In this section, I want to talk about what I think are some really helpful tools in terms of studying the Bible and putting lessons together, some things that have really been helpful to me. Now, when I'm not sitting in front of a camera giving a lesson on teaching the Bible or putting Bible lessons together, what I'm doing in the rest of the time is re-siding my house with my son-in-law. So in re-siding a house, there's all kinds of tools that are really helpful to have.
I've got scaffolding, I've got special saws, I've got hammers, and pneumatic hammers, and nail guns, things like that. It's really helpful to have certain tools. I don't need a lot of tools, but I need the right ones. So, to me, it's the same thing when teaching the Bible is I don't need a lot of tools, but there are certain ones that I found to be really helpful. So I want to share with you some of the things that have been my favorite tools in helping me to study the Bible and put lessons together.
And I hope that this is of some benefit to you as well. So one of the tools that's been helpful to me, I was teaching the Old Testament for many years, and I was in a church that used only the NIV translation. I went overseas to Albania, lived there for a while, and the Bible that they were using, the Albanian Bible, was based on the King James translation, so I switched over to the new King James, liked that a lot better for multiple reasons and was teaching out of that.
And then David Bercot came to Boston several years ago on a visit here, and my wife invited Dave and his wife over for dinner. We had dinner together, and I shared what I had been doing, how I was weaving together insights from the early Christians in my teaching of the Old Testament, how I had done that in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. And David made a suggestion to me. He said, " Chuck, that sounds great.
I'd be curious if you were to, in your Old Testament reading, to also take a look at the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, I'd be very interested to see what you see in there if you would take a look at that with your teaching." So I respected David and I said, " I'll try that out." I'd never read a Bible where the Old Testament was based on the Septuagint, so I purchased a Bible that were the Old Testament's based on the Septuagint, New Testament on the New King James.
And I read stories I was familiar with and saw a lot of things that were exactly the same, but a few things that are a little different. And one of the things that I noticed when I'm reading from quotes in the New Testament, and then the same quote in the Septuagint, is that in many cases, not always, but in many cases, the quotations from the New Testament lined up better in the Septuagint that it seemed to be, in more cases than not, that it was following the Septuagint where there was a difference.
Now, in most places, it says the same thing in the text based on the Hebrew as well as on the Greek and the Greek as well in the Septuagint. But where there was a difference and where the New Testament writers are quoting from the Old Testament, I found that there were many places where reading the Septuagint was helpful. It gave me an insight of what the apostles were reading at least in those particular passages. I think of one of the examples to me, classic example.
I get into discussions about this surprisingly frequently. I just got into two robust discussions this week with different people on this very issue of why do you read this unusual version of the Old Testament? I read both the Masoretic texts with the New King James and the Septuagint as well. And so I'd like to just share some of the benefits of those of you who are used to Bibles based on the Masoretic text to at least take a look at the Septuagint as well.
One big advantage is that when you're reading quotes in the New Testament where they're quoting the Old Testament, I'll give you a few examples. Jesus in Revelation chapter 2 quotes from Psalm 2. And you can open up the Masoretic text and the Septuagint and see which one is he following there when he's quoting from Psalm 2 where it talks about I will shepherd them with a rod of iron versus I will smash them with a rod of iron. So that's one example.
Hebrews chapter 10, there are a few examples there I'll mention one. Hebrews chapter 10 was really the setup for chapter 11, the Hebrews writer talks about, he says, " My righteous one will live by faith, but if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." And then it says, " But we are not of those who shrink back. We are of those who persevere." I'm paraphrasing there.
And I remember once I was just trying to I was with a group of Bible teachers, and I said, " Show me in your Bible where it says the righteous will live by faith." And of course they turned to Habakkuk, chapter 2, and I said, " All right, now show me in your Bibles where it says, but if he shrinks back, my soul will not be pleased with him." And they struggled with that. And I said, " Well, I can show it to you in my Bible." And so one of the people figured out that, well, Chuck is kind of a practical joker here.
He's a wise guy, so it must be something his Bible says, " Let me see that Bible you've got." So he pulled the Bible out. He says, " This is different. This is a different Bible that you're reading from the Old Testament." But sure enough, in Habakkuk chapter 2, it says not only that the righteous will live by faith and the Septuagint also talks about, but if he shrinks back, I'll not be pleased with him.
So this is the when I'm reading from certain parts of the New Testament, if I'm familiar with the Septuagint, some of the pieces seem to fit much better. So I'm not saying that the Masoretic text is bad or anything like that. I just wanted to encourage you to at least open your mind to consider reading both and comparing them.
