Part 5. Helpful Books for Bible Study

Bible Dictionaries

In the wider use of the word, an excellent single volume is Fausset's Bible Cyclopaedia which has the merit of scholarship, orthodoxy, and to a certain extent a spiritual apprehension of the truth.

Another Bible Dictionary, published by G. Morrish, has the added advantage of a deeper spiritual apprehension, though we are not prepared to speak with the same certainty of its breadth and scholarly character.

"Smith's Bible Dictionary," Hackett's edition, in four volumes, is perhaps the best of the comparatively recent and thoroughly scholarly works. It also has the merit of orthodoxy which, alas, is, lacking in many other modern works.

Hastings' Bible Dictionary, and Driver's, and all of that kind are to be eschewed by any one who loves the word of God. They are thoroughly leavened and tainted by higher criticism, and all the vain show of scholarship but raises dust to obscure the vision of the simple.

Other helpful and useful books of this character would be "Ditto's Bible Dictionary"; McClintock and Strong's "Doctrinal, Ecclesiastical and Theological Cyclopedia," ten or twelve volumes — of larger works the "Schaff-Herzog Cyclopaedia," an adaptation in English of Herzog's larger German work, and for ordinary readers the smaller Bible Dictionary by Dr. Schaff, are all that need be mentioned. Two books with many helpful articles are the "Handbooks to the Old and the New Testaments" by Walter Scott.

Some of these can be picked up occasionally in secondhand bookstores for a small sum. For any who are buying one book, we would recommend. Fausset as likely to give the greatest satisfaction.