Bibles Bible Studies Books

This edition of he Bible is excellent. There are comprehensive notes alongside the text, which makes them easy to find. The maps are very useful and the dictionary/encyclopedia would certainly be of value to someone who had not had extensive knowledge of the Catholic Faith. I am reliably told that the translation is extremely accurate - I am not a linguist, so cannot verify this myself, but it is certainly in good English which is pleasingly expressed. It is a very good edition of the Bible for someone wishing to gain deeper knowledge of God's relationship with man, particularly through the person of Jesus Christ. Finally, it is exceedingly good value for money!

This bible has explanatory footnotes with cross-reference to other passages. It is in a easily-read type. Each book has an introductory section which gives an overview and historical context.

This is a good book for the money. It has good transliteration, and it gives a short definition of the word. You will not find every word in the Bible in this book because of its size, but the book is well worth the money. It is a little tricky trying using the index if you are not familiar with the Hebrew alphabet.

As others have said, this is a terrific vocabulary builder, containing both Hebrew and Aramaic words. The back contains an index which I have found wonderfully helpful as an aid to finding the root in drop-letter or hollow verbs. Sometimes BDB gives far too much information. The one minor flaw is that feminine nouns aren't identified as such

This book is a great list for those students who wish to build their vocabulary in order to gain a greater understanding to the bible. This book is not a dictionary and don't try to use it as such. The words are broken into sections according to the frequency in which they occur in the bible. The more frequent a word occurs the closer to the front they will appear. The words are not in alphabetic order. However, if you wish to improve your vocabulary quickly by learning the most useful words than this book is for you.

Life is triage. We all must choose how to do the most in a short amount of time. A Student's Vocabulary for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic helps by presenting the words used most frequently in the Hebrew Bible. Using this book, students of Biblical Hebrew can learn first the words that they most need to learn. If only other tasks in life came so splendidly prioritized!

If you are interested in a similarly prioritized audio vocabulary builder for Biblical Hebrew, consider Old Testament Hebrew Vocabulary: Learn on the Go. Learning by reading differs from learning by hearing, so you may find it most productive to use both products concurrently. For a somewhat prioritized audio vocabulary for Modern Hebrew, consider Vocabulearn Hebrew: Level 1 (Language Power), Hebrew/English: Level 1: VocabuLearn: Original Format, Vocabulearn Hebrew Level 1 (VocabuLearn), or VocabuLearn: Hebrew, Level 1 (all four different formats of the same basic product).

All these products are variations on flashcards. For more conventional paper flashcards (also prioritized), consider Old Testament Hebrew Vocabulary Cards (ZONDERVAN VOCABULARY BUILDER SERIES) or Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Cards or Modern Hebrew Vocabulary Cards: Academic Study Card Set.

This is a good little book, if used the right way. I put it to use the best way I could -- which is to say that I typed in the text into a neat little program called Vocab and used it to drill myself to death. Behold me, well nigh translated to death!

This book is wonderfully detailed, and reader friendly. I enjoyed it so much that I am purchasing its companions for both the Old & the rest of the New Testament.

After having read most of better than a dozen books on NT survey, background, introduction, etc. Over the past few years this is perhaps the very best.

If I were building a church library and could afford only one book of this kind, I would without a doubt choose this book. It has a great balance of background material and commentary, but leaves the reader with essay and research questions that are challenging, yet "doable".

If you wish to LEARN about your faith and really grapple with the issues involved in understanding the Gospels, this is a book that will quench your thirst.

This book is an excellent introduction to the world of New Testament scholarship. Having gone to Christian schools my entire life, including college, I have seen "New Testament Survey" type books. I thought there couldn't possibly be any benefit from going through yet another New Testament survey as I'd heard it all before. But this rises above the rest. It opened my eyes to a whole new world of biblical studies that I had no idea existed.

Set up like any survey of the gospels and Acts, it delves deeper as it interacts with current scholarly debates and introduces you to the major players and important terminology used by scholars. After reading this book, you feel as if something has been hidden from you your whole life. As if they thought you were too dumb to be able to handle serious research into the historical Jesus and the early church.

This book isn't like that as it brings you into the conversation. I now have a voracious appetite for biblical scholarship and have read some of the greatest books of my life since reading this one. This book book started me on an incredibly influential path theologically and I'd recommend it to anyone who needs a bridge from the basics you learn through church, your own reading, and Sunday school to the gigantic and helpful world of NT scholarship.