The early Christian writers, one of the things I noticed is several of the early Christian writers when they're commenting on the Old Testament, and even when they're talking about like Justin Martyr, when they're talking about different translations of the Scriptures that are out there, they definitely mention the Septuagint and they speak highly of it. There were some other things that were surprising to me in reading the Septuagint.
I was reading an early Christian writer, I think it was Justin Martyr, who talked about Jesus the son of Nun. And I say, " Wait a minute, he's got it wrong there. Is Joshua the son of Nun in the Old Testament?" And then I went back and checked it out. And sure enough, in the Bible that he was reading in the Greek, it does say Jesus the Son of Nun. Now think about when you're reading the Bible, the sixth book of the Bible in the Septuagint in Greek is the book of Jesus.
After Moses dies on Mount Nebo, Jesus finishes the job. Jesus is just the Greek name for Joshua. So reading in the Greek Old Testament, when Moses dies, Jesus, Moses is concerned, " Hey, the people are going to be like sheep without a shepherd." And God says, " No, no, put your hands on Jesus. He'll finish the job.
He'll lead them into the Promised Land." In numbers 13, the twelve spies are sent out and the spy from the tribe of Ephraim is Hoshea, the son of Nun, and it says there he is given the name Jesus in the Septuagint. So Jesus or Joshua will be in Greek. In Hebrews chapter 3 where it talks about both the Old Testament Jesus or Joshua and the New Testament Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth. It uses the same exact word if you go back and check it out in an interlinear Bible. So I noticed that, wow, this changes my understanding.
Jesus finishes the job that Moses started. The sixth book in the Bible is the book of Jesus. I remember hearing a debate once between a Christian and a Muslim, and the Christian was asked the question, " Well, where in the Bible does it give the name of is there no prophecy about Jesus being this future great Christ who has to come?
Why is his name not mentioned anywhere if he's going to be so important?" And because the Christian was not familiar with Septuagint, he didn't know that actually the name is revealed there is that Joshua was given the name Jesus, that he would be the successor to Moses. He was the one who would finish the job that he started out. And you can see the same thing in the New Testament Acts 7:45 and Stephen's speech as in Hebrews 4:8 where the word " Jesus" is used there.
So if you're reading a Greek Old Testament, which the early Christians, if you're familiar with the early Christians, that's generally what they are reading and following. It gives you an easier way to understand when the same word is used in the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament, and the New Testament. There are some other advantages also to using the Septuagint.
When you have in the early church, the predominant Old Testament that was used by the Christians in the first 300 years of the Church was a Greek Old Testament. Most Christians could not read Hebrew; very few people could. Everybody could read Greek, and the Septuagint was widespread translation that was available. And so when words are used in the New Testament, in the Greek New Testament, this is not the first time that they're appearing in sacred Scripture.
Words like love, grace, holiness, faith, these words are also found in the Greek the same words in the New Testament as in the Greek Old Testament. So my question is, when the Christians were hearing these terms in the beginning, what did they mean to them? Now I could go to a Greek lexicon, a Greek dictionary, a Greek English dictionary, and try to get the answer that way.
But being a skeptic and I want to see it for myself, I don't want to trust any experts, what I like to do is take a look at the word and see how it was used in context, the same word in the New Testament, to see how is it used in context in the Greek Old Testament. Now, the last few years I've been studying Greek, but before that, for the vast majority of the years that I've been teaching in the Bible, I had no background in Greek whatsoever.
So I just use these are some tools that you can use knowing really no Greek whatsoever. So one of the things that I got was this is an apostolic polyglot Bible and that's a fancy name for a Bible that has a Old Testament and New Testament both in Greek. So the Old Testament is based on a manuscript of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament the same as the Greek New Testament that we're familiar with and they're both interlinear.
So the interesting thing to me is in the back of the book there is a concordance here which has every word in Greek where it appears both in the New Testament and in the Old Testament. This is a very fascinating and powerful tool. So when I want to see when I see a Greek word in the New Testament and I want to know what did it mean to the people reading it, I can go back and see how was it used in the Old Testament and by examples a lot of times I get a much clearer picture that I can understand.
Let me give you one example, one of my favorite examples. It seems that in every church community that's out there, there is a myth that goes around, that's preached over and over again about the word agape. The word agape means love. And this is popularized by C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves where he talked about there are these four different Greek words and they all refer to different types of love and agape was the highest, most wonderful, godly form of love.
