Musings of a Snickerdoodle

Looking for a book that will give you good guidelines for studying the Bible well? Inductive Bible Study by Richard Alan Fuhr Jr. and Andreas J. Kostenberger is a good resource on the topic. As the authors of this book explain, God chose to reveal His will to us through His written Word, rather than through personal revelation/new revelation.  He chose that it would be learned progressively with effort rather than instantly without any work on our part. We should revere God's choice method of conveying the knowledge of Him that He wants us to have and His will that is revealed through this collection of holy documents.  Fuhr and Kostenberger take you through a series of steps that will assist you in reverently discovering and handling what God's Word says with accuracy and reverence. The steps you are taken through range from: comparing English Bible translations, Asking the right questions of the text, using commentaries, word studies, practicing discernment and of cou...

Greek for Everyone by A. Chadwick Thornhill presents a unique book on New Testament Greek.  His  stated goal is to have those reading this book learn  "Greek in order to become better students of the Scripture rather than students of Greek."  The aim of the book is not to  "gain reading proficiency but rather are working to establish the ability to use various tools to study the text in Greek".    And I think that Thornhill accomplishes his goals with this book, he   takes you through a basic (though it still seems quite thorough) overview of the various parts of Greek so that you may then use lexicons, parsing guides, and other Greek tools in your Bible study without having to become an expert Greek scholar.  Thornhill starts out by explaining that one of the most important things to do in acquiring a knowledge of Koine Greek that is useful to Bible study is to remember to keep looking for the 'big picture' in a text/pas...

Discovering the Septuagint - A Guided Reader - by Karen Jobes is a very nice resource for those looking for an introduction to the Greek of the LXX (The Septuagint).  There are chapters dealing with selected passages from 9 books of the LXX, in each chapter there is an introduction telling you about that particular book and its translation techniques.   Then follows the  Rahlfs-Hanhart Greek text of an excerpt from that particular book and a brief examination of certain key words and phrases in each verse, notes on vocabulary and syntax. Then comes another excerpt of the Greek text and the notes on the various verses…etc.  After all of the selected texts are done being examined, then comes the NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) version of the passage(s) so that one may read the whole thing in English. And then finally, if verses from the chapter are cited in the New Testament, they have a table showing where in the NT the passage is referred t...

I was very impressed when I first opened up the package that contained my review copy of The HCSB Study Bible(large print), it has a beautiful cover, it looks very…..well, I guess the expression that seems most fitting as a description would be 'simply elegant'.   I just hoped that the inside 'features' would be   impressive as well, and that it wouldn't just be a study Bible that looks really good but doesn't have truly helpful/exegetical study notes.   I am glad to report that this Bible is impressive inside and out.   I really liked the goal of the study Bible as stated in the introduction, "As servants of the text, the study tools are designed to keep the focus on Scripture and never on the tools themselves."   And, from what I can tell, they do a pretty good job at meeting that goal.   Even the font for the text of Scripture doesn't hinder or distract one hermeneutically as even the words of Christ are printed in black, not red(I don...

If you're looking for a commentary on the book of Acts that is more of an overview but still exegetical, this commentary by Guy Prentiss Waters is a pretty good choice.   He hits at a high level on some controversial issues/textual debates where he deems it necessary, but it is still kept at a minimum and further reading for delving deeper is usually suggested in the comments.   I think that it is a nice commentary to have that you can start with in your studies, turning to it first to get the 'high-level' view and then after reading Waters on a text, turn to the ones that are more critical. Or you can just 'read it through' on its own, the author really helps you get your thoughts moving on a text, for instance, in the account of Pentecost, I had never considered that "Like wind, fire is a sign of God's presence with his people", which caused me to 'connect the dots' and remember the tabernacle in the wilderness and the cloud that had th...