Suggestions for Studying Online Bible Comments

These notes are intended to help the Bible student study chapter by chapter through books of the Bible. Each individual file includes notes on a section of a book (usually a chapter per file). Each file is then divided into sections, each section including questions followed by study notes.

The questions are designed to help the student study the material in a Bible class, family study, or personal study. I encourage the student to study the questions carefully and develop your own answers to the questions before reading our study notes. After you have studied the Bible passage and answered the questions for yourself, our notes may add helpful additional material.

I also encourage each student to keep a notebook on each book of the Bible and save your notes for future reference (use of a loose-leaf notebook will allow you to add new pages as needed). As you study, you can write your answers to the questions in the notebook, then you can add other helpful thoughts as your study continues.

Use of Our Bible Timeline (Chart of Bible Periods)

Understanding a book of the Bible may often be aided by relating it to the period of Bible history in which it was written. Please remember that books are not placed in chronological order in our Bibles.

In order to help the student relate Bible books to Bible history, we have included a Bible Timeline. It can be accessed at www.gospelway.com/commentary/bible_timeline.pdf. The timeline divides all of Bible history into three ages. Those ages are divided further, resulting in fifteen Bible periods. Our introductory notes on each book of the Bible generally encourage the student to consult the timeline to help put the book into historical perspective.

Helpful Tools for Bible Study

The following tools should help in studying the Bible and answering the questions in our material. Most of these tools can be obtained from a good religious bookstore.

1. A good study Bible

* Suggested translations are NKJV, KJV, ASV, or NASB. We do not recommend using a loose translation or one-man translation.

Good Bible maps are also useful in a Bible, if you do not have maps available in some other source.

2. A good analytical or exhaustive concordance

Alternatively, many computer programs are available that provide good Bible concordance and search routines.

A shorter abridged concordance may work, but will not contain all the words or all the references you may need.

3. Other useful helps

The following materials may be helpful, but are not as essential as the previous materials. Being human works, they are also subject to error.

* Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, by W. E. Vine - This dictionary actually defines Bible words, but is somewhat detailed.

* Bible Dictionary, such as New International Dictionary of the Bible by Zondervan's or New Smith's Bible Dictionary. These Bible "dictionaries" typically do not define words (as might be expected), but give information about people, places, and things found in the Bible.

* Maps of Bible lands - These may be found in the back of some Bibles or Bible dictionaries.

Be sure to familiarize yourself with the proper use of each of the above tools in order to use them effectively.

Sometimes our study notes on specific sections of Scripture will suggest other books that we have found useful in our study.

Conclusion

For further information about proper Bible study, we urge you to study our free article entitled “How to Study the Bible.” It contains information about use of the tools we have mentioned above, along with Scriptural guidance in proper attitudes in study and proper understanding of Bible authority. To study this article, see the links below or go to our Bible Instruct web site at www.gospelway.com/instruct/.

Note: We generally do not have the capacity to answer questions from students about our Bible commentaries. We encourage you to study on your own and answer questions for yourself from Scripture. If you need help on specific Bible subjects, please see our Gospel Way site for topic studies.

We hope that our study materials will challenge you to deeper and more practical study of God's word. And above all we hope you will apply God's word to practical obedience in your own life and in teaching others. To God be the glory.

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Topics for further Bible study