Phileo is a friendship love and he talked about Eros and you can probably guess what that kind of love that is. So he talked about four different types of love. Catholic Archbishop Fulton Sheen years ago, very eloquent, popular Catholic speaker. He gave lectures on this also. So this is going out in the Catholic world, the Anglican world, and the Protestant world. There have been so many sermons over the years talking about the wonderful agape love, the highest possible form of love that's out there.
Now, if you're like me, you're just a skeptical person and say, " Well, okay, that sounds really good, but is it true? Is that what the word means? Does this mean a higher special form of love?" As I've heard it said in many sermons. So what I did was I got my concordance here. I got my lexical concordance at the back of the apostolic polyglot Bible and I looked up in the back every word that every place that the word " love" appears. The word " love agape" is a noun. Agapao is the verbs, same word basically.
Strong's number 25. And I looked it up and I found, to my surprise, in Judges 16, when it talks about Samson, it says that Samson loved Delilah. He had an immoral relationship with her. And the word there is agape.
When Delilah tries to trick Samson several times into revealing the secret of his strength, and he tricks her time and time again, she finally really wears him down and she pleads and says, " You know, if you really loved me," and the word she uses there is Agapao, he says, " If you really love me, you tell me the secret of your strength." And so he finally gave in and he told her we know what happens to the rest of the story. So the whole idea that agape love is this higher form of love.
This is the kind of love that Samson had for Delilah who was involved in an immoral relationship with. Also in the New Testament, in 2 Peter 2:15, the same word is used there, Peter is talking about Balaam, the bad prophet in the Book of Numbers, who loved the wages of wickedness. And this is the same word Agapao is used there as well.
So the whole idea that agape is this wonderful higher Greek, wonderful form of love that only God has or only we can have for God as opposed to lower forms of love is obviously nonsense. The word agape has the same range of meanings as the English word " love" does. You can love hot dogs, or you can love money, or you can love God. In English, the word has a tremendous range of meanings, and obviously we can see from the examples that the same thing is true in Greek.
So I like like having a tool like Apostolic Polyglot Bible, and I believe that this is a resource that's also available online, because it helps me to understand, based on how a word is used, what it means. The same thing with the word charis or grace. It's in Protestant circles, particularly it's usually defined as unmerited favor.
And if you look at how the word is actually used in Scripture, including where Peter and James quote from Proverbs chapter 3, " God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble," that grace does not mean unmerited favor. It just means favor. It could be merited or unmerited. You can see how the word is used in Scripture. You can see it with your own eyes. You can see it for yourself. So you get a clear picture of what it is. It says we're saved by God's favor.
It's not saying we're saved based on his unmerited favor, just simply on his favor. So I think the reason it's important a building here in Boston and there are lots and lots of brick buildings that are out there that have been standing for a long time. And a brick building is only going to last and be as strong as the individual bricks are. If the bricks if the bricks are no good, if the bricks crumble after a few years, the whole building is going to come down. It doesn't matter how good of a mason you are.
So the Christian faith is based on words, the meanings of words, and I want to make sure when we talk about works or faith or grace or love, holiness, any of these basic words, I want to understand what they mean, and I can understand what they mean how they were understood in the beginning, how our Christian brothers and sisters in the first few centuries would have understood these words and I can see that by how they're used in the Old Testament and in the New Testament both by taking advantage of tools like
that.
I just wanted to touch a little bit on this question of Greek. Some people feel like, " Well, do I need to learn Greek if I want to teach the Bible to other people?" No, you don't. I think it's good to have interlinear tools. The biggest reason I was motivated in my 60s to finally get around to learning Greek. A true confession here when I was in my twenties and I was in engineering school. I had a secret desire. I wanted to be a Renaissance man, you know, somebody who did it all, who did everything.
So while I was studying engineering at college, I also decided to study Greek. And because I didn't have much elective time, I decided I had to study accelerated ancient Greek. So this was the hard course because I didn't have time to take it as slowly as everybody else did. And just taking engineering and Greek at the same time completely fried my mind. I almost flunked out of school my second year in college because I was trying to study Greek and engineering at the same time.
And I'm not that strong in languages. So fortunately, I made the wise decision that I better learn how to make a living. So I dropped Greek, continued with engineering, somehow made it through college, and then in my 60s, God opened the door for me to learn Greek. He gave me an opportunity.
I just could not pass up, and I thought, " Well, I'm just going to go for it." So the main reasons that I wanted to learn Greek, the first thing the first reason this may sound like a really poor reason to you, but it was my reason.
