Bible Dictionary

Kolen Cheung
Kolen Cheung Member Posts: 1,096 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

This time I would like to ask if you know there is any good Bible Dictionary. The one I know are:

Multivolume:

Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary

One volume:

Eerdmans Bible Dictionary

Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary

New Bible Dictionary

The one I am looking for is non-technical (so I would not purchase the Anchor one). Thanks.

Comments

  • Gary O'Neal
    Gary O'Neal Member Posts: 584 ✭✭

    I would like to ask if you know there is any good Bible Dictionary.

    Kolen

    You might get help from this thread which is discussing some of these -- http://community.logos.com/forums/t/13411.aspx.

    πάντα εἰς δόξαν θεοῦ ποιεῖτε

  • John Kight
    John Kight Member Posts: 1,619 ✭✭✭

    For book reviews and more visit sojotheo.com 

  • Matthew C Jones
    Matthew C Jones Member Posts: 10,295 ✭✭✭

    The one I am looking for is non-technical

    Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary is a great non-technical reference for those of us who like visuals. Most of Holman's reference works appear to be designed by a visual learner. [:)] I like charts, pictures, timelines & graphs. Holman does these very well.

    Anchor isn't too technical to be enjoyed but it isn't as visually appealing.

    The IVP collection gives you the biggest info bang for the buck.

    Logos 7 Collectors Edition

  • Kolen Cheung
    Kolen Cheung Member Posts: 1,096 ✭✭✭

    Thanks all.

    The Anchor is not technical? But will it be lengthy? (comparing single volume to 6 volumes)

    Thanks.

  • Kolen Cheung
    Kolen Cheung Member Posts: 1,096 ✭✭✭

    You might get help from this thread which is discussing some of these -- http://community.logos.com/forums/t/13411.aspx.

    Thanks for the post. The information is useful. But, I think that is about encyclopedia, right? What's the difference between Bible Dictionary and encyclopedia?

    Thanks.

  • Amy Leung
    Amy Leung Member Posts: 406 ✭✭

    Kolen, for what you want (a good one volume commentary and a good dictionary), I think you should seriously consider the Essential IVP Reference Collection.   The IVP Dictionaries (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, Dictionary of New Testament Background) are awesome resources and contain many mini-essays on the relevant topics.  The NBC is a good one volume commentary.  The IVP Background commentaries are really good and it is worth the price of the whole collection just for these two alone.  (They were recommended to me by a preacher friend who always consulted them for her sermon preparation.) [:)]  "Hard sayings of the Bible" is another gem, very insightful though I do not agree with everything that Kaiser Walter has to say.

    These bible dictionaries (the IVP ones, Anchor, Eerdman's etc) are more than "dictionaries" in their usual sense.  They offer not definitions but as I said they are really collections of mini-essays on the relevant topics. 

  • Kolen Cheung
    Kolen Cheung Member Posts: 1,096 ✭✭✭

    Thanks! I think I will buy the IVP collection.

    By the way, I have a question on the New Bible Dictionary in the base package in this post. Do you have a clue?

    Thanks.

  • Amy Leung
    Amy Leung Member Posts: 406 ✭✭

    I don't have a hardcopy so I don't know about it, but it looks like they're not that important?  But indices are missing in many resources, and sometimes they're very helpful (the scriptural indices of my Gesenius' Grammar and Figures of Speech used in the bible being some of them).  Though there're some workarounds (e.g. the "cited by" tool) I'd be most grateful if Logos could consider retaining the indices in future resources.

     

  • Kolen Cheung
    Kolen Cheung Member Posts: 1,096 ✭✭✭

    I think "How to use this Dictionary", "List of Animals", "List of Contributors", etc. are kind of important too. I suppose "How to use this Dictionary" will talk about the philosophy behind this particular Bible Dictionary, etc. It would be great to know it before read any entry of the dictionary.

  • Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell
    Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell Member Posts: 722 ✭✭✭

    I really enjoy using the Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary. I find I get an answer for pretty much anything I'm looking up.

    The worst one, in my humble opinion, is the old Smith's Bible Dictionary which was the first dictionary I ever bought when I started studying the Bible. I never found *any entries* I was searching for!! [:P]