Register now for ChurchSource’s free 30-minute webcast Tuesday, September 10th, at 3:00 pm ET with Dr. Bill Mounce. The topic: Is Biblical Greek Study Still Relevant to the Church Today?.
Today, we’re continuing our conversation with biblical Greek scholar and bestselling author Dr. Bill Mounce (@billmounce), who is one of the translators for the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible.
Last time we talked about how to get started in doing word studies in the Bible. In this second of three video conversations, Bill explains:
- what “biblish” is and how to guard against it
- the difference between the words “abide” and “remain”
- the reference tools available for the average person to conduct Bible word studies
- how “reverse interlinear” Bibles work
- how the hub of a Bible verse is similar to the hub of a bicycle wheel
- how to do word studies in Scripture using Bible Gateway Plus
- the challenge translators face of using the right English word to convey the full meaning of a Greek word
- how anyone can understand the rich definition behind Greek words
[Read the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament on Bible Gateway]
Here’s an excerpt from the video conversation:
What are the basics of what someone should be looking at in a word study and how can the reverse interlinear Bible help them get started?
Dr. Bill Mounce: Finding the right word is really important. Sometimes, you’ll look at a word and you’ll study it, and when you’re done you go, “Duh, that didn’t help me at all.” So it’s really key that you find the right word. Other clues in the text. Look for words that are repeated. I’ll look for words that may be theological and orientation words that you don’t understand. Compare Bible translations. Pull up a couple of different Bibles and and see where they’re different.
I think of a bicycle wheel: it’s got that axle, it’s got the hub. You can pull out a few spokes here and there on the bike and it’s still going to work. But if you pull out the hub, it all falls apart. Bible verses have hubs. There’s going to be specific words that are so central to the verse that if you did not understand them, the whole verse falls apart. Those are the words you’re looking for.
[See Bible study reference resources mentioned by Bill in the Bible Gateway Store]
We’ve been talking a bit about the reverse interlinear. Bible Gateway has done a really good job of implementing this. Let me just say a few things about it, because I want to make sure people know how to use it. What you do is that you go to Bible Gateway and you look up a verse—let’s say John 3:16—and under every English word there’s a transliteration of what that Greek word is. It’s kind of cool that you can do a mouse-over on a word, and see if that word occurs anywhere else. Like if you looked up John 3:16 and 17, mouse-over on the word God, you’ll see that’s the Greek word theos. And any other place that theos is used is also highlighted.
Where it gets really powerful, though, is if you use Bible Gateway Plus and click on that word, the sidebar opens and you can scroll down to “Dictionaries” and my dictionary [Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary and Mounce Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament] is listed there. If you click on that, every word in John 3:16 that I talk about gets listed. So it’s really simple. So you see all the words of John 3:16 if you want to do the word on love, you click on love. And up comes my dictionary. So it’s been a really, really good implementation of it. You can also click on a word and it shows meanings. So there’s lots of different ways to do this. And I tell students that there is absolutely no reason to do English word studies ever. I mean, it is not that hard any longer to really be able to do a Greek or Hebrew word study. You just have to understand a little bit about the nature of the language. And after that, it’s a piece of cake.
Bible Gateway has over 30 English Bible translations, many audio Bibles, Bible reading plans, over 60 devotionals, and this Blog with Bible related news and tips. On top of that, we have many free reference tools and paid resources from our Bible Gateway Plus membership program. Included in there are resources written by Dr. Bill Mounce.
BIO: William D. Mounce (PhD, Aberdeen University) is founder and president of BiblicalTraining.org, a non-profit organization offering world-class educational resources for discipleship in the local church. Formerly he was a preaching pastor and prior to that a professor of New Testament and director of the Greek Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of the bestselling Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar and many other resources. He was the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and is serving on the NIV translation committee.
[Browse the many resources by Bill Mounce in the Bible Gateway Store]
Olive Tree Bible App resources mentioned by Bill Mounce 30% Off Coupon with code BMBG30
Watch the first video in this conversation series, “Getting Started.”
Watch the third video in this conversation series, “Diving Deeper,” when it will be published on the Bible Gateway Blog September 9.
Register now for ChurchSource’s free 30-minute webcast Tuesday, September 10th, at 3:00 pm ET with Dr. Bill Mounce. The topic: Is Biblical Greek Study Still Relevant to the Church Today?.
The above resources by Bill Mounce are published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc., the parent company of Bible Gateway.
Get to the roots of studying the Bible by becoming a member of Bible Gateway Plus. Try it free right now!
The post Bible Word Study Made Easy: A Conversation with Dr. Bill Mounce—Video #2 Your First Word Study appeared first on Bible Gateway Blog.
