Friday, February 16, 2007

Bible Study Tools (part 4) - Dictionaries

Smith’s Bible Dictionary
Smith’s Bible Dictionary is one of the oldest Bible dictionaries extant today. Complete and covers people, place, and subject. Published by Thomas Nelson and edited and revised by F.N. and M.A. Peloubet. Highly treasured because of insights in archaeological discoveries.

Zondervan’s Pictorial Bible Dictionary
The late Dr. Merrill C. Tenny, gen. ed. of this Bible dictionary. He was professor of theological studies, Graduate School of Theology, Wheaton College. Articles are written from a conservative viewpoint. The Zondervan Classic Reference Series of this dictionary is designed for the use of pastors, Sunday school teachers, Bible class leaders and students who desire concise and accurate information on questions raised by ordinary reading. This work was first published in 1963.

Unger’s Bible Dictionary
Merrill Unger taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, professor of Old Testament studies. He died in 1981. His work is full of colored photos, archaeological research, charts , maps, outlines, excellent background information on Bible characters and customs. Dr. Under is a pretribulationist and premillennialist.

Other helpful dictionaries are Noah Webster's "American Dictionary of the English Language" (1828) published by Foundation for American Christian Education. There are also theological dictionaries out there. The mama of dictionaries would have to be The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which interestingly teaches the etymology of a word. (Etymology, hmmm...look it up!).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary is my dictionary of choice. It truly defines the word as it was used at the time of the translation of the King James Bible. Good examples to compare is to look up the word "sin" - VERY different. You can also find it on-line at:
http://www.cbtministries.org/resources/webster1828.htm

Jerry Bouey said...

An excellent Bible Dictionary of sorts is The Way Of Life Encyclopedia Of The Bible And Christianity. Basically, whatever you need in a Bible Dictionary is found in David Cloud's Encyclopedia. Very useful, solid and trustworthy.

http://www.wayoflife.org/ency/index.html

Unknown said...

That's a good one Jerry. We certainly don't want to leave out Cloud's materials.