Early Christian Study Bible — Full Tutorial

Welcome to the Early Christian Study Bible! Explore over twenty-five hundred Bible versions in about twenty-two hundred languages, and more than five million connections to early Christian writings. Right-click a verse to discover ancient quotations and read them in context. Search by reference, voice, or what you remember—even rough spelling—with over four hundred thousand cross-references. Explore our Septuagint interlinear: the Greek Old Testament. Then the Greek New Testament, and Hebrew with Strong's meanings and pronunciation. Study Greek and Hebrew with the King James, New King James, and English Standard Versions; Greek also works with the World English Bible. Reader's Greek connects English to Greek; Scholar's Greek reveals the original wording and grammar. Enjoy cinematic full screen. Every Bible verse is already a presentation slide! Build Sunday-school lessons in minutes, without making each Bible slide by hand in PowerPoint. Add ancient quotations and your own questions. Use Presenter view and a live audience screen, with zoom, laser, spotlight, and downloads. Stay to the end to learn how to use these powerful tools. Then come back anytime: choose a chapter, or resume where you left off. Let's begin!

Let's start with the Bible itself. The version button tells you which translation you're reading. Open it to see the available versions. A speaker symbol means that version has audio. The language button lets you explore Bibles in other languages. For this walkthrough, we'll use the World English Bible. Now open Choose a Book. Select Romans, choose chapter eight, and select verse one. Here is the chapter, with the audio controls along the bottom of the reader. Press Play. Listen for a moment and watch the words follow the reading. Pause brings the reading to a stop. If you'd like it faster or slower, open the speed control. The buttons give you quick presets. Drag the slider to fine-tune the speed between them, and dial it in to the pace you like best. We'll return to normal speed for this walkthrough. You can also let playback continue into the next chapter with Autoplay. Now open Cinema for a focused read-along view. You can change books, chapters, and verses without leaving this view. Watch as we choose a different passage and stay in Cinema. You can show the Greek and open a word's Strong's information here too, which makes Cinema useful for a simple presentation. Later, we'll build a lesson and use the fuller presentation tools, with your own questions, quotations, and teaching controls. For now, we'll close Cinema and find a verse by searching.

Open Search Scripture on the right. When you know a reference, type it directly. I'll enter John three, verse sixteen. Press Search. A recognized reference opens directly. Here we are in John three, with verse sixteen highlighted among its neighboring verses. Let's try a different passage by speaking. Open Search Scripture again, clear the previous words, and press the microphone. Say, search for Jude, chapter one, verse three. Check what the microphone heard, then press Search. This reference opens Jude directly. Now Jude three is open in the reader. You can read the surrounding chapter or play its audio. Let's look at searches where you don't know the reference. You can type a whole sentence, such as, where does it say love your enemies? Search shows Matthew five, verse forty-four. Select it, and here is the verse in its chapter. You don't have to remember the book and number first. Now pay attention to the spelling in this next search. I've typed, wher dose it sey luv yor enemys. It looks rough, but the question is still, where does it say love your enemies? Search still finds Matthew five, verse forty-four. We'll open that result too. And here's a single-word example. Notice that I've typed concubne, with the letter i missing, in the search box. Search recognizes the intended word, and we can open Genesis twenty-two, verse twenty-four. The passage is highlighted here. The extra chapter information and study resources are collapsed underneath the Scripture, so they don't crowd the reading. We'll finish these examples by searching for Jude one, verse three again and opening it. That will be our passage for the rest of this lesson.

