Pastor Mark Driscoll shares some great study resources in this final installment of his blog series, which provides a guided tour of topics like Bible translations, how to interpret the Bible, and misconceptions about the Bible.

Ecclesiastes 12:12 says, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness of the flesh.” This doesn’t mean, “Don’t study!” After all, the author of Ecclesiastes himself wrote a book. But the verse does provide a caution about getting carried away with studying at the expense of other areas of life. Still, it’s a fitting verse because there are so many great resources available to us.

Today we have numerous powerful tools that make studying the Bible easier than ever before.Tweet

Commentaries and theological books should never replace the Bible in our personal lives and studies, but they can be very helpful as additional resources to guide and enrich our learning. It would be impossible to list them all, so here is a sampling of helpful resources to guide you along in your Bible studies.

Digital Resources

The American Bible Society recently reported that 41 percent of Americans read the Bible digitally. With the tremendous surge in web-based Bible use, it's no surprise that a wealth of online study tools exist as well. For example:

• Logos Bible Software (see our Logos giveaway)
• Accordance Bible Software for Mac
• ESV Bible Online
• Bible Gateway
• FaithLife Study Bible

There are many great Bible study resources for mobile device platforms:

• YouVersion (which recently passed 100 million downloads)
• Logos (iOS and Android) and Accordance (iOS only)
• There are also paid versions of Bible apps—far too many to list here. But as just two examples, you can get the ESV Study Bible and the Apologetics Study Bible, both on iOS, as stand-alone apps, typically for a fraction of the cost of the printed versions. Poke around the Google Play Store for Android devices and you’ll find you can get tools like this, too, sometimes as extra add-ons to software like Olive Tree Bible Reader.

Bible tools and software are great companions to your Bible study and devotional times, but you don’t necessarily want to throw out paper just yet. Printed study Bibles such as the ESV Study Bible are great for writing personal notes in the margins.

Books about the Bible and Bible translations

The Indestructible Book by Ken Connolly

The Word of God in English by Leland Ryken

Choosing a Bible by Leland Ryken

The Bible in Translation by Bruce Metzger

How We Got the Bible by John Sailhamer

A General Introduction to the Bible by Norman Geisler and William Nix

How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth by Gordon D. Fee and Mark L. Strauss

One Bible, Many Versions: Are All Translations Created Equal? by Dave Brunn

How the Bible Came to Be, edited by J. Daniel Hays and J. Scott Duvall

The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities by Darrell Bock

Bible difficulties

Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason Archer

Hard Sayings of the Bible, edited by Walter Kaiser, Jt., Peter Davids, F.F. Bruce, and Manfred Brauch

When Critics Ask by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe

Bible interpretation

Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard, Jr.

Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul

Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson

Scripture Twisting by James Sire

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart

Out of Context: How to Avoid Misinterpreting the Bible by Richard Schultz

BestCommentaries.com