Results 1 - 10 of 10
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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | fcs375 | 213616 | ||
I would like to know your thoughts on study bibles with commentaries in terms of do you feel that they should be avoided to prevent any bias influence of the commentators and rely on none other than the Holy Spirit for the understanding of scripture, or otherwise? I have ran into some concerns with my own study bible, such as commentators using non biblical documents, although similar to events in the bible, some historical fact and otherwise to shed light on biblical truth which concerns me. Also, I feel that you run the risk of someonse elses interpretation that may not be completely accurate. I've been encouraged to only study from a bible that only uses cross references so that you are able to use scripture to interpret scripture in parallel. | ||||||
2 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | justme | 213635 | ||
fsc375: There is no way for us to know eveything about something that some Bible scholars have spent many years devoted to just one subject. To be sure there is a bias when someone writes on some Biblical thought or verse. An example is as there are three views of the endtimes, which ever viewpoint a person holds is going to reflect in their writting. Study Bibles sometimes have the same situation. Some may remember the Jimmy Swaggart Study Bible, or the Oral Roberts Study Bible. Both were, in my opinion worthless in the study notes. However, there are many excellent Study Bibles worth the investment, and using the notes to understand and grow in Christ. I highly reccommend. The NIV or NASN or NKJ Study Bible, the Life Application Bible comes in at least three Bible versions. I have a number of Study Bibles, and the two I like best and use the most are the NIV Study Bible, and the NASB Life Application Bible. I use the NASB the most. The Commentary I use most is THE EXPOSITERS BIBLE COMMENTARY published Zondervan and is a 12 volume set of the New Testament only, and is in the NIV version. The Expositors is excellent, I highly reccommend it. The NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARY writen by Hendriksen PUBLISHED BY Baker is good, and reflects his Amillennialist view point, I use it on an occasional basis. If I might suggest a starting point would be a Exhaustive Concordance in the Bible version you intend to start out with. There is an Exasstive Concordance for every version of the Bible. Personally I have five and use the NASB and NIV Concordances the most. I would strongly suggest VINES EXPOSITORY DICTIONARY OF NEW TESTAMENT WORDS. This helps you to look at root words of the Greek and see exactly what the true meaning of the word is. This also works with the Exhaustive Concordance. There is also and excellent 5 volume set of THE INTERLINEAR BIBLE, which has the Old Testament and New Testament, that works super with the Exhaustive Concordance as well. Frankly, there are so many wonderful tools and helps that are solidly Biblical, to help you grow spiritually. Please do not let such a wonderful treat to grow pass you by. So many Christians around the world don't even have a Bible in their own native tongue. Every Christian should have enough Bible tools to have a small library. If we are serious about our faith in Christ we should be growing all the time, and constantly studing. I want to make my self very clear, study the Scripture first and formost, use these added tools for indepth study. Nothing replaces the knowing the Word of God. If you find you are using helps more than actually being in the Word then you are out of ballance. Who cares what the words mean if you don't have the Word of God in your heart. Now for non biblical documents, they too have a place in studing, but after you have a solid base in understanding the Scriptures. Maybe these documents need to be used in a class og w real teacher. You sound almost like a person in master level seminary studies. I can say without doubt Seminary was exciting, but it seemed there was never enough time to go deep enough to have my hunger filled for knowing more about the Word of God. I still feel that way today, years later. God bless you path in growing in Christ Jesus fcs375. justme |
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3 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | fcs375 | 213643 | ||
Thank you for your response and agree with most of what you said. I'm always interested in other peoples views on certain subjects such as this one, and tend to be open minded in most cases. I must add however, personally I have decided to go away from a study bible and just use exclusively a classic reference bible (NASB), and really just rely on the Holy Spirit to teach and guide me, meditating on the word of God. However, I certainly think that a concordance is very helpful and would not discourage a solid, well grounded Christian from using a good study bible, as they are less likely to be mis-guided from a potential bias commentary, or mis-interpretation. I always find biblical facts interesting, although is not the starting point and foundation of our salvation, other than what Christ did for us on the cross. | ||||||
4 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | DocTrinsograce | 213648 | ||
Dear fcs375, Don't forget that the Holy Spirit teaches and guides through Godly, learned, faithful men. Many of them have passed on to glory. Loving the leading of the Holy Spirit often means loving how He has led others! See Ephesians 4:1-24... It is through this means that He has explicitly worked to equip you. In Him, Doc |
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5 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | fcs375 | 213649 | ||
Hello, and thank you for your reply. Yes, some are called to pastor and teach with exhortation or lead in a ministry of some capacity. However, when it comes to bible study, I firmly believe that one must study God's word first and foremost, asking the Holy Spirit to teach them and meditate upon it, and sometimes may require one to read over and over again. Good sound commentary has it's proper place in study but should be secondary, and discernment is very important. God bless you! | ||||||
6 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | DocTrinsograce | 213681 | ||
