Recently I was addressing a group of young men who wanted to learn the Scriptures in greater depth. I was about to speak to them about the value of having and using great Bible resources. By resources I mean books and other physical and digital materials beyond the Bible itself which help illuminate and explain aspects of the Biblical text.

I asked the group of about 18 how many of them owned a Bible dictionary: one. How many owned a Bible commentary: two. How many owned or used Bible software: zero!

While I firmly believe the Bible alone is sufficient to teach us all we need to know in order to be saved and pleasing to God, that is not the same as saying we do not need anything else to understand (and teach) it better!

The Scriptures were written over a period of some 1,500 years by numerous different authors on three continents, and in many different historical circumstances. But the Biblical texts do not provide for us much of the “background” information which the original authors and recipients knew well. Places, people, customs, events, geographical features, words, and more often escape our understanding without additional resources to supply is with more knowledge.

These resources take the form of dictionaries, atlases, histories, lexicons, concordances, and commentaries which step in to fill the void. More and more, digital resources are filling this need as physical Christian bookstores are disappearing.

We will be reproducing a series I taught on the Epistle to the Ephesians over the next several weeks. But I want to supply links to both free and paid resources on Ephesians that I recommend to those who want to build their libraries. Most of the free resources are digital (online or downloadable) while the physical books must be purchased. I expect serious Bible students to use resources by authors from different theological perspectives which will sometimes present some viewpoints with which the students disagree… yet know how to benefit from their contribution.

FREE

PURCHASE

Our image is from the original printing of the King James Version Bible of 1611. Available from www.kingjamesbibleonline.org.