The Bible Study Library

October 1, 2009

Ideally, the only book you need to study the Bible is the Bible itself. The guiding rule and principle of the ancient Church, that persisted as the norm up until the 1800′s, was simply: “Scripture interprets Scripture.”

The Fathers of the Church and those who followed after them had an advantage over us with this guideline, however. They had a prodigious knowledge of the whole Bible, with large parts of it committed to memory from years of daily reading and meditating on Scripture. When the Fathers said “the clear passages interpret the difficult passages,” they had a massive mental cross-reference system that could move back and forth through the Bible to actually do this sorting out of clear passages that enlightened difficult passages. In the sermons and commentaries left to us by such giants of biblical study as St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and of course, Martin Luther himself (and this is a very short and incomplete list), we have an example of how these minds, immersed in the Bible, could “interpret Scripture by Scripture.”

But few of us today have that sort of command of the contents of the whole Bible, and even fewer have the knowledge of how to apply the rule of “the clearer passages interpret the difficult passage;” I know I don’t. We need help. We need books on our shelves to give us background, history and theology before we set out to interpret the Bible (the method of which I have treated in other posts). So here is my list of what I think are the basic books someone needs in order to be a well-informed interpreter of the Bible. Any good bookstore — on-line or with a real building and live people — will be happy to help you find and buy these books, especially as many of them tend to be rather expensive:

The Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible

The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible

Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (latest edition)

There are many Bible Dictionaries and Bible Commentaries out there. I recommend these three because they are least influenced by political correctness and are all reliable, moderate options of modern biblical scholarship: not radically left or reactionary right.

The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today’s World

All Study Bibles today are biased toward a certain theology that determines how the Bible is interpreted, from all the varieties from radical liberalism to fundamentalist conservatism. The same is true for The Orthodox Study Bible wth a significant difference: it interprets the Bible from the perspective and method of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
This Eastern Orthodox Church approach is fundamentally unlike any western church method — Protestant or Catholic. It is spiritual, it relies on the wisdom of the Church Fathers, and sees Bible interpretation as aiding the Christian to a deeper experience of union with Christ.
Two unusual aspects that I think are useful rather than an obstacle: the Old Testament is the English translation of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek version of the Jewish Bible first produced ca. 200 B.C., which is “The Scriptures” to which the New Testament writers refer and quote; and the New Testament is the New King James Version.

The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church

See my other, detailed posting on The Book of Concord
Three of the writings in the BC should give you almost all the basics in theology you need for Bible Study: The Augsburg Confession; Luther’s Small Catechism, and Luther’s Large Catechism.

Good books to read:

Michael Dauphinais & Matthew Levering, Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible

Dominique Barthelemy, God and His Image: An Outline of Biblical Theology

Aidan Nichols, Lovely Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church

Lutheran Laity Leaders