• The more you use your study Bible, the more you'll feel the limitations of its built-in helps. That's when you know you need to begin building your Core Library, a set of five reference books that will:
  give you an overview of the Bible (Bible Handbook),
• help you find verses and passages in the Bible
  (Concordance and Topical Bible),
  help you understand things in the Bible (Bible Dictionary).
  

1. Bible Handbook

A Bible handbook is a companion to Bible reading. It's arranged in the order of the books of the Bible. It provides background before you read through a Bible book, commentary and illustrations as you read, and topical and historical notes to expand your understanding.

2. Concordance

A concordance lists common words found in the Bible and shows the places where they occur. For example, under the entry “faith,” you'd find the locations in the Bible where the word “faith” is used. A concordance enables you to do word studies as well as locate verses you vaguely remember.

3. Topical Bible

A topical Bible is a guide to different subjects addressed in the Bible. Under “faith,” it will list not only the most important verses where the word “faith” is found, but also verses that talk about faith without using the word, for example Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed the LORD...”

4. Bible Dictionary

A Bible dictionary gives more detailed information about people, places, words, and events in the Bible. You could use it to learn more about what the Bible says about children, for example, or about Peter, or Egypt, or miracles.

5. Commentary

A commentary is a single or multi-volume work that explains the meaning of Bible passages. [This image should be to the left of “Bible Handbook”]

1. BIBLE HANDBOOK

The first Bible handbook ever published was Halley's Bible Handbook.  It was a revolutionary concept that came out of Dr. Halley's desire to get people to read the Bible with more understanding. It remains a perennial bestseller to this day. A new, revised edition of Halley's Bible Handbook is now available from Zondervan.

 How to Choose

A Bible handbook is arranged in the order of the books of the Bible, and typically contains maps, charts, indexes, essays on special topics, outlines of Bible books, brief commentary on the Bible text, and cross-references to other parts of the Handbook.

 Ask Yourself

Is it more devotional or informational? Which am I looking for? How much more content does it have than my study Bible? Is it too basic for my needs? Do I plan to use it permanently or temporarily? (If you will be using it permanently, get the best you can afford.) Is it well indexed? Are the illustrations and charts helpful and easy to use? Is it readable and usable?

 Using a Bible Handbook

We recommend a Bible handbook as a primary reference book (after the study Bible) because it is comprehensive and easy to use. To use a handbook, you simply open it to the book of the Bible you're reading. All of the relevant information is right there. You don't need any advanced knowledge to use the it.
A handbook is an ideal basic companion to Bible reading, especially for people who are less familiar with the Bible.

If you have a study Bible and would like a reference tool that deals more with the meaning of the text, an alternative to the Bible Handbook is a basic Bible commentary. The following is a sample Bible handbook page.

2. CONCORDANCE

A concordance is an index to the words found in the Bible. It lists the references of the verses where they occur, and a piece of each sentence where the word occurs.

Unlike most Bible reference books, a concordance is based on a specific Bible translation, e.g., NIV, KJV, NASB, etc.  It should be used ONLY with that translation. The Greek word that is translated “love” in the NIV, for example, is usually translated as “charity” in the KJV and so would be listed in a different part of the concordance. If you were raised on the KJV but now use a modern translation, you may want a concordance for each so that you can also find verses you vaguely remember from your KJV days.

 How to Choose

Concordances come in different sizes, ranging from brief, abridged concordances in the back of most study Bibles to exhaustive concordances of almost 2,000 pages. There are four basic types:

1. Handy, concise, or compact concordances are in some way abridged. Only the most important words found in the Bible are included, and only the most important references for those words are listed. This type of concordance may be adequate if you only use this tool occasionally to find a Bible verse.
2. A complete concordance is still abridged, but in a different way. Not all words found in the Bible are included, but the list of references for each of the words that is included is complete. If you want to do English word studies, a complete concordance is a must, though an exhaustive concordance is even better.
3. An unabridged concordance indexes every word and lists every reference.
4. An exhaustive concordance indexes every word and lists every reference. It also shows which Hebrew or Greek word is translated for every occurrence of every English word in the Bible version.  If you want to do in-depth word studies based on the occurrences of Greek and Hebrew words, an exhaustive concordance is indispensable.

