Over the last few weeks I've been leading my Bible study group through the book of Leviticus. Let's get real - many Christians either never read or avoid this book like the plague. However, we've found it a great inspiration. While many of the rules seem ludicrous in today's day and age, readers that focus only on the rules are missing the point of the book - that we are called to keep ourselves holy, or set aside, for God.

Rather than work through each of the 27 chapters one at a time, we broke the book up into five studies. Clicking on each title will open or download a PDF of the study for your own use.

Study 1 - Chapters 1 to 7: Rules for Sacrifices
Study 2 - Chapters 8 to 10: Role of the priests

Study 3 - Chapters 11 to 15: What is Clean and Unclean
Study 4 - Chapter 16: The Day of Atonement
Study 5 - Chapters 17 to 27: Rules about Conduct

With this behind us, we'll be studying Hebrews next.

A few weeks ago I lead a short, two session study of the Apostle's Creed for my Bible study group. The study was based on the premise that for someone to take the trouble to write a creed that it must have been in response to something.

The first part of the study summarises some of the historical, theological and social pressures faced by Christians with the second session a review of the Apostle's Creed. Session two's focus is on looking for what the creed says in response to the context in which it was written.

My preferred study style is to take the text being studied, it's historical context and then discuss this with the rest of the group.

I hope it's of value to some of you.

The Apostle's Creed Part 1
The Apostle's Creed Part 2

My Bible study group has spent the last few weeks looking at the book of Esther. It's a fascinating story about how a young Jewish girl becomes the queen of Babylon in what amounts to a beauty contest. Without delving into all the details and recounting every element of the studies and discussion I wanted to take a quick look at one of the tangents we discussed this morning - the fate of the Amalekites.

In the book ot Exodus, chapter 17 tells us that:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands."

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. 11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. 12 When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. 13 So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

Several hundred years later, we learn a little more about the Amalekites and, in particular, their King Agag. From 1 Samuel 15:

When Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to the east of Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

Deuteronomy 20 describes the rules of warfare and tells the Hebrews that they are to "annihilate them" and to not let anything that breathes remain alive". It's very strong stuff. However, we know that Saul spares King Agag.

In the story of Esther, the main protagonist is a guy called Haman. Haman has a vendetta gainst the Jews and, as it turns out, is a direct descendent of King Agag (see Esther 9: 24). It's taken over 1000 years for the ultimate destruction of the Amalekites to complete as it's through the intervention of God in the story of Esther that the last of Amalekites, Haman and his ten sons, are destroyed.

All of this tells me that I have a long way to go in my study of the Bible. It's pretty incredible to find threads like this and, in my view, lends support to the veracity of the Bible as a historically accurate text. But that's an argument for another day.

Yesterday, I penned a story for my weekly column on Hydrapinion on eBooks.

Why eBooks suddenly matter (to me): I've never really understood the whole eBook thing. I've tried - really, I have. I've also given audio books a go and quite like the idea of the convenience they offer. Studying requires that I read a wide variety of different references in addition to my lecture notes. This has lead me, for the first time, to establishing an electronic reference library so that I can carry my reference books with me.

By sheer coincidence, Drew Turney, who's standing in for Stephen Withers on the Mac column, also wrote a story on eBooks that's worth a look.

 eBooks

Just following on from my post on Logos for Mac, it's worth mentioning another application that those into biblical scholarship might be interested in.

The Sword Project has the following mission:

Its purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools, covered by the GNU General Public License, that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily. Its secondary purpose is to amass a library of Bibles and other Scripture-related texts that can be used by all SWORD Project-based software.

I've used the Mac and Linux versions. The Mac version is my main Bible for preparing studies and searching for key texts. It'd be nice to have a version that works with Logos but coming at the perfect price (free) and with a wealth of different public domain resources including Bible translations, dictionaries and commentaries it's definitely worth a look.

 Bible • Sword Project

As a theology student (I'm at Ridley College in Melbourne) one of the tasks I regularly face is research. Finding articles for specific topics or for when I'm running a Bible study can be quite tricky. While the index in the back of the book is handy, having to trawl through the indexes of many books is very time consuming and is pre-supposed on the idea that I know what book the information I'm after is in. That's where e-Books come to the fore.

Many theological reference books are now available on CDs or DVDs. A substantial subset of those books are published in a specific format so that a common front-end can be used to access the entire library and then search across the library. Windows users have had access to the Libronix software for some time. However, Mac users have only recently been able to enter the fray with the release of Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh. Logos for Mac is currently in its first public beta release following no less that 11 alpha releases.

I've been using Logos for Mac since the last couple of alpha releases and now have the beta installed. The beta does have some limitations. For example, you can only install and access books that you have already unlocked using the Windows version of the software. This feature will be implemented in the final release.

The heart of Logos for Mac (the icon on the Dock is labelled as Libronix DLS) is the Library. this is where all the books in your electronic library are listed. At installation, you can choose where to store the books. If hard disk space is at a premium you could store your books on a USB stick. I chose to put mine in a specific folder in the Documents folder on my Mac (a MacBook Air running OS X 10.5.4). I'd previously purchased the The Essential IVP Reference Collection and BST New Testament CD-ROM [Affiliate Links] and installed them to a Mac running VMWare Fusion. That meant that I'd generated a license file that unlocked the resources in my library. Until the final release of Logos for Mac comes out, you'll need a system running Windows.

From my Windows installation, I synchronised my licenses with the Logos license server. When I ran through the Mac installation, I synchronised my licenses from the license server to my Mac. If I add any new books to my library I'll need to do that on my Windows set up first and then sync the licenses.

The proof of the pudding with software such as Logos is in the speed with which search results come back. I must say that I was very impressed. I was writing an essay on the teaching of the apostle James on wealth and poverty. The various queries I ran all returned their results quickly in a list that was categorised by book. A "by rank" sort option for search results didn't seem to make any difference but this is a beta so i don't expect everything to be working perfectly yet.

Reading a book on the screen was surprisingly good. Many people much prefer to be able to hold a book and flick the pages but some of the books, particularly many of the volumes in the The Essential IVP Reference Collection[Affiliate Link] are very large and a little unwieldy as bed-time reads go. However, the Libronix document/database format makes it easy to jump to specific sections using the book's table of contents. It'd be nice if the font that the book was displayed in could be changed but that's a minor issue as the serif font that's employed is pretty good.

If you're working on an essay or sermon and have opened a number of different reference works and need to stop working for a while, you can save a workspace easily so that you can return and keep working from where you left off.

I love books. I have a reasonably extensive library of fiction and non-fiction at home. However, for study, electronic books hold huge advantages over paper. For Mac users that are studying theology I'd strongly suggest looking at some of the electronic options that are available. Logos for Mac ought to be on your shopping list.

 Bible Study • Libronix • Logos

You might have noticed that I'm not posting as frequently as usual. That's because I'm in full-on study mode. I'm 10 days from an exam on the Content and Settings of the Gospels. My study is not focussed on several specific, thematic areas. These are

• Intertestamental history and its influence on what the Jews expected from Jesus
• The death and resurrection of Jesus
• The Kingdom of God - what is it?
• The titles of Jesus - what do they tell us about him?
• What are the Gospels? How do we interpret them? The Synoptic Problem.
• The significance of Miaracles
• The importance of Parables

Over the next ten days I'll have assembled a list of major topics within each theme and which specific verses from the Gospels I need to illustrate my views on each topic area.

At this stage I'm finding my key references are:

Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels

Jesus and the Gospels by Craig L. Blomberg

[Note: Both these links will take you to Amazon. If you purchase from those links I get a commission.]

 Bible • Jesus • Study

Laridian makes, in my view, the premier Bible software for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm users. Some time ago they expanded their range with an iPod version of their software.

Once again, they've boosted the range, this time adding an iPhone and iPod Touch version of their app.

There is nothing to download or install to your iPhone. Simply purchase a subscription to iPocketBible.com. Order at least one Bible to use on the site (dozens of Bibles and Bible-related books are available). Login to iPocketBible.com from your iPhone browser and enjoy the Bible anytime, anywhere.

iPocketBible.com is uniquely optimized for the advanced web browser included with your iPhone and iPod Touch device. Your entire Laridian Bible study library will be available to you at anytime for reading and research. You can search through your Bibles and books to find any word or phrase and much more.

While I'm always happy to see the word of God expounded anywhere and anytime this application highlights an issue with the Apple "closed shop" model. In order to use an application you must have some sort of network connection. In my view, this is plain dumb. Why can't I use my application when I'm sitting on a plane? While Web 2.0 is, generally, a good thing it isn't the only solution. Apple needs to open the iPhone and iPod Touch so that applications can be developed to run in situ on these devices.

This week, in class at Ridley, we started looking at the book of Isaiah. This is part of study into the minor prophets this semester. We spent a hefty part, about an hour, of the class time considering some of the views of who actually wrote the book of Isaiah.

One school of thought considers that the entire book is the work of a single writer. Others see a disctinct change at chapter 40, suggesting two authors while another group of scholars reckon there are three authors. There's a superficial discussion of the authorship on Wikipedia but it suggests that the dual-authorship view is the predominant one. I'm not sure that I agree as there are plenty of solid counter arguments. However, I'm not going into them here. My question is

My argument begins with this supposition:

That means, to me, that the person that put stylus to papyrus isn't nearly as important as the Word itself. Now, that might seem obvious but I think many academics get wound up in debates about authorship in an attempt to justify the Bible's authority. I reckon they're missing the point. The Bible is God's word - period. If we divert our focus away from the study of the word to a discussion of the person/people holding the pen than we're not focussing on the right thing.

However, what the study of authorship does do is force us to consider differences in what is said and how it is expressed. As long as we use the debate around the authorship of Isaiah to focus our attention on the Word and not the writer then it's worth looking at.

There's a lot that can be written about the authorship of Isaiah, and indeed many of the other books of the Bible. At the moment my focus is on what Isaiah says (present tense intentional).

 Biblical Authority • Isaiah • Isaiah authorship

I really like having a copy of the Bible with me everywhere I go but there are times when that's just not convenient. However, I always have my mobile phone with me. That's why I'm already a fan of Olive Tree.

A quick visit to the Olive Tree site reveals Bible Reader software for most portable platforms including the iPod. Installation simply involved downloading the BibleReader installation file. The only hassle was that the filename was BibleReader60_3_367_152.sis.txt which meant that my browser tried to open the application file as a text file. However, downloading the file (by right-clicking the download link) sorted that out. Then I renamed the file, removing the txt extension, and sent it to the N95 via Bluetooth. From there I installed it and that was done.

Then, I needed to download a Bible for the reader to read. That was quite simple and I transferred it to the phone and placed the file on the microSD card.

The software is quite basic. You can easily browse to a specific book and verse but there's no easy way to bookmark favourite verses to return to. Font sizes, text and background colours are easy to set and there's a handy split-screen mode if you're looking at a refernce book in parallel with the Bible.

Olive Tree is a handy, although fairly basic, mobile Bible reader. The reader software is free and if you choose a public domain translations or book there's no cost. Other translations and reference books (such as dictionaries and concordances) vary in price.

 Bible software • N95 software • Symbian software