BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIES

I realize that nowadays most people rarely read, let alone even purchase a book. However, I would like to make a plea to Christians to strongly urge you to consider some of the options below that might help you immensely in your personal Christian growth and witness to others. Some of these options are available on-line or can be downloaded onto your smart phone. The place I would suggest as a starting (and maybe ending) point is to purchase a good study Bible. Of course, it should be a Bible in a translation with which you are comfortable. Two excellent options, in my mind are the ESV Study Bible for a fairly literal and up-to-date translation or the NIV Study Bible for those who prefer that slightly paraphrased version.

The advantage of good study Bible is that it not only has the complete text right in front of you but also will usually contain a helpful commentary in the form of footnotes, introductions to each book, cross-references to parallel teachings, a Bible atlas with useful maps, a subject index, and a brief concordance for looking up individual words and where they occur.

Bible Commentaries

Many options are available here. The choices can be broken according to several important criteria:

Old vs. Recent: A number of classic commentaries can be found free on-line in sites such as blueletterbible.org or biblehub.com. These include works by authors such as Matthew Henry, C. H. Spurgeon, J. Vernon McGee, and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown. Almost all of these free resources will be basically sound theologically, but some may be off-putting due to the archaic language they employ and the fact that they rely wholly on the KJV, which is not that reliable in many places.

All more recent commentaries will utilize the latest historical and textual information and have a much better grasp on the meaning of the original language. Unfortunately, the few found on-line usually still rely on the KJV and may contain dubious interpretations.

Theological Differences: These may not be as noticeable as one might expect. Thus, I have found some very useful works by both Catholic and Jewish writers. There are actually more differences one will see between Protestant writers from the liberal and fundamentalist camps. But even these differences tend to show up only in discussing certain books of the Bible, especially (1) the Pentateuch where liberals will take an inordinate amount of space trying to defend their theories on how the books were originally pieced together from diverse sources and (1) the prophetic and apocalyptic literature where some very conservative scholars will try to weave detailed scenarios of future events out of the data available by interpreting it in as literal manner as they can.

One Volume or Multi-Volume: Another practical consideration is whether one wishes to have (1) a one- or two-volume commentary that covers the entire Bible, (2) purchase a whole set, or (3) pick out a variety of individual commentaries, choosing the best one for each book of the Bible.

The biggest advantage of option 1 is, of course, price. For a reasonably small investment you can purchase a comprehensive commentary that will be useful no matter what book of the Bible you happen to be studying at the time. There are several good examples to choose from that will certainly contain more background information and explanation than found in any study Bible. However, due to space limitations, you may find yourself disappointed when you come to a difficult Scripture passage only to find that your commentary doesn't even deal with that verse or does so in a very cursory manner. I always suggest to people that if they can somehow manage to find a Bible book store near them and it actually carries something in stock besides the latest Christian fiction and some greeting cards, peruse any commentaries they have in the store. You might want to have a particular sticky Bible passage in mind and try looking up what the commentary says about it. Alternatively, on rare occasions there will be sample passages from commentaries on-line that you can look at before purchasing, or read reviews on the book from others.

Examples of one- or two-volume commentaries that you may want to consider are The New Bible Commentary: Revised, The International Bible Commentary, and The Bible Knowledge Commentary.

In terms of multi-volume commentaries, which you can purchase individually or as sets, my personal favorite is The New International Commentary on the New Testament and its matching Old Testament set. Each volume is by a different noted evangelical scholar who is an expert on that particular book. Or if you wish a set from a conservative Reformed perspective, there is the New Testament Commentary with earlier volumes by William Hendricksen, completed by Simon Kistemaker. One notable feature of this particular set is that the authors go out of their way to present several interpretive options for each passage before presenting the one they personally favor.

There are also the Tyndale Commentaries on the Old and New Testament and The New Century Bible Commentary, both of which have the advantage of being available in inexpensive paperback editions. The Tyndale Commentaries tend to be slightly more liberal in theology than the NCBC volumes.