The best-known exhaustive concordance is Strong's,  which is based on the King James Version. The Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance is the only true exhaustive concordance to any version other than the KJV.

A very useful feature of exhaustive concordances is a numbering system which assigns a specific number to each of the Greek and Hebrew words found in the Bible. The Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance  uses the Goodrick/Kohlenberger numbering system, which reflects modern linguistic standards and is increasingly used in newer reference works. Strong's numbering system is dated and inadequate by modern standards, but is still widely used. There are also concordances that are based directly on the Greek and Hebrew text.

 Ask Yourself

• What translation of the Bible am I using? For most effective Bible study, you need a concordance that is based on the Bible version you use.
• Do I want to use it to find a verse or to do word studies?
• Is there a numbering system?
• Do I own a computer? Software can perform the same functions as a concordance with greater speed and flexibility.

 Using a Concordance

Read the introduction to your concordance so you know its features and limitations. If you can't locate a word, look for its dictionary form.  For example, if you can't find went, look for go. Look up other inflected forms or roots of words. Many concordances direct you to the various inflected forms of words, e.g., come, comes, coming, came, or even to words of the same root, e.g., heart, faint-hearted, half-hearted. By looking up the other forms or spellings, you can do a more thorough word or concept study. When doing a word study, use an English thesaurus to find synonyms and related words. For example, under faith a thesaurus will list words such as belief, hope, confidence, assurance, dependence, trust, etc. Don't study in the concordance alone—use your Bible. Always read the context in which a verse is found, not just the verse or piece of a verse. For example, Psalm 14:1 says, “There is no God”—but the context tells you that that's what the fool says. When you do a word study, read the verses you find, in their context, in several translations. Very few words—especially abstract words—have only one, clear-cut meaning.

*An analytical concordance is somewhat similar to an exhaustive concordance but is arranged differently. The only analytical concordances available are Young's Analytical Concordance (KJV) and the Analytical Concordance to the New Testament NRSV by Whitaker and Kohlenberger. The following is a sample concordance page.

 How to Choose

You can use a topical Bible with any translation of the Bible, even if it quotes from a particular translation.
Some topical Bibles list only biblical and theological topics, while others focus more on practical topics. Make sure you choose the kind you want. The size of a topical Bible doesn't necessarily reflect the number of topics or references it contains. A small one that gives only verse references may actually be more complete than a big one that prints out the full text of many verses. Since a concordance and a topical Bible complement each other, we recommend that you use them together, rather than choosing one over the other.
 Ask Yourself

• Which one best addresses the subjects I want to study?
• How much information does each topical Bible contain?
• Does the editor's choice of topics and their relative length seem balanced?
• Are the topics well subdivided and indexed?
• Are the Bible verses printed out in full? How important is this feature to me?
• When was it originally published and last revised?
• Which one seems most user-friendly?

 Using a Topical Bible

If you want to study a topic such as baptism, a concordance will only give you a list of all the verses in which the word “baptism” occurs. A topical Bible, on the other hand, will help you also find verses and passages in the Bible that talk about the subject of baptism without using the word “baptism” as such. 

The following is a sample topical Bible page.

4. BIBLE DICTIONARY

A Bible dictionary is more like an encyclopedia than like a regular English dictionary. It gives definitions and pronunciations, but it also provides biblical, historical, and theological information on people, places, words, and events in the Bible, all in alphabetical order.  A Bible encyclopedia is simply a multi-volume Bible dictionary.

Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias, such as the New International Bible Dictionary and the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, don't define every word of the Bible. They focus mostly on nouns—people, places, and things—although some also have articles on theological terms that are not in the Bible, such as “Trinity.”

Some Bible dictionaries are more specialized, such as Zondervan's Pictorial Bible Dictionary.

