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Hebrew Greek Key Word Study Bible: New International Version
The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible combines essential tools for Hebrew and Greek with translations that accurately and clear. An easy-to-use style plus the benefits of the Strong s Dictionary numbering system makes this study Bible one for every student of God s Word, no matter what age.
- GenresReferenceChristianity
Hardcover
First published December 31, 1996
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73 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 7, 2015
(Background: Over a couple of decades' time I plan to read the scriptures of the world's great religions/philosophies. I started with my own, reading the Bible in two different translations--first the KJV and then the Hebrew-Greek Word Study NIV Bible by Spiros Zodhiates--to gain a better grasp on my spirituality and to think critically about why and what I believed. I also wanted to get a better understanding of the world's major religions so that I could be more in tune with people, their language and their culture, and current events. Next I turned to Islam and Al-Quaran. After that The Bhagavad Gita and the Analects of Confucius. Lastly the Tao Te Ching. Every reading is helping me go a bit deeper and wider into man's search for God and, through that, meaning in this life. More books and reviews still to come.)
It's been said that the Bible is the greatest book ever written. It's that, and it's also the most popular, misunderstood, misquoted, and misused book ever written. People do this because of sinful nature, of course, but perhaps more so because they've not read the book in its entirety, so they're merely picking out pieces that suit them without seeing the whole. It's like selecting one tile in a mosaic and holding it out to declare you've found something of great excellence and worth and truth. When what you're really doing is missing the integrated whole.
I grew up Catholic and had little personal knowledge of the Bible. My spiritual rebirth happened in the mid-1980s, when I was in college, and it was immediate and profound. My excitement to know everything I could about who Jesus Christ claimed to be--and what impact He was having on my life in this new love relationship--was all consuming. As the years went on I read more and more commentaries and studies and portions of the Bible itself, but I still felt something was missing; I wanted to know the thing in its totality, its entirety. My reasoning was: You would never think of dropping into page 110 of Paradise Lost, for example, read a little bit, then think you'd understood the meaning of the entire work. So, I wanted that same sense of completion and comprehension. I was feeling a deep need to actually do what some have thought about but few have done: I wanted to just and simply and massively ... read it, from beginning to end. Just like a book. I did this with the King James Version. But when I wanted to re-read it, I wanted a study Bible.
But which version should I read? How would I decide?
When I was doing my research to find a Bible to read all the way through, I was looking for a "complete" package. I searched diligently for quite awhile, sifting through many professional and customer reviews. I wanted a translation of the Bible that had a balanced view, taking into account meanings from the original languages. I wanted word guides and studies so that I could better understand the original language within its context. And, I wanted some commentary, too, to help me understand the text I was reading.
It's all here in the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible by Spiros Zodhiates. Some of the many study helps include grammatical codes and notations; lexical aids; a scripture index; dictionaries for Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek (these are particularly helpful); and indices for Strong's to Goodrick/Kohlenberger's Numbers, and vice versa; and several color maps. Introductions to each of the 66 books of the Bible--39 in the OT and 27 in the NT--are short but enlightening, providing religious, textual, social, and archaeological contexts. (For further reading on how the canon came to be I suggest The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce. I've reviewed that book here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3313TC4...)
Just to give one example of the value I found in the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible:
It was reading 1 John 3:9 that shook me to my spiritual core: "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him;..." I was curious about the Greek word for "seed" and so looked it up in the Greek dictionary. There it was--entry number 5065--the English word "seed" in the Greek is "sperma"; and there, too: seed, children, offspring, descendants. I was floored, and a sudden realization overwhelmed me of the profound meaning of that word in its original text.
***
During a conversation a few years ago with a friend (who is a humanist), he blurted out something about Jesus not thinking of himself as any sort of deity but merely as a good teacher. He grinned, thinking he had me, but what he didn't know at the time is that I was literally so struck dumb by such nonsense that I literally could not respond to his uninformed statement. I felt--as the Germans would say--Fremdschämen. And then, too, Paul's admonition to Timothy came to mind: "Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments..." Still, here and now let's put to rest any doubt about how Jesus Christ saw himself. Jesus saw himself as God. Multiple passages in the New Testament attest to this, but the overriding fact is that this claim of His is why He was put to death. He was not put to death for being a good teacher, or for healing people, or for saying wise things; He was put to death by the Sanhedrin for claiming to be God. A few excerpts:
“Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58); see the New Testament Lexical Aids; the "I am" is in the present active indicative tense.
Later He says, “I and the Father are one.” The Jews were ready to kill Him right there and they tell Him why. “Because you,” they said, “a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).
