Hello my friend, I’ll assist you to learn how to study the Bible. We ought to use dictionaries. Notice that the term is in the plural form, “dictionaries”.
One indispensable tool is your everyday dictionary, even as the Encarta online dictionary. Regular dictionaries are acceptable and useful. We will have to give to them a workout. Nonetheless to deeply know the meaning of a term, we must put our nose in an etymology dictionary.
“Etymology” denotes knowing the origin of a term’s sense. Some terms are put together from several smaller terms, known as “root words”. The etymology tells, to us, the definitions of each of the root words. Some etymologies may have to be redone, when more understanding arrives.
For instance, the Online Etymology Dictionary, at etymonline.com, has wonderful etymologies ordinarily. Nevertheless, for the word, “abraxas” I saw that Wikipedia had a more accurate etymology, than has the Online Etymology Dictionary. For some words other sources are superior.
During the time, when you find out how to study the Bible, realize that another factor is to be considered. In the time when the King James Bible was authorized, a lot of English terms were defined differently from our understanding of them today. One of my editions of the scriptures offers a list of those terms, and what they originally meant in the holy scripture. I have scanned the list and put it up on the Biblefixit Dot Com’s web page at Biblefixit.com/old-english-words.htm.
What is hard is to inspect the list and to realize which terms we ought to substitute an old meaning for, as we learn from the holy scripture. With such a big list, what are we to do? Look up every term in a chapter, to see if it has an unlike meaning, from the definition which we already know? Or are we to just dash through the list, every once in a while, hoping that we will be able to call to mind some term, which we saw in our studying?
Preferably, a holy scripture ought to be, in future, printed, which would include the old meanings inserted, or footnoted, on the same page where the terms are printed in their context.
A different type of dictionary is to be found in the concordance. I use Stong’s Concordance online to find out the meaning of Greek and Hebrew terms in the Bible, whereupon I write them in the margins of my holy scripture. Nevertheless, I believe that in many particulars, YHVH’s intention may be somewhat different from the Hebrew definitions displayed in the concordance.
I’ll give, to you, an instance. A good deal of Hebrew names terminate in “ia” or “iah”. “Jeremiah” and “Obadiah” are two, thereof. Also there is the name of God, “Iahveh”. It is as well the German word for “yes”, which is “ja”. The letters “i”, “y”, and “j”, can frequently be seen to be interchangeable. The German tongue may be a development from of quaint Hebrew. Thus the American “yeah” (which is stemming from “ja”) can also be seen as a name of God.
But to get back to the central thought here — the truly old word “ja” deals with breathing. As one of the few, merely about a milliard, alive, who have accepted the gift of the “baptism of fire and the holy spirit” mentioned by the Lord, I can say with authority, that “Yahweh” is certainly connected with the concept of “breath”, in a manner that cannot and will not be explained to them, who are unbaptized in the fire and the holy spirit.
Notwithstanding the importance of the old meaning of the word, in the concordances and etymologies, the concept of breath has been lacking in the definitions of the words that have “jah”, “ia”, or “iah” therein, and words for “God” have been used to replace them. This is because the wisdom of the breath is a private matter, and is often not put into writings.
Ultimately, we need to develop our faith in YHVH, to lead us to the right sense of his meanings, and this we do by studying the King James Bible frequently, and obeying what YHVH has recommended for us.
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