The Bible
We contend that the King James Bible published by the University of Cambridge in the 1900s is truly God’s Word preserved for the world in English, as they were earlier written and preserved in Hebrew, and Greek. New Testament Greek was koine (common) Greek, but the use of terms reflects a Hebrew mindset, and can be referred to as Biblical usage. The Hebrew of the Old Testament is recognized today as Biblical Hebrew, and the meanings of the terms are defined by their Biblical contexts. In just the same way KJV English is not the English as in the King James era, but Biblical English, and the meaning of its terms must be understood in context. Read more about the KJV in the link above.
Bible Study
Bible Teachings and Bible Commentary from Oxford Bible Church (highly recommended)
Gbible.org
Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Paw Creek Ministries rich site!
The Bible as Divine Revelation viewed in the light of reason: Chapter 3 of 16.
Table of Contents All 16 chapters.
Also 43 other languages. A massive work, well undertaken.
ASK: Association for Scriptural Knowledge
ARCing the Bible
World English Bible (Messianic Edition)
Lamsa Bible Online (with Aramaic Peshitta New Testament Online)
12Tribes.com (detailed studies in the Book of Revelation)
Percept Austin
The name of the website puzzled me, and I almost discarded it. I examined its Statement of Faith and the Testimony of the Author, Bruce Hurt. The Testimony moved me, and inspired me in my work on this website. Austin turned out to be Bruce’s birth-place and home-town. He studied in the University of Texas at Austin, had a medical practice in Austin, and was born again in Austin. The site includes a listing of “area Precept classes” under the banner of Precept Ministries International, which encourages inductive Bible studies. However, Precept Austin is an independent ministry, not affiliated to Precept Ministries International. Enjoy both.
Here a Little, There a Little
Excellent site, deals with difficult subjects from a Messianic Jewish perspective
Saved by Grace (A blog that covers 21 topics listed in the left panel – the welcome page says that the blogger is continuing to build the site)
Sola Sisters (Excellent blog by two sisters who came out of new age, are anchored on the 5 solas, and are horrified to find new age and occultic concepts and practices coming into Christian churches)
Relevant Bible Studies
A free Bible teaching ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Brent Barnett.
Topical Bible Study
compiled by R. A. Torrey
Preaching ministry of John MacArthur – also includes excellent Bible studies
Grace Fellowship International
Ministry of Dr. Charles Solomon and Dr. John B. Woolward, Jr.
Let God Be True
This website’s name is taken from Romans 3:4, for “we are committed to the Word of God absolutely and unconditionally.”
Way of Life (Fundamental Baptist Publishing Ministry of David Cloud)
Who is the Real Jesus? (includes historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection)
Warn Everyone (about errors of Rome)
Ken Raggio’s Bible Studies and his blog
Serving the nations
A Theology of Nations, their call by God, their Redemptive Gifts, etc.
Study Light (study resources)
Live As If (practical resources for living the Biblical Christian faith)
Digitized Dead Sea Scrolls (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, digital project by Google)
Logos Theology School (distant education in theology)
and Trinity Theology (Trinity Graduate School of Apologetics and Theology) – both highly recommended
Online Bibles, Study Tools, Bible Dictionaries and Bible Resources
Read KJV Clarified (KJC) Bible Online
Read American KJV Bible Online
Laparola: LouwNida: Greek dictionary
WordSearch Bibles, Commentaries and Tools
Commentaries
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
The King James Bible Translators’ Notes
The Companion Bible Contains links to all the books of the Bible, each of which yields a pdf file with Bullinger’s notes
Seven-fold Divisions of the Bible
The Bible has seven divisions by books, and seven levels of study.
Seven Divisions by Books
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The Law (HaTorah) – The books of Moses (Chumosh = 5 books)
Genesis – Exodus – Leviticus – Numbers – Deuteronomy (Yeshua’s favorite book)
This is the most foundational part of the Bible, on which all else rests.
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History (Old Testament) – Joshua to Esther (12 books)
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Poetry – Job to Song of Songs (5 books)
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Prophecy (Old Testament) – Isaiah to Malachi (17 books)
Sometimes divided into Major Prophets (5 books) and Minor Prophets (12 books)
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History (New Testament) – Matthew to Acts (5 books)
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Epistles – Romans to Jude (21 books)
Sometimes divided into Gentile Epistles (13 books) and Jewish Epistles (8 books)
Or Pauline Epistles (13) and General Epistles (8)
The Pauline Epistles are addressed to 7 Gentile churches, and to his delegates Timothy and Titus)
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Prophecy (New Testament) – The Revelation (1 book)
Seven Levels of Study
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Testaments – Old and New (2)
A testament, as in the common term “last will and testament”, is based on the death of the testator. In other words, it comes into force after the death of the testator.
The New Testament is based on the death and will of Messiah, ours to claim as a result of His Blood shed on the cross at Calvary..
The Old Testament is based on the “Blood of the Covenant” shed at the reading of the “Book of the Covenant” (Exodus 24:7-8). -
Writings – the major sections as to types of writing (3)
Jesus spoke of the Law, the Prophets and the Palms (the Scriptures). Luke 24:44
See also Luke 24:27. -
Books – the word Bible (Greek, biblos) means a collection of books, a library. (66)
The Bible is a collection of 66 books. Each is whole within itself, yet each is related to the other books of the Bible in one comprehensive whole.
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Chapters – The Bible was first divided into chapters by Cardinal Hugo around 1250 CE (Common Era or Christian Era). (1189)
This division usefully separates the Bible into blocks of text suitable for public reading or teaching or private study.. (However Hugo’s purpose was to divide the Bible for the purpose of creating a concordance in Latin.
The Bible has a total of 1,189 chapters (929 in the Old Testament and 260 in the New Testament.