Now that we've found our passage, let's study it. On the larger screen, right-click Jude three to open its verse tools. Cross References helps you compare related passages. Open one, read the highlighted verse in its chapter, and use Back to return to Jude. The verse tools also let you copy a passage with its reference, highlight a passage, and save a note. Copy gives you the passage to paste elsewhere. Choose a highlight color, and the passage stays marked. A note can hold an observation or a question you'd like to come back to. We'll save a short reminder about contending for the faith. My Notes in the left menu brings together your notes and highlights from across the site, organized by section and source. Choose a category or search to find them again. Now, back to Jude. Next, let's look at the Greek beneath the English. Open Settings and turn on the Greek reading view. Reader's Greek places Greek beneath the English. This is the everyday view: it helps you connect the English words you're reading with the Greek behind them. You don't have to be a Greek scholar to use it. Scholar's Greek is for people who want to follow the fuller Greek wording and its grammatical connections, including little connecting words that English may express differently or leave without a separate word. We'll briefly compare it, then return to Reader's Greek. To study a word, click the Greek word directly beneath the English. Here we'll use exhorting. The word panel gives its meaning, its Strong's number, and related occurrences. The pronunciation control lets you hear the word. Let's listen. Now look at the other places the word appears. A word study can help you compare usage, while the surrounding verses keep the meaning in context. Close the panel when you're ready to return to the passage. There are also early Christian comments connected with Scripture. Open one of the comments, and choose Read in context. This opens the whole work and brings the quoted passage into view, highlighted among the surrounding sections. Take time to read above and below it. That's how you check what the writer was saying, rather than relying on an isolated quotation. Then return to Jude. We've moved from finding a verse to studying its words and context. Next, we'll use that same passage to teach.

You can teach straight from the Bible without making a slide for every verse. Open Jude three's verse tools and choose Present. The passage becomes a slide. Longer verses can use more than one page, so Next continues through the verse before moving on. Keep going, and here is Jude four. These Bible slides are already prepared automatically throughout the Bible. You can move through the verses, chapters, and books, or use Go to to jump to another passage. To show how that continues, let's jump to Jude's last verse. Next takes us into Revelation. You don't need to build those Bible slides yourself. We'll return to Jude three now. For a prepared lesson, you may want more than a sequence of Bible verses. You might add a question, a quotation, and private notes for yourself. Let's close this presentation and put those pieces together in a saved lesson.

Open Notes and slides, then make a new lesson. We'll call this one, Jude: Contend for the Faith. Add Jude three to the lesson. Its two pages stay together. Open Design to choose your background. There are pictured designs and plain backgrounds, and you can change your choice later. We'll use Plain light with Georgia text. Choose a design that keeps the words easy to read for your room. Your saved lesson contains the slides you choose, in the order you arrange them. That is different from simply continuing through all the automatic Bible slides. You can add a private speaker note as a reminder to pause and let the group answer. Those notes are for your screen, not the audience. You can also bring material from the rest of the website into the lesson. Let's begin with an early Christian writing. Open the work, select a short quotation, and use Add to slides. Choose our lesson and check the text in the preview. The quotation is saved when you choose the lesson. Check the writer and source in the saved slide. The same idea works with the Early Christian Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. Open the comment you want, select the quotation, and add it to the lesson. Again, check its wording and attribution. For one of David Bercot's lessons, open the transcript, select the portion you need, and add that selection as a slide. And you can do this with a video's transcript too. Open the transcript, select the words, and choose Add to slides. We're adding the selected quotation here, rather than promising the entire video will play inside the downloaded presentation. Back in our lesson, the Bible passage and those quotations are now together. You can review their order and the source information before teaching. Let's add a couple of questions to help the group discuss Jude three.

Choose Your own slide and type your discussion questions. We'll use two: What does it mean to contend for the faith? And, how can we do that today? Your changes save as you work. The editing preview stays on your screen while you prepare. Clean up helps separate the questions into readable lines. You can add numbers if that suits your lesson, choose a larger text size, and align the text. For more control, choose Arrange separate text boxes. Now each question has its own box. You can change its size, padding, and style, and adjust the space between the questions. Drag a box to a new position, or resize it with its handle. Snap to grid and center helps line things up. Turn snapping off if you'd prefer to place the boxes freely. The center controls bring a box back into alignment. We'll leave the questions centered, with generous space and text large enough for the room to read. Here is the finished layout. Move the question slide after the Bible passage, so the group can respond before the quotations. The editing grid and handles don't appear in the presentation. Next, prepare your emphasis. The highlighting tools let you choose the words you want to emphasize and build the steps in the order you'll reveal them. Rehearse with Next so you can see each step clearly. It's worth taking a moment to check your questions, your quotations, and your private notes before you begin. We'll now open the finished lesson and look at the tools you can use while teaching.

