The Great BibleProject

The Big Idea: If you don't know about the videos from the BibleProject, you are missing out on a great resource. Here's why.

You think you know the BibleProject? Think again!  

Here are some things you might not know!

• A gargantuan coffee table book of  PDFs on each book of the Bible weighs a pound!
• Founder Tim Mackie has a podcast series there called "Exploring my Strange Bible."
• TIm and his artist/sidekick Jon Collins were once roommates at Multnomah Bible College.
• You can now take free Graduate level Bible courses like "Heaven and Earth."
• There's a Spiritual Being series with one called "Divine Council."
• It has been translated into 18 languages (10+ videos) and watched in over 200 countries so far.

The day my Bible study co-leader introduced me to The BibleProject videos I was blown away. This non-profit computer animation video production company is about books of the Bible, Word studies, Biblical themes and so on. It is purely crowd funded and intends to always teach about the Bible for free. It uses fairly simple animation and illustrations that are able to be translated into other languages. In fact it has been  translated so far into 18 languages (with 10+ videos per language) and viewed in 200+ countries.

Tim Mackie, the theologian, is an excellent verbal communicator. His friend, Jonathan Collins, is the communications and animation specialist. These two guys roomed together at Multnomah Bible College and several years later decided to share their passion for the Bible to create this powerful vehicle of Bible education. Their videos can mesmerize young children and bring joy and profound understanding to adults. Launched in 2014 in Portland, Oregon, they have gathered a very skillful team around them. 

WHAT THEY OFFER:

Videos: Book overviews, Bible themes, Word studies and the How to Read the Bible series.

Podcasts: They spend about 50 minutes with deeper explanations. Tim Mackie also has posted some of his sermons and teaching sessions in a blog called "Exploring my Strange Bible."

Blog: Posted by various members of their team

A Church at Home Series, especially helpful during the COVID 19 period, but also great for small group Bible studies and home schoolers.

Classroom: (NEW in Beta form) Graduate level Bible Classes Free. Currently 2 courses available. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (18 hours) and Heaven and Earth (19 hours).

Shop: Coffee Table book of each of the books of the Bible and another of the informational posters. The individual posters on each book of the Bible are also available for download on their website. They also have a couple t-shirts, and a stick drive with all their Bible Videos.

WHAT IS MY FAVORITE THING?

That is hard. I love their videos that give an overview of each book of the Bible. If I start studying a new book I always go to that first. We bought the coffee table book of all their charts.

I am very excited about their How to Read the Bible Series. These are uncommonly excellent in explaining the various genres and themes of the Bible, weaving together the basic theme and brilliant ways it is put together to express this basic theme about God and His partnership with us.

They have videos like: 

How to Read Ancient Jewish Meditational Literature 

How to Read Metaphor in Biblical Poetry

Spiritual Beings focus Angels and Cherubim

Theme: The Tree of Life 

Theme: Day of the Lord 

I refer to these videos and show them every chance I get! I currently teach a Sunday School class of an Overview of the Bible and I use one or two in each session. You always see light bulbs going on in people's heads as they watch them.

Check them out!

One last resource I just discovered… Top 75 Bible Study Blogs.  I recently checked into it and submitted my blog, and it was chosen to be featured as part of their list! How exciting! And if you go to this site you will find so many ideas from an amazing variety of sources.  You can check out the list of each blog's last five posts and it will give you so many wonderful ideas. It includes blogs from Bible Gateway, Bible Publishing companies like American Bible Society and author Liz Curtis Higgs.

Wow! I am passionate about the Bible and I hope it rubs off on you too! What an amazing God we have who has made a way to communicate with us in the written word, the spoken word and You Tube also! Join me on this fabulous journey! 

Up Next: My favorite Bible Versions

Previous Post: Old Testament: God's Partnership Plan

Bible Word Search

Big idea: How to do a word search to reaseach specific words used in the Bible. 

Why look for special words in the Bible? 

Topics are a reason to do a word search.  If you want to  know what the Bible says about "grace" in the Bible, you might ask yourself where the verses are located that talk about "grace". Compare how often they occur in the Old Testament and the New Testament. If you are studying the book of Ephesians, you might check how often the word "grace" appears in that book. You could see what chapters seem to focus on it more. You could see if it occurs as a word more in one epistle than another. The one with more occurances might be a good place to study if you want to learn about that topic. 

Focus on a subject can be done using a word search. Let's use the word "grace" again. You could look up a number of verses in one book of the Bible, or the whole if you wish, and write down each verse reference and what it teaches you about grace. Then look at everything and compare and contrast. 

Finding a key verse based on a key word is another way to use a word search. Say you have always heard the verse, "For by grace you are saved through faith." But you are not sure where in the Bible to find it. You can look up the word "grace" and most likely will find it's address, it's reference, in the Bible.  

Concordance

One of my favorite concordances is called the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. It is one of the oldest and best ones out there. It was put together by James Strong and published first in 1890.  It was first used with the King James Bible. Now it is also available for the NIV.  It lists the occurance of every word. See the second photo for the list of every occurance of "the." Since it is so old, it is very easy to find it available for free on many software programs and websites. For instance https://biblehub.com/

 

There are other concordances available as well. Cruden's Concordance and Young's Concordance are two examples. Many study Bibles will have a less exhaustive concordance at the back of the Bible. 

Electronic Word Search 

One of the most common electronic Bibles is YouVersion, espcially as an app for tablets and phones. You can find the app by the Appstore or Google Play.  https://www.youversion.com/

Here is how to do a word search using the YouVersion Bible. You will want to look in the upper right hand corner of the Bible page in the app and find the magnifying glass.  Put the word in you are looking for. 

You will find there are options for your search. You can isolate the word to the Old Testament or the New Testament, or confine your search to just one book of the Bible. 

It is even intruiging to see how many times a certain word occurs in each book of the Bible. You can then go to each instance and note what it says about a particular word. 

There are other excellent Bible programs out there, each with a different way to search. Bible Hub, mentioned above does. Another one I like using is https://www.biblegateway.com/.  Play around with them and see what you find! Bible Hub also has tools that include Bible dictionaries. Those are helpful too. More on that another day!

Up Next: Be a Scripture Spy

Previous Post: An Introduction