Multipurpose Tools Bible Study

I have found Danker's work to be most helpful. It is on my list of the 100 books needed for a Ph.D. in New Testament. He breaks the chapters up based upon different areas and sources: concordances, Greek NT, Hebrew OT, Greek OT, LXX, Lexicons, Dictionaries, Versions of the Bible, Judaica, DSS, etc.

This is a fabulous book, appropriately written for pastors, highly educated and well-motivated lay readers, church leaders (even lay leaders), and seminarians, addressing additional resources for assisting biblical study.I believe the current version is the 4th edition and includes a number of computer biblical tools as well (such as Gramcord's Accordance and Hermeneutica's BibleWorks).Frederick W. Danker is a top notch (Evangelical) Lutheran Biblical Scholar who is the final name of the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature." (The new edition came out Nov. 2000, chaired by Danker.)The book discusses the merits of studying the original languages, how to use lexicons (including the LSJ lexicon), bible dictionaries, concordances, encyclopedias, as well as Bible helps, commentaries, and so on. Various versions of critical apparatii are discussed (e.g., Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies versioning for the Greek New Testament, the variants and how to use them in the Masoretic Text/Hebrew Old Testament, like the Leningrad Codex). Danker goes on to do some sample word studies.It's not exactly for the lay reader, and you need to have some grasp of how the Bible was put together as well as interpretation. It's a great reference manual for the group mentioned above. Probably a great addition for people who like to look at issues of hermeneutics (books of this sort include Kaiser's "Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics," Carson's book, and Fee/Stuart "How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth"), interpretation, and/or linguistics.