We live in a time when there are a million and one voices telling us how to believe, how to think, and how to live. We at Into the Harvest truly believe the only way for any of us to not be a ship tossed and turned by the winds of the world, is to be tied fast to Scripture.
So this week’s ITH favorites is devoted to the tried and true Bible Study resources that we love and use on a daily basis to help us read and study Scripture!
E-Sword: Free Bible Study Software: This one stop-shop is a free software you can download to your PC, android or Apple device and it really is a huge resource of reference libraries, versions of the Bible, and places to make your own editorial notes as you study. It even includes some of our other favorite resources as well-all for free!- (we’ll make note of those e-sword add-ons below*)
Blue Letter Bible: This resource is one of our favorites for easy one-click interlinear Bible translation. Want to quickly know the Hebrew or Greek root of a word in scripture? Type in the scripture, click on the word you are interested in, easy as that. No software learning curve or difficult navigation. We think Blue Letter does a great job at making translation something even non-seminary students care do.
The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge*: with over 500,000 parallel and cross-references this book really does show that scripture can and will interpret itself on every verse, topic and word. We think this is another great book to have on hand when studying your Bible for yourself!
Nave’s Topical Bible*: Once again, it’s all about how things are organized. And we are grateful for Nave’s Topical Bible for ordering scripture by topics and subtopics. Want to study a specific theme? A particular idea? This book is a great place to start!
We’ve also got two Bible Handbooks on our list, and really we couldn’t pick (and honestly it’s nice to have a few to chose from!) so we’ll mention The New Unger’s Bible Handbook and Halley’s Bible Handbook as good options. In fact, it’s always a good idea to have multiple references when delving into Bible Handbooks, which are great for context and history as well as maps and graphs for geater Biblical understanding of culture. But any good handbook begins to sneak into commentary and you always want to hold commentary with an open hand!
Bible History Old Testament: This book by Alfred Edersheim is a great overview of Old Testament history with important background and context from a Jewish perspective. A great resource when reading through the Old Testament.
Andrew’s Extra Tip: I like to organize my Bible study thoughts in Google Docs because it makes them easier to share and organize down the road and I like the talk-to-type tool!
Abigail’s Extra Tip: Part of my tactile learning style requires me to put pen to paper when doing Bible study. However, the Rocketbook Wave Smart Notebook lets me take pictures of my notes and have them immediately transfer to my Google drives, notes app, email or anywhere else I want them sent! Coolest part is when I fil