Single or Multi-Author Sets: If you simply love a particular author such as John MacArthur or William Barclay, by all means purchase their available sets of commentaries and you will probably be very happy with them. On the other, if you are the type who likes to be challenged by new perspectives, you might want to opt instead for one of the one- or many- volume commentaries mentioned above. The one- or two-volume commentaries may be by a single author, or more likely, contain contributions from a number of different authors. Falling in between these extremes is The Bible Knowledge Commentary, which is written by a number of author. However, since all of them are professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, you may detect a certain amount of group-think creeping into their individual contributions.

And if you really want to stretch your horizons and have a little time to do detective work, you may wish to mix and match volumes from various commentary sets. One way to do this is go on Google and search for something like “The Best Commentaries on Ephesians.” Of course, the results will be biased depending on the prejudices of the reviewer, but often they will add valuable comments regarding what caused them to choose one commentary over another one. I used that very method myself to pick out a volume on Ephesians and was not disappointed with my choice.

Scholarly vs. Devotional: This final criterion is an extremely important one to take into account. Why do you want a commentary in the first place? If it is to jump to the chase and discover how a Bible passage can be used in your devotional life or applied in practical ways in your Christian walk, then that dictates an entirely different type of commentary than a heavy tome that goes on endlessly regarding the exact meaning of a Hebrew word in the text. On the other hand, if you are like me and are more interested in matters of exact interpretation than life application, then that would lead you to an entirely different type of Bible aid.

I am afraid that I am not really in a good position to recommend a good devotional commentary. Most of the popular authors such as MacArthur or Wiersbe who have come out with commentaries will fall into this category. In addition, you may want to consider purchasing some inexpensive paperbacks that offer study guides to various books of the Bible. They may be a little light in information, but they will often have probing questions useful to get a good discussion going in a group setting. Just go to the Christian Book Distributors site and scan their long list of possibilities. By the way, if you purchase anything on-line from them, you will probably get added to their mailing list and will receive their latest catalogs. Or you can give them your e-mail address and they will send out notifications whenever they are having a sale.

Moving on to the more scholarly books, these come in a wide variety. For example, the Anchor Bible series has some excellent volumes, but others are a little too scholarly even for me and occasionally have a strong critical bias that may turn off evangelical readers. However, they are excellent for providing historical and linguistic information that will not be found in other commentaries.

Then there are the few volumes available in the New International Greek Testament Commentary set. They are written by noted scholars of impeccable evangelical credentials. However, in order to read them, it is very helpful to have at least a passing acquaintance with the Greek alphabet.

Most of the other sets I have mentioned above will contain a mix of scholarly and practical content, but my favorite by far is the New International Commentary on the New Testament and its Old Testament equivalent. The authors are both evangelical and scholarly in their approach and have been drawn from the ranks of the most noted conservative Bible seminaries.

Concluding this section, I would like to mention the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament by Beale and Carson. As its title promises, it contains a valuable and interesting discussion of the ways in which NT authors quoted from or alluded to OT passages.

Bible Dictionaries

These Bible aids come, as do the commentaries, in a variety of styles. My favorite one-volume commentary for years has been The New Bible Dictionary. But I must admit that I am using it less and less with time because its limited size translates to a limited usefulness. Nowadays, if one wishes to know when a particular book of the Bible was likely written or where one can find information on some minor Bible personage, it is just as easy to Google the subject and Wikipedia will probably give you the facts you need at your fingertips.

So I am gravitating more to the multi-volume Bible dictionaries that have enough space to discuss broader subjects such as “Warfare in the Bible,” “Law,” “New Testament Apocrypha,” or “Agriculture in the Middle East” in more detail. One such example is the excellent 8-volume dictionary set put out by Inter-Varsity Press. However, there are less expensive options published by others.

In addition, there have been a number of useful one-volume dictionaries published in recent years geared for those who have particular interests in mind. These include books with titles such as Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics, New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, and Dictionary of Christianity and Science.

In closing, one useful method I have found for choosing between various Bible reference books is to look for a reliable publisher. At the top of my list in that regard would be Eerdmans, Inter-Varsity Press, and Baker Books although there are certainly worthy books published elsewhere.