After I mentioned just a little bit about a couple of comments this book made about the third chapter in Genesis, I had three people wanting to borrow it. This is a serious study. I appreciate that much of the commentary relates to a direct literal study of the Hebrew (even though it has poetic interpretations in the same book). Well worth the money.

Ardent feminists will love this book. Moderate ones may think it goes too far in emphasizing the significance of women in the Torah. The commentaries and the literary entries are excellent and the format is easily accessible. I would not recommend reading this commentary alone, without a less egalitarian version at one's side. Comparisons are always valid. I especially like the non-gendered usage, which doesn't hammer the reader over the head but makes its point nicely.

I bought this for my wife, a theology major. She has been very excited about the book, finding it scholarly, well researched and a new approach to the Torah from women's point of view. There are many significant insights to be gained from this work.

Wow! This is such a beautiful commentary on Judaism's holiest text. I love the symphony of voices that flow through this book. Not only are comments meaningful and well written but the general oranization of the book is wonderful. I am man who loves Torah and all of the commentaries that it produces. This volume will sit proudly on my bookself next Rashi, Hirsch, Sforno, Ramban, etc. I am recommending this commentary to every Rabbi I know regardless of affiliation. Even if the price is a stretch for you, buy this book because you won't be sorry.

The Torah: A Women's Commentary is a compilation of the most recent Torah scholarship that also includes a woman's perspective. Introductory essays by Carol Meyers, Judith R. Baskin and Ellen Umansky are outstanding in orienting the reader to the world of Torah history and post biblical analysis. Alterative perspectives enrich this multi-dimential effort. This volume produced by the Women of Reform Judaism makes me proud to be a scholar and a Jew.

This practical guide helps the sermon exegete from a number of excellent angles. For example, the author provides a glimpse at how to arrange the minor prophets with the major prophets in the OT by timeline or by themes for preaching.

I will write more as I dig into this tool. For now, let me say that what I have seen is very helpful and I'm glad I bought a copy.

I am taking Dr. Walton for an Ancient Near Eastern course at Wheaton. I find him to be an excellent teacher. His knowledge of the subject and his style of communication help open up whole new worlds of understanding for the Old Testament. I think anything he has written is probably worth owning if you are a bible teacher or preacher.

After reading dozens of reviews on Bible dictionaries, I settled on Eerdmans to add to my graduate-student library. Later, I found that two of my professors in my graduate program were contributors. I found this to be an excellent resource; I used it for a number of exegesis papers (biblical interpretation, etc., etc.) and found the entries to be both adequate and concise. For a one-volume dictionary (as opposed to the New Interpreter's series...part of which is forthcoming), this is a very fine choice. In fact, a fellow student who had access to several reputable dictionaries except for this one asked me to look several things up for her: none of her sources had entries, but Eerdmans did. So, whether you are looking for one main dictionary for your library or another addition to add to your collection, this is an excellent choice.

Generally speaking the book contains a great deal of historical biblical informations and is to some degree an assest to bible study. However, the overall flavor of this book seems not to be faith based. The perspective approach is a scholarly one but at times lacks a critical ingredient for believers. Small matters of disagreement between historians (such as whether the book Matthew or Mark was written first)seem to indicate that much of the writing is from a historians viewpoint vs that of a believer.

I purchased it for an incarcerated felon at the Christian Prison in Richmond, TX. The Chuck Colson Prison Fellowship Ministries 18 month pre-pelease program of "Inner-Change Freedom Initiative (IFI)" is conducted at the Carol Vance (Jester 3) Unit of TDCJ. I mentor ex-offenders prior to release and 6 months after. He says: "I use it daily".

Excellent one volume bible dictionary. Treats a tremendouse amount of topics from books of the bible to people, places and things in the bible, and more. Probably the best one volume bible dictionary available. Very up to date research backs the articles, pespectives range from moderate to conservative.

This is indeed a great resource, but I find the print a bit to small. The print should have been a bit bigger. I use this volume alongside my New Internation Bible Dictionary and Wycliffe Bible Dictionary. They are all good.

But I value the most recent scholarship in Eerdmans. A great buy!

My Mother, Anne loved this book that I gave her as a gift, since she has started Bible Study!!

Johnna

This workbook is a great way to get introduced to the entire bible and the background of the bible. Of course there is so much more to learn, but this workbook is a great start especially with a group.

This study is good for beginners; folks who 'just want to get started'. It's simple and provides a good outline for the studier to follow. If you're looking for more than a guide through the Bible; or somthing that provokes deeper thought, you may want to keep looking.

I thought (stupid me, for thinking) that this book would cover each book of the bible and allow for deeper understanding of each book. Oh no, not the case at all. The book has you read a book of the bible, then the discussion talks about verses from other parts of the bible. I have gotten nothing out of this, and feel that I've completely wasted my money. I based my decision to purchase it on the customer reviews on this page. I don't know why people rated it so well, honestly I don't.

This book provides a good outline / general overview of the books of the bible based on a literary view. Definitely helped as an introduction to the bible. If you are looking for indepth study of each book of the bible you will want to find another study material but this is worth having in your bible study library.

the book did get to me faster than expected. however, it was the wrong edition. it will work for my class, but the picture on the website was not the book i bought. the picture is of the newer edition, which i needed and thought i was buying, but it really was the older edition. somewhat of an upset, but i guess it will have to do.

The book is well organized, highly researched, and well written, but very boring! It simply analyzes biblical literature to death and makes many of the not so interesting and not so well written parts of the Bible out to be much more than they really are. It's a bit like trying to make the phone book out to be a great piece of literature. It isn't. It is a good source of information and that's all. The Bible has some nice literary parts to it to be sure, but the author stretches the value of much of the literature in the Bible. Her focus on the mundane, was tedious, and left much to be desired. I would have much rather had her be less detailed and cover the more interesting and valid aspects of Biblical literature rather than trying to make even Geneologies and redundant historical accounts out to be more interesting than they really are. Frankly, many of the stories in the Bible are really not that well written and to try and make it seem as though they are is just delusion.

Ryken does well with his introduction to the Bible as literature. This work is clear and tight, the way such a book ought to be. Perhaps its greatest virtue is that it works within the traditional western categories of literature, explaining them all along (for those of us who don't remember everything from our school days!). As such, the ideas and terms will ring familiar, at least faintly, with most of us educated in the States, and it will offer a sound introduction to the Bible as literature.

With this said, though, perhaps the greatest weakness of this book is that same characteristic. Traditional categories are a good place to start, but the reader must, at some point, go beyond these into the more Hebrew-specific realm of reading. The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament truly is, despite some opinion, a masterful work, but to understand it as such one must become familiar with just how it works. Wonderfully, there are writers, such as Robert Alter and Adele Berlin, who have written well on precisely this topic.

In the end, this book is a great place to start. It offers a well-grounded foundation for reading the Bible literarily, and as long as the reader knows its strengths and limitations, it will serve him well.

As the author notes, the Bible is not a theological outline with proof texts attached. He states that we have been so preoccupied with the hermeneutical question of how to interpret what the Bible says that we have been left impoverished in techniques to describe and interact with the text itself. I have found this to be true in my life. This book brings out the richness of the Bible in introducing its literary forms and allowing the reader to get more out of the Bible as a result. It is a quick and interesting read which I recommend for any one interested in knowing more about this great book.

Despite the fact that Ryken seems more theologically conservative than I find tasteful, this book does a good job of making the Bible accessible to the average reader as a matter more of Western culture than Christian faith. The author's emphasis on literature underscores that the importance of the Bible lies in its ability to communicate by evoking an emotional experience in the reader.

However, as a product of Western literature, there are a few important points Ryken skips over: How can the Biblical stories clearly intended in the Bible as morality tales not become trite and manipulative to postmodern Western audiences? Does the use of metaphor in the Bible invite differing interpretations because each reader will have a different experience of the original metaphor? And perhaps, due to Ryken's Wheaton-based theology, he entirely fails to address overiding themes in the Bible such as the condemnation of hubris and exclusivity.

The Baker's commentary series is the best exegetical commentary I have found. I love it. Great background information, and the exegesis is right on point.