So many times I would listen to sermons where the preacher who generally didn't know much of Greek either, he said, " Well, I know it says this in English, but in the Greek it really means such-and-such." And so being a skeptic, I would go back and even though I didn't know Greek, I would dig in and try to figure out is what this preacher said true or not? That in the Greek it really has this extra meaning.
And what I found in my experience over the years was about half the time when the preacher said in the Greek it really means such and such, he was dead wrong. And I would come back to the preacher who didn't know that much Greek anyway and I'd say, well look, here are the resources and I show them this is what you just said to the congregation is just not true. I don't know where you heard this. You just passed it along from somebody who told you but it's really not true.
So I wanted to learn Greek for self-defense. Sometimes I find myself in a room with other teachers and they had taken a couple of Greek courses and they would make statements about what something meant in Greek. And I wanted to be able to objectively evaluate what they were saying whether it was true or not. I've never gone to a seminary. I had no formal training in language so I'm just kind of picking it up the last few years on my own so I can read.
The thing is I'm interested in prophecies and I'm interested in the early Christians, how they understood the prophecies, how they used the prophecies to spread the gospel and to convert other people. And after reading the Septuagint, a translation, an English translation of the Septuagint, I thought, wow, it really would be wonderful if I could actually read this in the original language.
I could just get that much closer because I'm so interested in the prophecies in the Septuagint and the prophecies in the New Testament. So that was the other reason I wanted to learn Greek was just to be able to read in the original language and sometimes I'll see what the same word is being used in the New Testament or the Old Testament. So I would say knowledge of Greek is a benefit if you want to teach, but it's not necessary.
I know some people a few people will be extremely devoted and learn Hebrew who are interested in the Old Testament as well. But if you do want to pick it up, don't think you're too old. I'm probably a lot older than most of you who are listening to this and I'm picking it up in my 60s. I will never be an expert, but it's been helpful to me to get one step closer.
The Bible says that those who teach will face a more severe judgment and particularly if I'm teaching other people who will be teaching, I really want to make sure that what I'm saying is the truth to the best of my possible understanding. So just leave you with that thought about language study. So if you have an opportunity, that's wonderful, but don't let it hold you back. I taught the Bible for many, many years without knowing Greek really at all.
Another benefit besides at least using interlinear Greek tools like an interlinear Bible or a Septuagint interlinear. Another benefit that I have found is the perspective of the early Christians. And this is also a controversial area because some people are very interested in the early Christians. Some people are very wary, very cautious of the early Christians.
Now the fact that this is being posted on the historic faith site, I assume that most of you are not going to struggle with the importance of the early Christians, but if you want to start teaching other people and bringing insights of the early Christians, I guarantee you you're going to be getting some pushback from certain quarters. So I think you should be prepared for that. That shouldn't stop you, but I think that there are some things to be aware of.
When people ask me, " Chuck, why can't you just read the Bible? Why do you need to listen to the early Christians also?" I said, " Well, that's a good question." I said, " My desire is to go back to the historic faith. What was the faith once for all entrusted to the saints? What was the faith that was handed down by the apostles? I want to teach the original faith, not some version of it that somebody invented in the 1500s.
I want to go back to what was the original deposit of faith that was handed down by Jesus and the apostles. And I'll give an example sometimes. This is a little parable that I made up. I said, " Let's imagine that we're all going to a giant seminar that's being held on the Book of Revelation," okay? Book of Revelation is probably the most intimidating book in the Bible for me personally to teach because there are so many questions I still have and so many things I'm not sure about I don't understand.
So let's just pick the Book of Revelation. We're going to a seminar on the Book of Revelation and in this seminar this is their breakout classes in the seminar. So there's a general group where everybody gets together and then the breakout classes for the next session. And in the breakout classes we have teaching in various rooms. You get to choose one, which one you want to go to. NT Wright, very famous preacher. We have Martin Luther.
Somehow we've managed to dig him up from the grave and he's teaching on the book of Revelation. We have John Calvin. We have William Barclay, the famous commentary writer. We have Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian. So you have all these famous speakers speaking from all different times. Somehow we pulled this off and they're all speaking in a different room. You only get to choose one.
But in one other room, there's someone whose name you've never heard of, long dead, somehow we brought him back from the grave also. And his only claim to fame was that he sat at the feet of the apostle John in Asia, in Turkey, and he learned at his feet. He learned the Book of Revelation from the Apostle John and he grew up speaking Greek as his native language. Now, given this cast of choices of teachers on the Book of Revelation, which class would you go to?