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Verses – These separate the Bible text into lengths suitable for reference, quotation and memorization. The pattern for the length of a verse is set in the New Testament quotations from the Old Testament. For example, Matthew 1:22-23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 as a promise of the virgin birth: (Matthew quotes the actual verse, and not a chapter-and-verse reference, as these divisions didn’t exist in his day.
The New Testament was first divided into verses in 1551 by Sir Robert Stephens in his Greek New Testament. In 1560, the Geneva Bible, an English translation of the Bible made by the English exiles in Geneva, divided the entire Bible into the verses that we still use today.
An old source said that the number of verses in the Bible totaled 31,173 and many to this day have quoted this number. However, this number is wrong. Also wrong is the common teaching that the middle verse in the Bible is Psalm 118:8. I have checked this myself and have had it verified by a number of sources. The Bible has 31,102 verses and the middle verses (two verses are required because of the even number of total verses) are Psalm 103:1-2.
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Words – These distinguish between individual mental concepts. Language is made up of words and God speaks to man in words. Proverbs 30:5 teaches that “every word of God is true.” Men are warned against taking any words from the book of Revelation (Revelation 22:19). It is the words that are pure and preserved in Psalm 12:6-7: (This is why I prefer a literal translation rather than a paraphrase (often promoted as a thought for thought translation).
By one count, there are 773,746 words in the King James Bible. This means that the average verse is approximately 25 words long. There are approximately 8,000 different words in the English Bible. The power of God in using words can be seen when this is compared with Shakespeare. He used about 25,000 different words in his writings. God said much more with fewer words.
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Letters – the last level of study. They separate between the distinct sounds which make up the words. They are important because a change in them can spell out a different word and thus express a different meaning. Paul distinguishes between the meaning of “seed” and “seeds” in Galatians 3:16.
Letters in Hebrew and Greek have numerical values, with the result that every word, phrase, sentence, etc., can be evaluated for numerical value. The study of the relationships between words of the same numerical value is called Gematria. (See also last point below.)
Note: Generally speaking, words in any language can be related in many ways
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by meaning:
synonyms (different words, same or similar meaning),
antonyms (different words, opposite meaning),
homonyms (same word with different meanings) -
by sound:
homophones (same sound, different meanings, e.g., bear and bare)
last syllable (different words, same ending sound as in rhyming words) -
by cell phone equivalents
(different words keyed in with the same key sequence, as in love/loud, or hate/gate, have/gave, or home/good/ gone/hoof/hood). These are technically called paragrams, but colloquially referred to as textonyms, or txtonyms, or T9onyms (pronounced tynonyms). T9 refers to the fact that the cell phone contains 9 text keys. -
by numerical equivalents in the Hebrew or Greek alphabet. This is the heart of Gematria.
Words which have the same numerical value in Hebrew (or Greek) are said to be related in meaning.
The Bible Wheel
Title of a book that expounds a concept originated, researched and developed by Richard Amiel McGough, of Takima, Washington, USA. (Yakima is about 144 miles by road from the great city of Seattle, Washington.)
The concept can be briefly stated as under in the words of the author of the book:
“The Bible Wheel is a simple two-dimensional view of the Holy Bible. It is a symmetrical way of looking at all 66 books at once that we discover by simply “rolling up” the 66 books “like a scroll” on a spindle wheel of 22 Spokes, corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. … It is of utmost importance to recognize that the Bible Wheel is derived entirely from Scripture and Scripture alone. The pattern has existed implicitly in the Bible since at least the fifth century AD when the Vulgate was produced.”
In the Bible Wheel, the 66 books of the Bible are assigned by turns to each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Thus, the first letter, Aleph, connects the 1st, 23rd, and 45th books. The author points out interesting and significant correlations among the three books, which also relate to the significance of the corresponding Hebrew letter. And so on through the rest of the Bible.
The book of Isaiah, the first of the Major Prophets, is itself a “Bible Wheel” as it contains 66 chapters, which have also been “rolled around the spindle of 22 spokes”. Once again, the 1st, 23rd and 45th chapters show significant correlations, and so on through the rest of Isaiah.
The book of Lamentations, the middle book of the Major Prophets, is also a mini Bible Wheel. Four chapters of the book consists of 22 verses and one of 66 verses. The first four chapters are also acrostics, with each verse starting with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequence. The fifth chapter is not an acrostic though it contains 22 chapters. In this, Lamentations is like the Torah, in which the fifth book, Deuteronomy, is “different” from the first four. And Lamentations occurs in the middle of the Major Prophets section, which itself can be seen as the middle section of the Bible, thus enabling us to think of Lamentations as an Inner Wheel within the Outer Wheel! Literally, a wheel in the middle of a wheel (Ezekiel 1:16).
The exact middle verse of the book is Lamentations 3;1, which says, “I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.” This was to be true of Messiah Yeshua, and so appropriately forms the very hub of the Wheel within the Wheel.
Psalm 119, the longest Psalm in the Bible, is a Bible Wheel consists of 22 sections, each containing 8 verses.
It is not the only “Bible Wheel” Psalm. Others, though less obvious, are Psalms 9,10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, and 145, which do not contain 22 verses.
The final book of the Bible, The Revelation, also consists of 22 chapters. The last Bible Wheel within the Bible Wheel!
Read more about the concept in the FAQ page of the Bible Wheel website..
Below are two reports carried in Yakima newspapers.
Report by Adriana Janovich of the Yakima Herald-Republic
Report by Carrie Snyder in the Yakima Business Times
All this may be very interesting, but is the concept of the Bible Wheel valid scripturally?
This question is addressed in this page, in which the author discovers that the Book of Lamentations is a mini Bible Wheel!
Bibloscope 