Dear fcs375, You wrote, "I firmly believe that one must study God's word first and foremost, asking the Holy Spirit to teach them and meditate upon it, and sometimes may require one to read over and over again. Good sound commentary has it's proper place in study but should be secondary" (sic) Yes, secondary, but not utterly neglected -- so that we won't "be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men" (Ephesians 4:14b). (Remember that one of the worst trickster's we'll face is our own heart.) Sadly, most people who make these kinds of assertions of divine solidarity really mean that they will neglect orthodoxy for some kind of pious, personal walk with God. It is no surprise, therefore, that being "untaught and unstable [they] distort the Scriptures" with dire consequences (2 Peter 3:16). Nor should it surprise us, therefore, to discover that we have gotten what the Spirit warned us about in Ephesians: Long after the Lord helped the church deal decisively with heresies like Arianism, Manichaeism, Pelagianism, Monarchianism, Montanism, Gnosticism, etc. etc. we are up to our ears in all those things. They go by different names, of course -- if they bother to be named at all; but such teachings are now more commonly espoused than is sound doctrine (2 Timothy 4:3-4). And they are espoused by people who claim to have the Spirit's teaching. We will repeat history if we fail to learn from it; or, perhaps in this instance, by lightly esteeming the gifts plundered by Christ for the church (Psalm 68:18; Ephesians 4:8) of the past, we will fail to repeat it. As my pastor often says: there are two ditches on either side of the road. Let's take care lest we fall into one ditch, while striving to avoid the other. In Him, Doc |
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7 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | fcs375 | 213696 | ||
Thank you for your response. The most important thing to remember is that commentary may have it's proper place, however God's word should be first and foremost and not neglected. I recommend to get a good reference bible (I prefer NASB) with a concordance to study with, that way you can cross reference scripture. Pray first asking that the Holy Spirit would teach you and meditate upon the word of God. May God bless you! | ||||||
8 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | DocTrinsograce | 213703 | ||
...and a good commentary so you can track back to make sure that the warm feeling you're getting isn't from the Pizza you had for dinner. "In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others. My chat this afternoon is not for these great originals, but for you who are content to learn of holy men, taught of God, and mighty in the Scriptures. It has been the fashion of late years to speak against the use of commentaries. If there were any fear that the expositions of Matthew Henry, Gill, Scott, and others, would be exalted into Christian Targums, we would join the chorus of objectors, but the existence or approach of such a danger we do not suspect. The temptations of our times lie rather in empty pretensions to novelty of sentiment, than in a slavish following of accepted guides. A respectable acquaintance with the opinions of the giants of the past, might have saved many an erratic thinker from wild interpretations and outrageous inferences. Usually, we have found the despisers of commentaries to be men who have no sort of acquaintance with them; in their case, it is the opposite of familiarity which has bred contempt. It is true there are a number of expositions of the whole Bible which are hardly worth shelf room; they aim at too much and fail altogether; the authors have spread a little learning over a vast surface, and have badly attempted for the entire Scriptures what they might have accomplished for one book with tolerable success; but who will deny the preeminent value of such expositions as those of Calvin, Ness, Henry, Trapp, Poole, and Bengel, which are as deep as they are broad? and yet further, who can pretend to biblical learning who has not made himself familiar with the great writers who spent a life in explaining some one sacred book? Caryl on Job will not exhaust the patience of a student who loves every letter of the Word; even Collinges, with his nine hundred and nine pages upon one chapter of the Song, will not be too full for the preacher's use; nor will Manton's long metre edition of the hundred and nineteenth Psalm (Psalm 119:1-176) be too profuse. No stranger could imagine the vast amount of real learning to be found in old commentaries like the following: Durham on Solomon's Song, Wilcocks on Psalms and Proverbs, Jermin on Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, Greenhill on Ezekiel, Burroughs on Hosea, Ainsworth on the Pentateuch, King on Jonah, Hutcheson on John, Peter Martyr on Romans, etc., and in Willett, Sibbes, Bayne, Elton, Byfield, Daille, Adams, Taylor, Barlow, Goodwin, and others on the various epistles. Without attempting to give in detail the names of all, I intend in a familiar talk to mention the more notable, who wrote upon the whole Bible, or on either Testament, and I especially direct your attention to the titles, which in Puritan writers generally give in brief the run of the work." --Charles H. Spurgeon |
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9 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | Beja | 213711 | ||
If I could be permited a bit of rambling due to the fact I find this conversation interesting. I spent a very great amount of time in my own Christian life avoiding commentaries. I did this for two reasons. First because I found that those around me used them too quickly and it left their minds dull. They did not first give their minds to the study of scripture and knowing it then latter consult commentaries to check if their thoughts were affirmed by other Christian witness, rather they just grabbed the nearest answer. I found this to be terrible. The second reason is because you can find a commentary that says anything and everything. How was I to know whether I was being taught heresy or truth? Commentaries are not inerrent rather the scriptures are. So it was not for any high opinion of my own understanding but from a fear at my inability to truely recognize foolishness that I shunned them. I believe I was very right to do so because I think my path would have surely led to poor thinking and falsehood if I had grabbed for the commentators who would have been handed to me at that time. So I am glad I avoided them. On the other hand, now that I know well enough what is in scripture that I can readily recognize truth and falsehood when I hear it, I find that I can actually identify those great souls of the past who have much to teach me! Now, I find past saints to be a source of knowledge and spiritual guidance I never could have from them before in my inability to trust them. But even to this day my firm commitment is to never take in more writtings of men than I take in scripture. For a vivid and constantly refreshed knowledge of scripture is what makes these commentators safe. It is by this that we can mine their amazing worth without taking in any false teaching. I will always observe this caution, but no more will I avoid such rich treasures. Anyways, take this for what little it is worth to you, I'm mostly typing because I enjoy the conversation. In Love, Beja |
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10 | Study Bible | Bible general Archive 4 | DocTrinsograce | 213752 | ||
Dear Beja, Fortunately, the Lord has provided us with the means of discerning sound instruction. The great and godly teachers have stood the test of time. While most of those who taught heterodoxy have faded over time. Believers through time have come to recognize their merit. I seem to recall placing here some suggestions for choosing a good commentary. I'll see if I can resurrect that old post, perhaps tomorrow. I believe I touched on a number of similar things to those that you mention. In Him, Doc |
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