BASIC BIBLE DOCTRINE

Essential Tools for Christian Growth

Lesson Three

Selecting and Navigating Your Bible

By John McReynolds

One of the first skills a new Christian needs to develop is how to find his or her way around the Bible. Later on in this course on Bible Basics we will be saying a lot more about the Bible—what it is, how we came to have it, what we believe about it and why. But for now I just want you to know that we have a textbook for this course, and it is the Christian Bible. In every lesson we will be referencing various passages in the Bible, so there are two things you need. Number one, you need a Bible. Number two, you need to know how to find your way around in it. Let’s address these needs one at a time.

Which version of the Bible should I use?

Occasionally when someone begins attending our church for the first time they ask, “What version of the Bible do you recommend?” It’s a fair question. I am a conservative, evangelical Protestant, and this course is presented from the doctrinal standpoint adopted by conservative, evangelical Protestants. There is one basic Bible that we use, generally referred to as the Protestant Bible, which is composed of 39 books of the Old Testament, and 27 books of the New Testament—66 in all.

Now there are other Bibles that include more books, notably the Douay Bible which include several additional books in the Old Testament—these are collectively known by Protestants as the Apocrypha. This is the Bible commonly used by the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant churches have rejected the Apocrypha as not being Divinely inspired Scripture, so they have left that section out of the Protestant Christian Bible.

Also, the Mormon Church (Latter Day Saints) adds the Book of Mormon, to the Protestant Bible. Protestants reject the Book of Mormon as unscriptural for a variety of reasons, which we’ll get into later on in this course. So from now on when we refer to the Bible, we are referring to the Protestant Bible.

There are, however, many version of the Protestant Bible. Years ago most conservative, evangelical churches favored the King James version—more accurately known as the Authorized Version (KJV or the AV) of the Bible, which was published in 1611 AD. Although there were a number of revisions and paraphrased versions of the Bible after that, the KJV remained the version of choice, up until 1881, when the Revised Version (RV) was first published. Although more versions continued to be introduced, those two versions remained the most popular English versions in use until the mid 20th century. At that time there was a huge proliferation of English versions of the Bible that became available to the Bible reading public.

Some of the English versions of the Bible available today include the New International Version, New American Standard Bible, American Standard Version, New King James Version, Third Millennium Bible, New Living Translation, New Revised Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, Good News Bible, New Century Version, God’s Word Translation, World English Bible, The Bible in Basic English, The Darby Translation, The Webster Bible, Young’s Literal Translation, Holman Christian Standard Bible, and others. Most, if not all of these, are available in Christian bookstores and are also available for online viewing on the internet.

Many people still prefer the old King James Version (there is a fringe group that believes it is heretical to use any other version), but most people today find the 400 year old language stilted, full of obsolete or obscure words, and generally hard to follow. The New King James Version (NKJV) has made it easier to read. However, most scholars agree that the original manuscript used to translate the Bible into the KJV (the Textus Receptus) has numerous errors, and that there are older, more accurate manuscripts available today due to archeological discoveries made since the Renaissance. The New International Version (NIV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB) both sourced the latest available manuscripts in the original languages for their translations.

For those who prefer a more academic approach to Bible study, there are a number of Bibles available as interlinear versions, which feature the text in the original language (Greek or Hebrew), with a literal English rendering below each line of the text. This literal rendering usually does not flow well in English, so it cannot be used as a direct translation, but it is valuable for word studies. Normally, interlinear versions also provide one of the popular translations such as the NIV on the facing page of the interlinear text.

In our church our pastor uses his own exegesis (analysis of the passage from the original language) as the basis for his sermons. Because of this, it is not critical which English version a church member uses—therefore we do not emphasize the use of one version over another. There are several different versions in use in our congregation. Having said that, I personally think that either the NIV or the NASB Bibles are good, easy to read Bibles, and are reasonably good translations from the original Greek and Hebrew, with only a few exceptions. Either of these would be a good Bible for new Christians.

Whatever version you get I would recommend a Bible that is a true translation. Not all English Bibles available today are translations. Some are what is known as paraphrases, and were not translated from the original manuscripts. For example, The Living Bible is a paraphrase. Paraphrased Bibles are just that—they are paraphrased from other English translations, and are intended to clarify or expand on Bible passages. But sometimes they can “muddy the waters”, or reflect an author’s agenda that is not necessarily Biblical. You can use a paraphrase in Bible study—just be aware of its limitations. Personally, I would not use one except possibly as a reference.

Okay, I have my Bible, now how do I find my way around it?

When the Bible was originally written, there was no division into chapters and verses. This was a relatively recent development that occurred during the Renaissance when Bibles began to be produced for the masses. Now, each of the 66 books of the Bible are divided into chapters and verses to make it much easier for readers to find specific passages.

Like any other modern textbook, your Bible should have a table of contents at the front with page references to help you find the book. Most beginning Bible students will need to frequently use this table of contents. Some more expensive Bibles have handy thumb notches cut into the pages that allow the reader to put his thumb in the notch for the book he wants, and open his Bible right to chapter one of the book. Then it’s just a matter of moving forward through the book to the chapter, and finally the verse. After a time of consistent Bible study you will begin to get familiar with the Bible so that you are able to quickly find the most commonly referenced books without the table of contents or thumb tabs.

Except for the shortest books (Obadiah in the Old Testament and Philemon, 2nd John, 3rd John, and Jude in the New Testament), all the other books of the Bible consist of two or more chapters—the Book of Psalms has 150! All of these chapters are divided into verses normally about a sentence long, although sometimes they can be a couple of sentences long, or sometimes just a fragment of a sentence, depending on what is being said. We have developed a shorthand way of referring to specific verses. For example: John 3:16.

John refers to the book—in this case it is the Gospel of John the Apostle, located near the beginning of the New Testament. The numeral 3 refers to the third chapter. Then we have a colon (:) which serves to separate the chapter from the verse. Then the number 16 refers to the specific verse in chapter three.

Another example: 1st John 1:9. This is another book written by the Apostle John. It’s actually a letter, or epistle, written to the various churches in existence at the time and circulated between them. John wrote three of these epistles, so they are designated as 1st John, 2nd John, and 3rd John. As before, the 1 after the name of the book refers to chapter one, and the 9 refers to verse nine.

Here’s another: Eph. 2:8, 9. Most of the book names are longer than three or four letters, so it is customary to abbreviate them. Eph. stands for Ephesians, or actually the Epistle to the Ephesians (check out the list of the books of the Bible and their abbreviations at the end of this lesson). Again, the numeral 2 designates the chapter, but now we have 8, 9 – two numerals separated by a comma. This refers to two different verses, verse eight and verse nine. These verses might be grouped together, but they could be separated by one or more verses, like Rom. 5:1, 6. This refers to the Book of Romans, chapter five, and verses one and six.

Let’s look at one more: John 10:27-30. Again, John refers to the Gospel of John, 10 is the chapter, and then we have 27-30 – two numbers separated by a hyphen (-). When verse numbers are separated by a hyphen it means that all of the verses in between are included. So John 10:27-30 refers to the 10th chapter of John’s Gospel, verses 27, 28, 29, and 30.

Hopefully this has made it a little easier to find your way around. Don’t be shy about looking in the table of contents to find where a book is. I still do it for some of the books I don’t visit very often. If you study the Bible as often as you should (daily!) you will find you have become proficient at navigating the Bible in a much shorter time than you probably thought possible.

List of the books of the Bible and their common abbreviations

The Old Testament

The New Testament

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