bob gets bloggy

Online Tools of the Bible Interpreter: Bible Handbook/Dictionary

For a Bible Handbook/Dictionary, a good one is built into the study tools at net.bible.org so you don’t really have to look much further if you use NetBible as your study Bible.  Even if you don’t use NetBible, this is a good link to use for looking up proper names, place names, theological terms, and so on.

It is also good to be aware of Theopedia, or more formally, the Online Encyclopedia of Biblical Christianity: http://www.theopedia.com (This site gets into systematic theology and in some places is extremely Calvinist, but still evangelical).  Theopedia is more tightly controlled and strictly edited than Wikipedia, but it is growing in coverage of useful topics. 

Online Tools of the Bible Interpreter: Atlas

The next tool on the list is an Atlas of Bible-relevant geography. In addition to the Online Bible Atlas there are lots of maps online, and Google can help you find them.  Note: Check the time period you are researching and try to find a map of that time so that the Bible-era names will match up.  Once you do, it’s often interesting to check the same piece of geography in Google Earth to see how it relates to the present.

Online Tools of the Bible Interpreter: Concordance

A Concordance is used mainly for word studies, as explained in the article on Tools.  For the same purpose I would prefer to use the “universal search” box on the left side of the net.bible.org page (by doing a search for the same word I would look up in a concordance).  For word studies, one can also use the KJV with Strong’s links from the same page. 

• For a more normal (if smaller) concordance, there is one at the ibs.org site. 
• There are Greek and Hebrew Lexicons at http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/.  The Greek Lexicon will accomodate searching on English words and Strong’s numbers as well as Greek words.
• A good choice for offline use is a PDF-format concordance you can download from http://septuagint-interlinear-greek-bible.com/ and free updates are still available for download there as of this writing (May 2008).

Online Tools of the Bible Interpreter: a Study Bible

The tools of a Bible interpreter are always available when you are online if you know what you are looking for (with Google around, you hardly even need to know where to look, though it does help to memorize some URLs).

For a Study Bible, I suggest remembering the address net.bible.org so that you don’t have to look it up.  The NETBible is there, along with a few other translations. 
There are many other options online.  I like the book introductions from the NIV Study Bible, as well as the following additional web pages that do certain things well.

• http://bible.crosswalk.com/ includes more Bible versions than the NETBible site, including the NIV, and has links to other tools.  However, the interface seems a bit more difficult to use than that of the NETBible.
• http://zhubert.com/ has the strongest tools for working with New Testament Greek.  Not everyone needs this, but if you’ve spent time learning Greek, here’s a good way to keep learning and using it after college.
  
• http://bible.lifeway.com/crossmain.asp has the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is accurate but also easy to read.  It’s good to be familiar with this site because of its links to many other tools.
  
• http://www.biblegateway.com/ includes a number of languages, including Kiswahili.

Tools of the Bible Interpreter

While teaching in Assemblies of God Bible College in Tanzania, I ran into the issue of some students not practicing what they learned in class.  A major cause was that after leaving campus, they didn’t have the Bible study tools they needed to continue.  I organized a course to teach how to use computers and online tools to fill this gap.  Now I want to share the same information here for others who may be able to benefit from it.

As a starting point, here’s a link to an article: The Tools of a Good Interpreter

The list of basic tools mentioned in that article will guide the posts that follow in this series.  If you think of others that need to be included, please leave your suggestions in the comments.