Mark 14:61 states that the high priest then asked Jesus: "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said "I am", at which point the high priest tore his own robe in anger and accused Jesus of blasphemy.
One of the great tragedies of our modern era, I think, is our eagerness to engage in communication on a subject without the requisite knowledge of a subject. It's very strange to me how people can form such strong opinions on things they don't really know or understand, but that they think they do. It never ceases to amaze me how eager people are to use the Bible to justify some position they're interested in defending. And I am continually dumbfounded by "educated people" and their lack of education on the fundamentals of Western civilization, one of these being, of course, the Bible.
***
Some of my favorite verses include:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4)
[After some of his disciples left Him because of His hard sayings] So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:67,68)
Paul in one of his letters: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)
Jesus: I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. (John 16:12,13)
***
One of the great revelatory aspects of reading the Bible from beginning to end was seeing in it the centrality of Jesus Christ. St. Augustine expressed the principle of seeing in the Old Testament what was revealed in the New Testament: "In the Old Testament the New Testament is concealed; in the New Testament the Old Testament is revealed."
This is the book to read. I think it should be re-introduced into the university curriculum, along with other scriptures, to provide a well-rounded collegiate experience for young people. Its part in the Western Canon is indisputable. Just a few decades ago it was considered to be part of every person's education; I think it should be returned to that place of honor.
Reading this book all the way through, from beginning to end, was one of the most powerful and profound experiences of my life.
Read to discover and rediscover. Read to find out what you think you know and what you do not know. Read to understand man's place in creation.
Ultimately, you must learn for yourself. Otherwise, how will you know?
***
For the reader interested in a philosopher's view of the differences between the concept of God in Christianity and Islam, I recommend William Lane Craig's presentation on the topic. Just google The Concept of God in Islam and Christianity National Religious Broadcasters Convention for the YouTube video. Dr. Craig is a Christian philosopher and theologian, and he provides an excellent summary of each belief.
It's been said that the Bible is the greatest book ever written. It's that, and it's also the most popular, misunderstood, misquoted, and misused book ever written. People do this because of sinful nature, of course, but perhaps more so because they've not read the book in its entirety, so they're merely picking out pieces that suit them without seeing the whole. It's like selecting one tile in a mosaic and holding it out to declare you've found something of great excellence and worth and truth. When what you're really doing is missing the integrated whole.
I grew up Catholic and had little personal knowledge of the Bible. My spiritual rebirth happened in the mid-1980s, when I was in college, and it was immediate and profound. My excitement to know everything I could about who Jesus Christ claimed to be--and what impact He was having on my life in this new love relationship--was all consuming. As the years went on I read more and more commentaries and studies and portions of the Bible itself, but I still felt something was missing; I wanted to know the thing in its totality, its entirety. My reasoning was: You would never think of dropping into page 110 of Paradise Lost, for example, read a little bit, then think you'd understood the meaning of the entire work. So, I wanted that same sense of completion and comprehension. I was feeling a deep need to actually do what some have thought about but few have done: I wanted to just and simply and massively ... read it, from beginning to end. Just like a book. I did this with the King James Version. But when I wanted to re-read it, I wanted a study Bible.
But which version should I read? How would I decide?
When I was doing my research to find a Bible to read all the way through, I was looking for a "complete" package. I searched diligently for quite awhile, sifting through many professional and customer reviews. I wanted a translation of the Bible that had a balanced view, taking into account meanings from the original languages. I wanted word guides and studies so that I could better understand the original language within its context. And, I wanted some commentary, too, to help me understand the text I was reading.
It's all here in the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible by Spiros Zodhiates. Some of the many study helps include grammatical codes and notations; lexical aids; a scripture index; dictionaries for Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek (these are particularly helpful); and indices for Strong's to Goodrick/Kohlenberger's Numbers, and vice versa; and several color maps. Introductions to each of the 66 books of the Bible--39 in the OT and 27 in the NT--are short but enlightening, providing religious, textual, social, and archaeological contexts. (For further reading on how the canon came to be I suggest The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce. I've reviewed that book here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3313TC4...)
Just to give one example of the value I found in the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible:
It was reading 1 John 3:9 that shook me to my spiritual core: "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him;..." I was curious about the Greek word for "seed" and so looked it up in the Greek dictionary. There it was--entry number 5065--the English word "seed" in the Greek is "sperma"; and there, too: seed, children, offspring, descendants. I was floored, and a sudden realization overwhelmed me of the profound meaning of that word in its original text.