The `Baker Exegetical Commentary On The New Testament' for `Acts' or `Acts of the Apostles' by Darrell L. Bock, the research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary is a generally good commentary on one of the less well appreciated books of the New Testament. In the spectrum of commentaries which range from very pastoral - friendly such as the `New Interpreters' Bible' to the heavily scholarly volumes which are practically worthless for pastoral use, such as those in the `Word Biblical Commentary' series, Bock's volume falls about two - thirds of the way toward the scholarly side. The book's greatest strength, as well as its greatest weakness, is that it seeks to be a scholarly study of all the latest commentaries on `Acts', most especially the Anchor Bible contribution from Joseph Fitzmyer, the Sacra Pagina contribution from Luke Timothy Johnson, The New International Commentary on the New Testament volume by F. F. Bruce, and `The Acts of the Apostles, A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary' by Ben Witherington. In fact, Bock refers so often to Fitzmyer and Witherington that I seriously wonder what I'm doing reading Bock, when I can be getting the goods from the horse's mouth. Surveys of the best (and worst) of scholarly opinions are great, but such books become books about the research rather than books about the scripture. As I read Bock, I often find myself vainly seeking to find what Bock himself thinks about a passage. And, there are times when I find Bock expressing an original opinion, only to find other experts disagreeing with him, and I agree with the other writers.
One of the better reasons for picking Bock is that he also did a commentary on the Gospel of Luke, the first of the Luke - Acts combination, written by the same author. I have not used Bock's commentary on Luke, because those by Fitzmyer, Johnson, and Joel Green are so good, and, Fitzmyer and Johnson have also done commentaries on both works.
A `simple' reason for picking Bock is that his book is quite new, so it covers all the major works written in the last fifteen years. Another simple reason for picking Bock is that in addition to pointing out the good stuff, he gives us what we need to know to avoid the bad commentaries. But, both of these reasons are a bit weak. If you happen to read this review and go with Fitzmyer, Johnson, Witherington, or Bruce, you really don't need Bock at all.
Since I always find it best to work with at least two commentaries on scripture for my lay Bible study teaching, I strongly recommend Robert W. Wall's commentary in volume X of the New Interpreter's Bible plus either Fitzmyer or Witherington. If Johnson has a point, Fitzmyer will have it in spades. Wall is especially good for lay study, and Fitzmyer is a good partner, as Fitzmyer (or the 'Word Biblical Commentary' volume) will have all the study critical material Wall avoids.
Last but not least, I found the Baker style of presentation just a bit difficult to follow; however, I must commend them on excellent typefaces for their readability. Otherwise, this is a book almost exclusively for scholars and teachers of courses on `Acts'.

I have used a number of commentaries on Acts over the years. Previously my favorites were Haenchen and Fitzmyer. Both had the most exegetical material available until the recent publication of Bock's wonderful commentary. Bock is thoroughly Evangelical and this will be helpful for those who previously had so few options for a good Evangelical commentary on Acts. Bock also does an excellent job of summarizing the findings of previous works. He is highly readable and has much to offer both laity and pastors. I am currently preaching through the book of Acts, and even though I was on chapter 9 when Bock's commentary was finally available, it has quickly become the first commentary I turn to each week!

This commentary by Bock is simply the best available commentary out there on Acts. It was published in 2007 and therefore incorporates the latest scholarship on Acts.

Bock has a solid reputation of being a trustworthy NT scholar and commentator. You would not be disappointed. He works quite well with the Greek and offers several translations and indicates the best one.

The layout of the commentary is great. I wish all commentaries were laid out in this way. It's so easy to find things and just begin to read.

Get this,for it is the best out there!

The most significant biblical words are illustrated by Scripture passages, comments, cross-references, ancient and modern meanings, precise etymologies, historical notes, and clearly defined technical information.

Each original language is indexed, and the addition of a topical index allows you to access all the dictionary entries pertinent to specific New Testament ideas and teachings.

This is an essential reference source for all Bereans.

I hate to give this dictionary only 2 stars because it has been the most helpful word study tool for those who do not know the original Biblical languages. But it has now been surpassed by

Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (William Mounce).

It is more accurate and thorough than Vine's.

Stephen D. Renn's Expository Dictionary of Bible Words and Lawrence Richards' New International Encyclopedia of Bible Words can also be helpful. But they are less thorough than Vine's, let alone Mounce's.

Other helpful tools for word study include:

Interlinear for the Rest of Us (William Mounce), which includes a Greek-English dictionary.

Word Study Greek-English New Testament (Paul McReynolds), which has a very useful concordance based on Greek words.

This one isnt what i tought it would be. It is OK . for what it is. Leaves out some what i would have thought would be in it . Difficult at times but it is what it is .

As a graduate from Bible college I can assure you that this lexicon is excellent for those with no knowledge of the greek. It is easily laid out and is well worth the price

It does a good job on the Greek words (New Testament) then on the Hebrew words (Old Testament, so I took 1 star away for that. But over all it's a good book & good to have in your library.