Recommending that a Bible student become familiar with Bible reference works is like suggesting to a carpenter that he get familiar with a hammer, saw, and drill. Reference works are crucial tools for any serious Bible study. In this chapter, I’d like to acquaint you with the different types of reference works for Bible study.
There are several things to look for in any given reference work.
First, you want it to be the product of specialists. Most major academic publishers keep a sharp eye on this sort of thing because their reference works won’t sell to libraries, the biggest buyer of reference material, without such expertise. That means you can avoid a substandard work by making sure the publisher has a long track record of producing reference material.
Second, you want it to be up-to-date. The typical life cycle of a reference work in biblical studies is twenty years. Time marches on. In the span of a few decades, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and biblical studies scholars discover new things and new ways of analyzing the Bible. For instance, a biblical reference work produced in the year before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered became out-of-date long before the twenty-year cycle!
More specifically, there are different types of reference works. Most people hear the phrase “reference work” and think of encyclopedias. That’s certainly a major category. Encyclopedias relevant for biblical studies might be devoted to the Bible itself, but encyclopedias of the ancient Near East or ancient Greece and Rome are also quite important for serious Bible study.
Not all reference works are encyclopedias. Bible dictionaries are similar but not quite the same thing. There are exceptions, but Bible dictionaries are usually shorter and therefore not as exhaustive. They are most often one-volume works, while encyclopedias tend to be multivolume sets.
Bible atlases are reference works. Every Bible student should have a good Bible atlas, which is not only filled with maps but also some discussion about places and incidents marked on the maps.
Related to reference works specifically about the Bible are theological reference works. There are many specialized dictionaries aimed at theological topics.
There are other types of reference, but these are the major categories.