Geoffrey's Notebook

Week 30 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 29 Berean Literal Bible + 1 John 3:7-17 + Scofield's Notes 1 John (BLB) Have you heard of the Bereans? Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true (Acts 17:11) I'm really appreciating the work those from Biblehub.com have accomplished with their Berean Bible translations. They made a study version, an interlinear (which is pretty nice compared to others), a literal translation, and an annotated one. All of these are useful in different ways. This was a smaller team of translators but they took it seriously and they used a lot of input from volunteer scholars and bible students from all around. They have an open concept of sharing the text and their struggling notes for translating. Let's read their literal bible translation. If yo...

Week 29 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 28 Jerusalem Bible + 1 John 2:29-3:6 + FB Meyer notes 1 John (FB Meyer) For this week let's use a much smaller commentary. F.B. Meyer has some short notes on the book and I believe it is a good example for us. If, after having studied for a year, we can come up with some overview-type paragraphs for each major section that would be some fruit. It's true that we may have a lot of notes and many details to tell people about that we've discovered. But can we do something simple like this as well? As always, F.B. Meyer brings the word to all of us and lifts us up to Christ (see attached). Let's read from the Jerusalem Bible this time. In the 1960s or so there was a movement among the Roman Catholics to get into reading the Bible. One piece of fruit from that time is the Jerusalem Bible. It is a Catholic translation so it will have some extra books in it, but we're jus...

Week 28 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 27 LEB + Paraphrase 2:18-28 + Matthew Henry  1 John (LEB) Hey everyone! I wanted to mention at the start that now with commentaries added in we're all going to have the potential to do a lot of interesting studying as well as getting overloaded. If you're having a busy week, try just a sample of the commentary and set it aside for another time. You may feel like you need to do that each time and that's okay of course. It may help to pick a section of 1st John that becomes your section. You memorize it, you paraphrase it, you get notes on it, and you read all the commentaries we post on it. If you can do that then you can finish out 1 John later on when you have some more time. That said, LEB (Lexham English Bible) is a very neat translation that's more modern. The Logos Bible software company put this together gradually out from the interlinear work they were doing. T...

Week 27 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 26 Normal translation + Manna/Memory with 1 John 2:24-28 + Darby's Synopsis of the Bible Another (great!) overview of the Bible. This one will work with us since we've been studying 1 John. Normally, it's very difficult to follow unless you inch along with the Bible open. I've been so helped by this and am working through an audio version of it. It's free online (See links below). I also just recorded a podcast review on Darby's synopsis + Bible translation. I'll share that tomorrow as well. It includes the audio version of this synopsis for the intro and first chapter of 1 John. By the end of the week, I may have the rest of the audio finished with 1 John. Here's the older version with some archaic words Here's the updated version, where they changed things like "Holy Ghost" to be "Holy Spirit." Not too many updates.

Week 26 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 24 & 25 Young's literal translation + Manna/Memory 1 John 2:18-23 + God Has Spoken in 1st John (Kaung) 1 John (Youngs) We're in the 2nd half of our 1st John studies! It's time for us to share more of our notes and begin to fellowship with others who have studied and shared their comments. I've been reserving some of my notes to not overwhelm the group before we reached this spot, but I'm planning to share more now and encourage everyone to do the same. Translation: First, let's read the Young's literal translation this time. I have a large white paperback version of this at home but you can find the digital version everywhere that has Bible translations. Attached is a copy just in case. You may have seen Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible. That is a concordance worth having at home. It's not just for searching to find a ...

Week 24 & 25 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 23 1 John 2:12-17 Manna + Memory + Paraphrase (6 verses for 2 weeks). Use your normal translation for both weeks. Hey everyone, these will be our last weeks without commentaries. In general, I try to not use commentaries until after reading through the first 25 times. By that point, I'm well into my detailed outline of the book and I'm actually very interested in what others have to say, what nuggets of gold they've discovered, etc. Some of us are still catching up, and others may almost find the study boring without enough direction. That's probably normal for Bible study. You either are hungry for a lot more or you are overwhelmed by it. Then sometimes you're at the sweet spot of enjoyment and enlightenment. It's the drudgery of the regular study that brings out the depth of light and life that we may hear in a good sermon or read in a good...

Week 23—1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 23 Paraphrase 2:3-11 + RV vs ESV translation. 1 John (RV vs ESB) This week we have the RV vs the ESV. Remember that ESV is based on the RV just as NASB is based on ASV. And the ASV team was together originally with the RV team. When the RV was released people weren't sure if it was okay to read it. In England, for example, they weren't sure if it was approved since it wasn't the "authorized" version. People were more used to the English of the KJV thought it was still outdated. It's possible that Spurgeon said the RV was strong in Greek but weak in English (I've read that quoted in various places but I can't find the original). But he still quoted the RV often in sermons to bring up the original text and used it as the better study translation. Watchman Nee mentions the RV text in his talks on Bible Study as possibly the best translation at...