Which one would you want to listen to if you really wanted to understand the meaning of revelation? You know, thinking, let's see, this 666 Mark of the Beast? Is this something that's coming up soon? What's that all about? What's the Antichrist? What's that all about? I know which one I'd go to. I'd go to the one, no question. I'd make a beeline for the class that is taught by someone who sat at John's feet because I think he's got the best shot at understanding what did John mean from this.
That's what I want to listen to. And I think most other people, if you think about it, that's the common sense. If you really, if your goal is to understand what was the meaning of the writer, here's a number of advantages. Personal knowledge of the writer and also that he spoke the language. So the meaning of some of the terms in the book, 666, he would understand what that's all about, much more than I would. Now, the early Christians have at least two advantages they have three advantages over us.
One advantage is they haven't been polluted by all the ridiculous spiritual fads that have come up over the centuries. They didn't have to deal with it. They haven't have been polluted by the Protestant Reformation. They haven't been polluted by all the other movements that have sprung up in the various heresies that have only developed in the last few hundred years. So that's one advantage is that they don't have all that baggage that we have to wade through.
Another one is that they spoke the language, and then the third one is that they either some of them learned directly from the apostles or were one or two generations removed. So they learned from someone who sat at the feet of the apostles for those who are the earliest Christians. So that's a huge advantage. Now, some concerns. Number one, early Christians were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. They're fallible. They made mistakes. They make mistakes. Number two, criticism.
Well, what do people say, well, what about errors that crept into the church in the beginning? Well, errors did creep into the church, but it took time. The other thing is, unlike today, you didn't have the internet, you didn't have telephones, you didn't have instantaneous communication. So the church spread out all over the world into the Parthian Empire, into India, into North Africa, into the Roman Empire, into Britain. So the gospel spread in all different directions.
And if we listen to people who are teaching from different parts of the world, if they're all teaching the same thing, then it's more likely that what they're teaching is correct because it came from a common source. How are you going to spread a heresy instantaneously all over the world in one generation? It's very hard to do that. So one of the reasons that I think people really don't like the early Christians is you can't control them. It is what it is.
What they say isn't going to agree with any one particular church, sect, or denomination. There's going to be something in there that people are going to like from every group and also people are going to struggle with and have a hard time with. They won't agree with what the group is saying. So if you want to take a look at the Christians, the early Christians and what they had to say, sometimes they'll say things that you wish that they didn't say and you can't really control them.
Now, the Bible is the standard in all things, on all issues. We start with the Bible, we end with the Bible. But where there's a passage of Scripture, and there's more than one possible interpretation, I'll give you an example. John chapter 3 verses 3 to 5, Jesus says, " I tell you the truth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he's born again of water and the spirit." What does that mean? Is that referring to some kind of a spiritual experience? Is that referring to water baptism? What does that refer to?
And you read the early Christian writers from different parts of the world and all of them say that being born again of water in the spirit is a spiritual rebirth that takes place when you're baptized in water. And that's how someone becomes a Christian. They're dying of the old way of life, they're being born again. Doesn't contradict any of the scriptures, but this is how the Christians understood this in the beginning.
So the tremendous advantage to me of getting a fresh perspective outside of whatever group I'm a part of. How did they understand the teachings on head covering or something like that? Was the covering hair on a person's head, a woman's head, or was the covering that she had to have when she was praying a cloth covering? What was that? You look at the early Christians. Those who comment on it, it's very clear. It's talking about it was a cloth covering that the women would cover their heads when they prayed.
So when there are multiple ways to interpret a passage of Scripture, and I'm not sure which one is the correct one. I mean, sometimes one of the questions is, with passive scripture, are they to be taken literally or figuratively? Now I would consider myself to be an extremely conservative Christian who has total confidence in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. But when Jesus and the apostles are speaking, do they mean it literally or do they mean it figuratively? Sometimes it's hard to say.
A lot of times Jesus said, " Lazarus is sleeping. Let's go and wake him up." The apostles took him to be speaking literally, " Oh, he's asleep. Let's let him sleep. He'll get better." But no, he's speaking figuratively about death. Jesus says, " Destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days." They've taken him literally, but he meant it figuratively. The temple was referring to his body. So when Jesus is speaking, does he mean it literally or figuratively? So this is a good question.
Also, I would like the perspective of the early Christians. How did the church understand this in the beginning? I like to use the early Christian perspective as a check to make sure that I'm not drifting into something that would have been considered a heresy in the church in the beginning.