***
During a conversation a few years ago with a friend (who is a humanist), he blurted out something about Jesus not thinking of himself as any sort of deity but merely as a good teacher. He grinned, thinking he had me, but what he didn't know at the time is that I was literally so struck dumb by such nonsense that I literally could not respond to his uninformed statement. I felt--as the Germans would say--Fremdschämen. And then, too, Paul's admonition to Timothy came to mind: "Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments..." Still, here and now let's put to rest any doubt about how Jesus Christ saw himself. Jesus saw himself as God. Multiple passages in the New Testament attest to this, but the overriding fact is that this claim of His is why He was put to death. He was not put to death for being a good teacher, or for healing people, or for saying wise things; He was put to death by the Sanhedrin for claiming to be God. A few excerpts:
“Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58); see the New Testament Lexical Aids; the "I am" is in the present active indicative tense.
Later He says, “I and the Father are one.” The Jews were ready to kill Him right there and they tell Him why. “Because you,” they said, “a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).
Mark 14:61 states that the high priest then asked Jesus: "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said "I am", at which point the high priest tore his own robe in anger and accused Jesus of blasphemy.
One of the great tragedies of our modern era, I think, is our eagerness to engage in communication on a subject without the requisite knowledge of a subject. It's very strange to me how people can form such strong opinions on things they don't really know or understand, but that they think they do. It never ceases to amaze me how eager people are to use the Bible to justify some position they're interested in defending. And I am continually dumbfounded by "educated people" and their lack of education on the fundamentals of Western civilization, one of these being, of course, the Bible.
***
Some of my favorite verses include:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4)
[After some of his disciples left Him because of His hard sayings] So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:67,68)
Paul in one of his letters: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)
Jesus: I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. (John 16:12,13)
***
One of the great revelatory aspects of reading the Bible from beginning to end was seeing in it the centrality of Jesus Christ. St. Augustine expressed the principle of seeing in the Old Testament what was revealed in the New Testament: "In the Old Testament the New Testament is concealed; in the New Testament the Old Testament is revealed."
This is the book to read. I think it should be re-introduced into the university curriculum, along with other scriptures, to provide a well-rounded collegiate experience for young people. Its part in the Western Canon is indisputable. Just a few decades ago it was considered to be part of every person's education; I think it should be returned to that place of honor.
Reading this book all the way through, from beginning to end, was one of the most powerful and profound experiences of my life.
Read to discover and rediscover. Read to find out what you think you know and what you do not know. Read to understand man's place in creation.
Ultimately, you must learn for yourself. Otherwise, how will you know?
***
For the reader interested in a philosopher's view of the differences between the concept of God in Christianity and Islam, I recommend William Lane Craig's presentation on the topic. Just google The Concept of God in Islam and Christianity National Religious Broadcasters Convention for the YouTube video. Dr. Craig is a Christian philosopher and theologian, and he provides an excellent summary of each belief.
September 15, 2017
Years ago, I used the Key Word Study Bible in an NASB translation and found it very helpful. Several months ago, when our Bible study group began a series in Proverbs, I picked up the NIV Key Word Study Bible, thinking that it would be useful to be able to get more information on some of the terms in Proverbs. Though I didn't use the lexical aids as much as I had thought I would for the study, it was occasionally very helpful to learn more about terms--especially when, on reading a passage together in the group, we found that a particular word was translated in very different ways.
The Key Word Study Bible is a handy all-in-one source for background on the words, especially for when you don't have a full concordance or dictionary nearby. But it would be difficult to use this as my default, go-to copy of the Bible, because there are so many numbers mixed in with the text that it's often hard to find the verse numbers. It's a very cluttered Bible, and not so much a general reader's Bible.
The Key Word Study Bible is a handy all-in-one source for background on the words, especially for when you don't have a full concordance or dictionary nearby. But it would be difficult to use this as my default, go-to copy of the Bible, because there are so many numbers mixed in with the text that it's often hard to find the verse numbers. It's a very cluttered Bible, and not so much a general reader's Bible.
May 24, 2012
This the bible I use all the time. I love it because it is not full of other people's interpretation of the bible, but it does allow me to look up many of the original words for clairification. I highly reccomend it, though it is important to know that without fully understanding the original language, sentence structure, etc, you will miss some things.
February 11, 2013
This is my absolute, positively favorite bible to use. I love the amount of commentary, cross-referencing and the exhaustive dictionaries with lexical definitions. It really helps understand the context in which the authors of the individual books were writing and how other scriptures influenced their writings. Excellent!
May 24, 2012
Good resource for those looking to go a little deep without all the other books.
December 8, 2012
I started this version on the 1st and I've finished the entire Bible for the year. I'm a little Early this year. Love God's Word. Get's me through life.
Want to read
August 6, 2013I have used this book much and have learned; How to speak Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek! As well as what the author was meaning and feeling when writing these books.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews