Customer Reviews

Multipurpose Tools Bible [With CDROM]

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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.

Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study by Frederick W. Danker, 4th Edition, 2003.

For those who may prefer to go to simpler books for their advice on Biblical Research sources, I offer this thought. When the Jews wish to undertake serious study of their scripture, they study Hebrew. When Muslims wish to study the Qur'an, they study Arabic. When Christians wish to study their scriptures, they say 'God will reveal his wisdom.' Sorry. On this, the Jews and the Muslims have the right idea. In some ways studying the New Testament in English is harder than studying it in Koine Greek, as you have to check several different commentaries and translations to get the full picture. If you knew the Greek, most of the time, you will get the story first hand. NOT always, because there are Greek translations on which even experts disagree. And Professor Danker is a leader among those experts, as he is the current author of THE most authoritative Biblical Greek Lexicon in English (which began as a book in German).

I have already reviewed seven Bibliographies and surveys of Biblical Reference books, before I started in seminary. Having completed a full semester now, I discover this book (sitting on my shelves, overlooked for almost a year, for some reason) and find that it is generally superior to all seven of those other books. While others may be strong in a particular area (such as Longman's and Carson's surveys of Old and New Testament commentaries) Danker gives the best picture of the overall field.

Be prepared to consult your dictionary now and again when reading this book, even for English. I had to turn to mine at page xii of the Preface. Biblical research has its own distinctive vocabulary (combined with the vocabularies of Bookbinding, Publishing, Philology, and lexicography) which you simply have to learn if you expect to make it in Biblical study. And, even pastors who have no intentions of ever writing a research paper (after getting out of seminary, that is) will still need these skills to be sure their understanding of scripture is the best.

Pay special attention to the first word in the title of the book, 'Multipurpose'. It is easy to believe that Concordances are only used to help find the locations of all uses of the words which have been translated into a particular English word. Danker describes several others, and reminds us that our Strong's Concordance is not the only game in town. There are also concordances in Greek and Hebrew for the OT and concordances for the Apocrypha and Deuterocanonical Books as well as for the Greek New Testament.

Danker covers fifteen topics in as many chapters. These are:
1. Concordances
2. The Greek New Testament
3. The Hebrew Old Testament
4. The Greek Old Testament
5. The Use of the Septuagint
6. Hebrew Old Testament Grammars and Lexicons
7. Greek New Testament Grammars and Lexicons
8. The Use of Grammars and Lexicons
9. Bible Dictionaries
10. Bible Versions
11. The Use of English Bible Versions
12. Judaica
13. Contextuality
14. The Dead Sea Scrolls
15. Commentaries and Their Uses

One may wonder at the citation of German grammars in the chapters on Grammars and Lexicons. The fact is that between the time of Luther and the mid-20th century, all the best Biblical scholarship was done in Germany, and most of the best references, such as the best Greek Grammar, are in German (although almost all have been translated into English, there are still some which remain in German.)

I was happy to see Danker rank the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Kittel / Friedrich) very highly among his references. This 10 volume work was done in German and he says ignoring it is like ignoring Paul's trip to Rome. But even though it has been translated into English, it does not yield its best secrets unless you have a rudimentary knowledge of Greek.

Like many scholarly books, some of the best stuff is in the footnotes, as when Danker points out that some of the best theological dictionaries, including Kittel / Friedrich, rely on some questionable philological principles, such as assuming a word carries its theological baggage wherever it appears.

Do not get the impression that the book has no value if you don't know Greek and Hebrew. There are lots of things on plain English sources which are worth their weight in gold. For example, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, at 6 volumes, would seem to be unassailable as the leading Bible Dictionary. But Danker points out that the 4 volume International Standard Bible Encyclopedia has a superior bibliography and is better on some important subjects and in subject organization.

It is no accident that commentaries are listed last, as the good doctor is expecting us to do for ourselves much of what commentaries do, with the aid of all the other sources.Danker reports on something I have seen, that often two commentaries will disagree on the simplest matters. I will suggest, however, that new commentaries have a big advantage over other references in that their bibliographies will be up to date and their discussion of general theological issues will reflect current views.

It's important to observe Danker's comment that even if you do not know Greek, the chances are very good, as I did for three years, that you will consult Greek words in an interlinear translation (oddly, that is a tool Danker does not mention) and puzzle out some information from Kittel with it. He notes that the best place to go first is to a Greek lexicon, to get the shading of meaning in different contexts. Oddly, he does not touch the difficult task of finding words, especially verbs, in a Greek lexicon. To be perfectly effective at this skill, you need to know how to conjugate Greek verbs and know how cases affect translation of prepositions.

It is quite odd that the author makes no mention in his text of computer aided Biblical research using software such as Bibleworks or Internet resources. He does not even discuss the contents of the CD which accompanies the book. But, I will grant him the fact that the software largely automates what we do by hand with Concordances and multiple translations of the Bible.

If you need to take a class in doing Biblical research, get a copy of this book. It will tell you most of what the instructor does not have time to cover.

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.

I was required to read this book for a seminary class.

Dr. Danker is a scholar of top-notch quality and there is no doubt that he knows his subject matter well. Being an amateur in the methods of Biblical research however, I found much of what he wrote difficult to follow. He cites many resources that are in languages other than English (German, French, etc.) and he also sometimes uses quotes that are in other languages as well. If you already have a background in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek then this will not prove to be much of an impediment for you. On the other hand, if you are like me and have yet to study in this area then this book will prove to be more difficult.

Dr. Danker's writing style requires an audience that already has a solid foundation in the scholarly realm of Biblical study. A number of the points that he makes in the book require a certain level of background information in order to understand the significance of the point. Advanced seminarians (those with the Biblical languages under their belt), pastors, and those already doing research in the area of Biblical studies are ideally suited for this work. If you are a beginner then I would suggest taking a look at other less demanding titles.