Bible Atlases
One of the most underused biblical resource is the Bible atlas. Many of us do not realize the tremendous value of knowing where a particular city or site is located in relation to others, the topography that was assumed by original readers, or the impact of the environment on events in a certain region. These five atlases offer such help. In addition, many of these atlases have full-color pictures and discussions of trade routes, battlefields, and geographic oddities throughout the ancient Near East. Knowing how to use a Bible atlas can truly help the biblical text come alive for you.
Bible Atlas (American Bible Society, 1999)
Hammond's Atlas of the Bible Lands (Hammond, 1990)
HarperCollins Concise Atlas of the Bible (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991)
Holman Bible Atlas (Holman, 1999)
Moody Atlas of Bible Lands (Moody, 1985)
Oxford Bible Atlas, 3rd edition (Oxford, 1985)
Concordances
Ever wonder where a certain word is used in the Bible? Need to know how many times a word or phrase occurs in a particular book? Learning how to use a concordance can provide tremendous depth to your study of a biblical text. A Bible concordance is an alphabetic listing of all the words in the Bible in a variety of grammatical forms and meaningful contexts. The two concordances recommended below are exhaustive so you can research all the words that encounter in your Bible study.
The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nelson, 1990)
The NRSV Concordance, unabridged (Zondervan, 1991)
Backgrounds to the Bible
One of the more recent resources to become available include these listed below. These resources provide interesting and invaluable information on the sociological and historical context of the Bible. In most cases, such information on customs, worldviews, and domestic life was an implicit or understood part of the text. But the biblical world is so different from ours that is necessary to become familiar with this information to make better sense of the text itself. The four listed here are some of the more readable and reliable books on the world behind the biblical text.
Handbook of Life in Bible Times, J. A. Thompson (InterVarsity , 1987)
Life in Biblical Israel, Philip King and Lawrence Stager (Westminster/John Knox, 2001)
Manners and Customs in the Bible, Victor Matthews (Hendrickson, 1991)
The World of the Bible, Roberta Harris (Thames & Hudson, 1995)
Study Bibles
Just as there are innumerable English Bible translations available today, there are also numerous study Bibles that attempt to provide quick insights, background data, and historical context in a single volume. These study Bibles typically have notes keyed to a particular English translation, together with introductions, maps, and reading helps. There are too many study Bibles to list here. These five cover a wide range of theological perspectives, each one offering reliable information for your biblical study.
The Catholic Study Bible (Oxford, 1990)
The HarperCollins Study Bible (HarperCollins, 1993)
The Learning Bible (American Bible Society, 2000)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, 3rd edition (Oxford, 2001)
The NIV Study Bible (Zondervan, 1995)
