Best Bible Study Tool

As Christians, we're supposed to be diligent students of the Bible.  But it's pretty seldom that we're actually taught how to study the Bible beyond reading it.  Further, as Christians interested in defending the Bible, Amy Hall has pointed out that we need to be students of the Bible - we need to understand what we're defending and be able to explain the Bible to critics.

Back when I worked on my M.A. at Talbot School of Theology, the Bible study software that was consistently recommended was Logos.  Several years ago, the software came to Mac, then to mobile platforms.  Now Logos has improved again with Logos 5.

Logos 5 is a library of study tools that you can customize to your needs and interests.  It has tools for Christians who want to study the Bible but don't have any specific expertise or training.  But the vast library also makes it useful to pastors and scholars.  It has a huge collection of tools and books - thousands - and they add to it all the time.

There are several new features in Logos 5, and three of them caught my attention because I think they are especially helpful to any Christian studying the Bible. 

The "Clause Search" helps you find any reference in the Bible to a person, place, or thing - even if it's not named specifically in the passage.  Here's a good description of this feature.  The search is not literal so it can return complete results expanding your study.  One of our mottos at STR is "never read a Bible verse" - always read a paragraph or more.  Sometimes "more" isn't in the immediate passage, but in another reference that teaches more about the subject.  "Clause search" gives more complete and expansive insight into what the Bible teaches. 

Another tool that caught my attention is "Timeline."  There are 8,000 events tagged in the Logos 5 resources - the Bible and other books.  You can see a timeline of Bible history and church history.  You can refine it according to the criteria you're interested in.  You can read the Bible and follow the timeline as you go.  You can open the timeline from other books in the Logos library to see how it all fits together in history.  It's another useful tool to give us the big picture and more context to understand the Bible better.

Word studies are one of the most fascinating ways of going deeper into a passage.  It's possible to study a word and find out what it means in the original Hebrew or Greek.  It takes a lot of time, requires several books, and the results are usually very literal.  It's helpful, but not always complete.  Logos has had tools to do word studies for a long time, but a new feature in Logos 5 is the "Bible sense lexicon."  It reveals related words that are used in the same way, and doesn't return results where the same word is used but means something else in the passage.  That's really useful, especially for those of us who don't know Greek or Hebrew.

There are lots of other new features along with the great tools Logos has always had.  You can find out more about Logos 5 here.

Comments

[Don Fisher]

Logos is absolutely essential. Been a user for more than 15 years. Bible College and seminary would have been much more difficult. It is an investment but one that will pay long term dividends for life. Oh yeah, the Ambassador curriculum is also great

[Oscar]

For those of us who cannot afford the hundreds of dollars for Logos5 there is always the FREE alternative at www.e-sword.com . It has some basic search abilities and has many free commentaries, dictionaries, bible handbooks and helps, and quite a few bible versions and translations. There are also different translations and commentaries that can be added for a modest fee.

I have been using this program for years and occasionally send donations to support the effort. Check it out.

[q]

"Logos is absolutely essential."

I don't know about essential (and I know that's not what Don meant, so I'm not poking at him)...I mean I'm sure it's useful tool to those that find it helpful and easy to use, etc. But, I'll be honest, I get the feeling that 99% of the battle most people have with studying the Scriptures is actually reading them in the first place.

I think we live in a "Christian" culture that is infatuated with books about the Bible and learning what the latest best seller has to say about the path to prosperity instead of committing to studying the Scriptures themselves.

Also, I think most serious Bible study comes down to basic reading and research skills. There are a plethora of free tools on the internet, but even without the internet I think it's easily possible to do serious research and study of the Bible by just using the Scriptures themselves and maybe some basic historical research from respectable outside sources...

Bottom line, this isn't a rant against this particular piece of software or anything, but again it seems like we're always obsessed with the latest and greatest thing to "help" us understand the Scripture, when a lot of it can be solved by getting over that obsession and just reading the Scriptures and applying basic critical reading skills like any other document you would read. Remember, we have the Holy Spirit, the ultimate Bible Interpreter, indwelling us, and He is to "lead us into all truth." The Bible isn't meant to be a mystery to Believers; it's God's message and I don't think he intentionally made it difficult to understand.

Also remember that there are a multitude of Brothers and Sisters in Christ around the world that are in jail, beaten, tortured, and not even allowed access to the Bible who would be glad for even a few verses written on a napkin to treasure, let alone the latest software update from Logos...

[Alexis Marlons]

It funny now that we have this kind of technology, the Bible is really very accessible to all. The question is, are we really going to study it even it is already in the palms of our hands?

[Kirra]

I used Logos one time in Bible college as part of a class project. I didn't care for it, but I didn't use it long enough to figure it out. Maybe in the future I will purchase it and figure it out.