter, and verse in which it appears.
For example, if I want to know how many times the word 'death' occurs in the Bible, I enter the word 'death' in
the concordance search window and find out it occurs 372 times in 342 verses in the KJV and I see a list of
every occurrence. For this demonstration I used the free Strong's Concordance at http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html.
I have owned Strong's and Cruden's in hard copy but now with the ease of using a computer I no longer need
to search through heavy books.
The most famous one, Cruden's Concordance was the work of Alexander Cruden first published in 1738. [wikipedia].
Next would be Strong's Exhaustive Concordance first published in 1890. The task these people undertook was enormous.
The work had to be done by hand, word by word, without the aid of computers. Can you imagine the perseverance it required ?
Only for the love of God and fellow man would anyone perform such a task.
There are many concordances keyed to various language translations. One of the most astonishing Bible web sites
is http://bibletab.com/. Here you see a reduced image of the site's home page.
Look at the number of flags across the top and the tabs offering all sorts of tools and helps.
Each flag represents a different available language.
Bible Commentaries
It's name tells you what it is ... someone's comments on the Scriptures.
The best known is Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible Unabridged available for viewing online at
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc.i.html or you can purchase it in book form. The commentary is basically a verse by verse
or passage by passage analysis with references to other sources and documents.
From wikipedia.org: "Henry's well-known Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708–1710) is a commentary of a
practical and devotional rather than of a critical kind, covering the whole of the Old Testament, and the Gospels and Acts in the
New Testament. After the author's death, the work was finished by a number of ministers, and edited by G. Burder and John Hughes in 1811.
Not a work of textual criticism, its attempt at good sense, discrimination, its high moral tone and simple piety with practical
application, combined with the well-sustained flow of its English style, made it one of the most popular works of its type.
Matthew Henry's six volume Complete Commentary, originally published in 1706, provides an exhaustive verse by verse
study of the Bible. His commentaries are still in use to this day. Henry's commentaries are primarily exegetical, dealing with
the scripture text as presented. Henry's prime intention was explanation, not translation or textual research."
At http://www.christnotes.org/commentary.php you can explore John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes .
John Wesley [1703-1791]. Wesley believed that each person could be saved by faith in God. Methodism in both forms was a
highly successful evangelical movement in the United Kingdom, which encouraged congregants to experience Christ personally.
(extract from article at wikipedia.org).
Bible Dictionaries
http://www.biblestudytools.net/Dictionaries/SmithsBibleDictionary/ offers all of these dictionaries:
Baker's Evangelical dictionary of Biblical Theology
Easton's Bible Dictionary
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary
Jack Van Impe's Dictionary of Prophecy Terms
King James Dictionary
Smith's Bible Dictionary
Vine's Expository Dictionary can be accessed at http://www2.mf.no/bibel/vines.html.
Nave's Topical Bible online is at http://www.bible-history.com/naves/.
This remarkable work enables you to look up a topic and see relevant Bible passages pertaining to it.
Bible Atlases
You want to know where things are now or were in 2,000 BC in the Middle East ? Want to see where
Paul's journeys took him ? What area comprised the Kingdoms under different rulers ? All this and more is readily
available in historical Maps of the Bible.
Here are a couple to get you started:
http://www.godweb.org/atlasindex.htm Online Bible Atlas
http://bibleatlas.org/ Bible Maps for every OT and NT location.
Summation
The above list is not exhaustive. Because the Bible is the most important document ever created, millions of people have labored
to provide help and insight to anyone who desires to have it. At the end of these help pages I will give you a list of all the links
I have listed. Every site will have additional links on it. You can spend every hour of every day doing nothing but Bible study if
you want to but that is not what God calls you to do. He calls you to believe in the One He has sent.
Here is a useful bit of information. At wikipedia.org you can look up a topic in many languages. For example, I looked up
'Matthew Henry' and found a fine article about him. Down the left side of the page is a list of languages. I clicked on
the Francais link and in a flash the entire article was presented to me in the French language.
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