Bible Study Resources
Bibles
English Standard Version. Crossway, 2001.
New American Standard Bible (updated). Lockman, 1995.
New King James Version. Nelson, 1982.
Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.
Study Bibles
ESV Study Bible
The MacArthur Study Bible
New Inductive Study Bible
Reformation Study Bible
Reference Materials
Vine, W. E., Merrill F. Unger, and William White, Jr. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nelson, 1985.
This is a useful work for studying word meanings. The book is divided into two sections: one for Old Testament and one for New. English words are listed, and under these words are the Hebrew or Greek words from which the English is translated, with an extensive treatment on the word usage and meanings. Each entry is also linked to Strong’s concordance by way of the Strong’s reference number. Each entry also contains cross-references.
Unger, Merrill F. The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary. Rev. and updated edition, ed. by R. K. Harrison. Moody, 1988.
This is a very useful reference tool to have for Bible study. It is essentially an encyclopedia for the Bible. It contains nearly 7000 entries for people, places, and terms in Scripture. It also contains some pictures, maps, and illustrations to supplement the text.
Halley, Henry H. Halley’s Bible Handbook. Zondervan, 1965.
A classic reference tool. Contains introductory and background material for each book of the Bible, with background and explanatory comments for each chapter of Scripture (for much of the Old Testament), and on individual verses or groups of verses (for some of the Old and all of the New Testament). Contains sections at the end for How We Got the Bible, Church History, Archaeological Discoveries, and more.
Smith, Jerome H. The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Nelson, 1992.
From the introduction to the book: “At its heart it is the most comprehensive listing available of cross-references from specific words of Scripture to other related Scripture portions. Many of these cross-references are marked with special symbols to indicate exactly what information they provide… The many notes found through the book comment on the basic content of Bible chapters, on the meaning of words, on historical matters, and on practical and doctrinal teachings of Scripture… much of the vast knowledge distributed throughout the whole book is made more quickly accessible through the seven comprehensive indexes at the end of the book.” From the introduction to the book.
Nave, Orville J. Nave’s Topical Bible. Hendrickson, n.d.
From the back cover: “It is a comprehensive digest of over 20,000 topics and subtopics with more than 100,000 associated Scripture references. The most significant references for each topic actually include the full text of the verse cited… Because Nave’s groups verses by “idea” (or “topic”), it offers a better overview of relevant Scriptures than a concordance, which only lists … verses according to specific words. This edition also includes the helpful Scripture index…”
Strong, James. Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Abingdon, 1980.
The classic concordance for the King James Bible. Strong’s contains a heading for every word used in Scripture and lists every occurrence of that word, showing the verse reference and at least part of the verse itself. Every entry is also tagged with a number, which is the Strong’s reference number for the dictionary entry, of which there is one for both Greek and Hebrew, so the word used can be studied (albeit in brevity) for the meaning of the term in the original language.
Rasmussen, Carl G. NIV Atlas of the Bible. Regency, 1989.
This work has a great deal of text to go along with its plentiful maps and pictures, which supplement the graphics with a sort of flowing history, both Biblical and world. The maps and pictures are helpful to give a better background for the events being studied in Scripture.
Aharoni, Yohanan, and Michael Avi-Yonah. The Macmillan Bible Atlas. Macmillan, 1993.
This is a well-researched and very thorough Bible atlas. The book contains many, many maps, which help to explain historical periods and geographical features which correspond to Biblical events from early Old Testament history past the time of the New Testament. The downside of this book is that it is printed in two-color fashion, with black and green inks being the only ones used. It also contains no pictures, using only illustrations.
One-volume commentaries
Bible Knowledge Commentary
Wycliffe Bible Commentary
Multi-volume commentaries
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary
The MacArthur New Testament Commentary
New Testament Commentary (Hendriksen and Kistemaker)
ESV Expository Commentary
Tyndale Old/New Testament Commentary
Reformed Expository Commentary
Teach the Text
Christ-Centered Exposition Commentaries
Electronic Bible Study Resources
Bible hub. www.biblehub.com. Free website with word definitions, concordance, Hebrew and Greek, various translations.
E-Sword. www.e-sword.net. Free, downloadable electronic Bible study software. Includes search capabilities, several translations, some commentaries and word study resources included.
Blue Letter Bible. www.blueletterbible.org. Free internet Bible program. It can be used to search multiple versions, and includes multiple commentaries. This site includes timelines, maps, and articles on theology, apologetics, cults, religious holidays, and more.
Bible Gateway. www.biblegateway.com. Similar to the Blue Letter Bible, but with less study tools included. Helpful search tool.
Bible.org. www.bible.org. This site is packed full of resources, including the NET (New English Translation) Bible, which is a Bible that was translated for the primary purpose of being used electronically.
Study Light. www.studylight.org. This is another Internet tool that contains encyclopedias, dictionaries, lexicons (Greek and Hebrew), commentaries, and concordances.
Linked Word Project. www.linkedword.com. This is a site hosted by Bob Jones University that contains links to every word of Scripture (remembering that some words in Hebrew or Greek are phrases when translated into English). The link then gives you word origin, Strong’s number, definition, usage in the KJV, etc.