Some of the tools that I like to use that are helpful to me say, " Okay, if you want to take a look at the early Christian perspective, where do you begin?" Well, I think, for one thing, I think it's good if you have a familiarity with what did the early Christians teach, what were they like, so you don't just have to take a little snippet here or there to get a feel for some of the early Christians. One of my favorite writers is Justin Martyr for people who want to read the early Christians.
I like to encourage them to read. This is put out by Scroll. We don't just speak great things, we live them. This is two early apologies, one by Justin Martyr, one by Mark Felix, to read some of the more accessible early Christian writings to get a feel for what was the faith like in the beginning. How did they read the scriptures? What was the church like? What was the lifestyle like? I read Clement of Alexandria or some of the other writers that are available in modern translations from Scroll Publishing.
Another tremendous benefit to me is the dictionary of early Christian beliefs. This is David Bercot is the editor of the dictionary. It's a topical guide to the Ante-Nicene Fathers. So Ante-Nicene Fathers is a 10-volume set. It can be pretty intimidating. But if you wanted to read what did the early Christians believe about, for example, the Trinity? What did they believe about baptism? What do they believe about head covering? What do they believe about life after death?
David has done the difficulty, the hard work of looking throughout the nine volumes of Ante-Nicene Fathers and collecting by topic so you can go there and look and read through the topics. The good thing to me is that in each case he puts the reference in the Ante-Nicene Father so you can go back and read the whole thing in context to make sure this is an honest treatment and he's not taking something out of context. So this is a great way to check that out as well, dictionary Christian beliefs.
Another thing that I use quite a bit is the I have the 10 volume Ante-Nicene Father set. I've heard that this is out of print so you might have to be a little more creative in tracking it down. The first nine volumes are available in the public domain online so you can get that. What is particularly helpful to me is volume 10. Volume 10 has a concordance in the back and I use this all the time when I'm putting letters lessons together.
I'm going through a series right now on the book of Exodus and we're in Exodus 25. So what I will do, for example, is I will look and see in the index of texts at the back and I'll go to Exodus 25 and I'll look at all the places in the Ante-Nicene Fathers where it talks about that. And if I want to, I can go back and read what the early Christian writers said about that. So David Bercot impressed on me early on, " Don't take anybody's word.
Go back to the primary sources." It takes more time to do that, but that way you can see it for yourself. There's a lot of biased information regarding what the early Christians taught in secondary source material. I think it's always best to go back and read it for yourself. What did they say? How did they understand it? Another book that was helpful for me was Everett Ferguson's backgrounds of early Christianity. I want to understand what was the world like?
What were the religions of the world like at the time that the Bible was written at the time of the early church? So I can better appreciate what were the forces that were impacting the church that they were dealing with at that time. That's helpful to me as well. So basically, these are tools that I use. And one of the things that I didn't mention in here was Bible commentaries. Think, well, most Bible teachers like to turn to commentaries and read in Bible commentaries.
I don't like commentaries in general because a lot of times the information that's in there is just incorrect. When I go back and it'll say something, there's no primary source material to back it up. And when I go back and find out what is the historic faith, what they're saying in the commentary, a lot of the time is just not correct. So commentaries I found are particularly unreliable. It's ironic to me that David Bercot is now working on a commentary series, the Historic Faith, a commentary series.
They just came out with the first volume on Matthew, chapters 1 to 13, Historic Faith Commentary Series. This is really good. The good thing about this, it's not just David giving his personal opinions about things. He's saying going through the gospel of Matthew chapter by chapter, how did the early Christians understand this? And here's the reference, either in the Ante-Nicene Father set or in some other early Christian writing. So you can go back and check it out for yourself.
What was the historic understanding? How did people understand things in the beginning? So basically, those are pretty much all the resources that I use. I like to like, for finding out the meanings of words, I'll use the apostolic polyglot Bible. I like to look at the Septuagint for the Old Testament and compare that, particularly where the New Testament quotations are different from what's in the Masoretic text. So I like to use a Bible that has a Septuagint Old Testament.
In addition to the more standard ones that have the Masoretic text for the Old Testament, I like to use those resources. I like to become familiar with the early Christians by reading some of their writings, starting with books like this, and Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 1, the earliest Christian writings there, and then other resources that helped me to find out what was the historic faith, what were things to be.
My goal is not to advance a version of the faith that is comfortable with my particular denomination, or a version of the faith that's popular today, but was unknown in the beginning. It's to contend for the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. That's my goal, and a few key resources I find really help me to get there.