Why Learn to Use Study Tools?

by David Rollert

Consider this scenario: There you are, reading an article with a catchy headline about how religious people have missed some important concept in the Bible for centuries. The writer insinuates that your church leaders have been lying to you, but this secular blogger knows better than all of them. They present convincing arguments that appeal to your sensibilities. How do you know who is right - the elders and preacher, or this blogger?

Or, consider this scenario: An atheist coworker knows that you are a Christian and keeps bringing up supposed problems with the Bible and Christian teachings. They really seem to know their stuff, and you are embarrassed to admit that you don’t have the answers to their accusations.

In either of these situations you could go ask the preacher or the elders about these issues. But, appearing ignorant might be embarrassing, and maybe your faith was shaken enough that your trust in them has been eroded. What do you do? How do you find the answers?

The modern answer would be to search your questions on Google, YouTube, Quora or some other website. However, then you will just get the answers from anyone and everyone - no matter what their bias or knowledge level might be. A better solution would be to learn to use the very same research tools that professional Bible scholars use so that you can identify the answers to your questions yourself. By learning these skills, you are no longer at the mercy of others and their bias to spoon-feed you information. You can confidently open the Bible, locate the relevant passages and dig into the original languages yourself! But, what are these resources that will give you such abilities? Here is a short list of resources that are worth your time to learn to use:

• A concordance (such as Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance). With a good concordance at your disposal you can locate where any word is used in the Bible You can identify which original language word (or words) were translated as that English word and get a basic definition of those words. Pro tip: Be sure to get one that is keyed to the translation of the Bible that you use the most.

• A dictionary of Bible words (such as Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words). With this you will be able to get a deeper understanding of the words used and their meanings.

• A few different translations of the Bible (or a Parallel Bible, which has multiple translations printed next to each other on the page). This allows you to see how the ideas can be rendered differently. Sometimes one translation will be easier for you to understand, where another will be more precise in its translation.

You can also consider getting an introduction and survey of both the Old and New Testaments. These will give you background information on each book of the Bible, as well as important facts, outlines, a small amount of commentary, maps and more.

To learn more, watch the sermon below.