 How to Choose

It's helpful to have a Bible dictionary that matches the version(s) of the Bible that you use. The spelling of some people and place names may be different from one translation to another, and sometimes words are translated differently altogether. For example, there's a Hebrew word that the KJV, NIV, NASB, and NRSV translate as “cormorant,” “desert owl,” “pelican,” and “hedgehog,” respectively.

When you're comparing dictionaries, pick a few words—for example a place name like Shiloh; a person, perhaps Mary; an abstract biblical word such as grace; and a theological word like Trinity—and read the entries for these words in several dictionaries.
It can be helpful to have more than one Bible dictionary, especially if they're somewhat different in focus or orientation.

Look for thorough cross-referencing. If you don't know the exact word to look up, a good cross-reference system will anticipate many of your guesses and help direct you to the topic you're looking for. For example, if you look up “perfume” in the NIV Compact Dictionary of the Bible, it tells you, “SEE OINTMENT AND PERFUME.”

 Ask Yourself

• What kind of information will I most likely want to look up?
• How many articles does the dictionary have? Do I prefer many shorter articles, or fewer longer ones?
• Does it have good cross-references? What size dictionary is best for me? What type size and page layout do I like?
• Do I want a dictionary that uses more every day English or a more scholarly one?
• When was the dictionary originally published and last revised? Historical, archaeological, and linguistic knowledge has grown dramatically over the past decades.

 Using a Bible Dictionary

Cross-references or cross-indexing can help you find articles of related interest. An article about Jesus might end with “See also ATONEMENT, MESSIAH, MIRACLES, PARABLES, SECOND COMING,” to name just a few.

A good English dictionary is an indispensable tool for use with your Bible dictionary. There may be unfamiliar words in the Bible that you won't find in a Bible dictionary. Take, for example, Isaiah 14:23 in the New English Bible: “I will make her a haunt of the bustard, a waste of fen, and sweep her with the besom of destruction.” Your Bible dictionary probably won't help you here, but your English dictionary will.

An English thesaurus is another valuable tool. For example, if you can't find an article on “Gentiles” in your Bible dictionary, a thesaurus may suggest “heathen” as a synonym, and that may be the right heading in the Bible dictionary.

The following is a sample Bible dictionary page.

5. BIBLE COMMENTARY

Commentaries give the commentator's perspective on passages in the Bible. They should never be the first books you check when doing a Bible study—if you do, you start with somebody else's conclusions rather than finding your own. There is no substitute for first-hand study, using the tools of the Core Library and relying on the illuminating presence of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, commentaries can be helpful in supplementing your own study by giving you other perspectives and additional insights.

 How to Choose

Choosing a commentary, perhaps more than choosing other Bible reference books, is a personal matter. The key issue is which commentary answers the kinds of questions you are likely to ask.

As usual, you should take time to look at what's available. Compare before you buy. One consideration for comparison is what theological perspective the author is writing from.

Another consideration is the date of publication—some historical and cultural information in older commentaries might be outdated or incorrect, but the devotional material in them would be timeless. Commentaries come in many different sizes. You can get a commentary or set on the whole Bible or for individual books of the Bible.

 Using a Commentary

Devotional commentaries, such as Matthew Henry's Commentary, focus on the spiritual significance of the text for our lives. Expository commentaries focus on explaining the text. Most expository commentaries, such as the Expositor's Bible Commentary, use historical, geographical, and cultural information as well as discussions of the original languages to explain the text.
Exegetical or critical commentaries focus primarily on technical issues related to the Greek or Hebrew text and its interpretation and are written primarily for specialists.

 Ask Yourself

• Is the Bible text included? Is it the author's own translation?
• Is there an explanation of the text?
• Is historical, geographical, and cultural information included?
• Are there word studies and grammatical explanations?
• Are there critical notes dealing with textual criticism; form, literary, and other “higher” criticisms; history and comparison of different interpretations?
• Are footnotes, bibliography, and indexes included?

 
The following is a sample Bible commentary page.