Start the lesson from its first slide. Your presentation shows the slide clearly, while your private controls and notes help you lead the discussion. If you are using a separate display, open the TV window and move that window onto the audience screen. Keep the controls on your own screen. We'll show both the controls and the audience result as we demonstrate the teaching tools. Let's play Jude three. Listen and watch how the spoken words stay with the passage, including the change to its second page. Now we'll spend a little longer with a Greek word. Turn on Greek and click exhorting on the verse. That opens the full Greek word slide. It gives the original word, its meaning, and its related information in one place. Click Hear how it sounds beside the Greek word, or use Say it, to hear how it is pronounced. We'll leave it up long enough to hear the whole pronunciation and read the slide. Some of the information is smaller. Zoom lets you enlarge the part you want everyone to see. Focus on that area, then reset to the full slide. The laser helps you point to the word you're explaining. Spotlight dims the rest of the slide so the group can focus on one area. Choose a small circle, a medium one, or a larger one to suit the text. Turn it off to show the whole slide again. The pen lets you mark a word or draw an underline while you explain it. Undo removes the last mark, and Clear removes your temporary drawings. These marks are for the live presentation. Now return to the lesson and continue to the questions we prepared. Leave space for the group to respond before advancing to the next quotation. Finally, close the show and choose Download PowerPoint. The PowerPoint file downloads, and you can use your presentation elsewhere. Your question formatting and placement carry into the download; live word lookups and temporary pen marks are tools of the website presentation. You've now seen the desktop flow: find a passage, listen and read, study its words and context, prepare a lesson, and teach it. In the final chapter, we'll look at the phone controls.

Now let's look at reading on your phone. These controls are useful when you're using the Study Bible away from your computer. Tap the Historic Faith logo to return home. Open the Study Bible again. We'll stay on the phone now and make the reader comfortable. Open Books and chapters, then Settings. This is where you'll find the main reading preferences. The larger A increases the text size. Tap it, close Settings and the drawer, and look at the Scripture. Give yourself a size that's comfortable to read. Return to Settings and use the smaller A to reduce it again. You can adjust this whenever you need to. We'll return to our original size for the rest of the example. Settings also gives you a choice of themes. Choose dark, then close the panel to see the reader with its darker background. To change it back, open Settings again and choose light. We'll use the light theme for this demonstration. There is also a useful choice called Classic view. I'll turn it on, then close Settings and the drawer. Watch the bottom of the phone screen. This row is the app's navigation menu, with shortcuts to other parts of The Historic Faith. We normally hide it in the Study Bible to give you more room for reading. If you prefer having those shortcuts here, you can restore them with Classic view. Let's open Settings again so you can see the change. I'll turn Classic view off and close the panel. Watch that same bottom row disappear, leaving more space for the Scripture. The audio controls remain available, so you can still listen as you read. Full screen gives you still more reading room. Tap the full screen button once to hide the header. Tap it again to tuck the audio controls away as well. The menu control brings your normal reading controls back. Cinema is a focused read-along view. Open it from the audio controls at the bottom. You can listen here and follow the words as they're spoken. Let's listen for a moment. Pause stops the reading. Close Cinema to return to the normal reader. Choose whichever view helps you concentrate. To open a verse's tools on a phone, press and hold the passage. Here we'll use Jude three. You can highlight the whole verse, or tap the verse text to choose individual words. I'll select very eager and apply blue to that phrase. Only the words we've chosen are marked. Select those words again, then Remove clears their highlight. Done leaves the word picker, and closing the drawer returns to your reading. Your other notes and highlights remain. For a longer passage, press and hold Jude three again and choose Select more verses. Then tap the additional verses you want to include. Here we'll add verses four and five. Open Actions and choose Copy selection. That copies the selected passage with its references, so the verse numbers and the words stay together when you paste it elsewhere. You can open this tutorial again from Settings. Close the verse tools, open the reading Settings, and choose Tutorial. Watch from the beginning, choose a chapter, or resume where you left off. You can return directly to the part you want to practice. Start with the parts you need, and return to the rest as you grow comfortable with the Study Bible.