Old Testament is here!

I’m going to present my reading suggestions thematically this year, in a series of posts.

Those who teach children, teenagers— and to a lesser extent, young adults— are faced with a barrage of questions about how to understand and teach the Old Testament to their age groups; they also face a barrage of questions from their classes. This post is for them.

Before the books, though, I need to talk about formats. I prefer print… except when I don’t. My preferred electronic format is an app called Logos, which I’ve used for scripture study since 2001. Basic functionality is free across all platforms; you pay for books, packages, and increased functionality. Logos is far superior to something like Kindle; every reference is active and functions as a pop-up or link to your preferred Bible translation, for example. I’ve made a video documenting some basic Logos stuff below.  Many of the books I recommend exist in Logos, so I’ve linked to them.

Whereas ALL the amazon links below are Affiliate links, and I receive a small percentage of your book purchase, I get nothing from the Logos links; I just want to share the joy of the app’s utility. (If, on the other hand, you decide to buy a Logos package or subscribe, doing so from this link will get us both some credit.)

I wrote a long post a few years ago about scripture study for youth and adults. I expressed a few key elements— learning to ask good questions, research and evaluate potential answers, and record the answers you find. This is my philosophy: you cannot fully learn from scripture unless you are also actively learning about scripture.  Check it out.

Many of the questions that we— and our students— will have about things we don’t understand in the Old Testament have their answers in context, whether historical, cultural, literary, linguistic, or otherwise. We are prone to speculate doctrinal reasons when contextual ones make much more sense.  For that reason, many of the resources I recommend focus on cultural and other contexts which aren’t obvious to us. Example: Jeremiah 1:11 recounts a vision of Jeremiah.

Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree. 12 Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.

What possible connection is there between the almond tree and God’s reliability in carrying out his word? When limited to English translation, one might surmise almond trees were symbols of reliability or were particularly resistant to change. Indeed, when confronted with the strange and unfamiliar in scripture, Latter-day Saints tend to look for (speculative) doctrinal reasons. We think of theological causality primarily in terms of revelation. But much of scripture’s weirdness is attributable to historical/cultural/linguistic contingency, not “doctrinal” ideas. And in fact, almond trees had no such symbolism.

Instead, there is a Hebrew pun here, a linguistic quirk under the surface that translation simply can’t handle well. See here.

All this illustrates something important. From the recent Answering Your Gospel Questions: 

Someone once said, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” People in the past had different assumptions about the world than we do. They used different imagery and words to describe their experience. If we want to better understand the words and actions of those in the past, we also need to understand the culture and context in which they occurred. That doesn’t mean we can’t reject things about past cultures. In fact, there are some things from the past the gospel calls upon us to reject. But understanding historical context helps to keep us from imposing our present views on people of the past in a way that prevents understanding.

Now, on to the resources!

#1 Other translations to accompany— not supplant— the KJV in class time. Why keep the KJV, you ask? A few good reasons.

  1. The KJV is no more “the Bible” than any other translation, but has had massive influence on America, the English language, and Latter-day Saints.
  2. To that point, we need to know the KJV language so we pick up on allusions in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.
  3. Lastly, the archaic language of the KJV serves as a reminder that what we are reading is ancient, not a 2025 General Conference talk. This helps calibrate our expectations, reminds us that we should expect differences, because that’s how revelation (and culture) work.

When we study the past, we sometimes find that practices, teachings, and ideas we thought were unchanging have actually changed quite a bit. Core principles of the gospel are eternal, but the ways they are understood and expressed over time reflect the line upon line nature of revelation and the constant change of human culture. The principle of continuing revelation helps us navigate these changes. You might find that learning more about the many things that have changed makes it easier to discern the things that are enduring.

Whether it’s paper or online or Logos or ParallelsPlus (a free multi-translation app used by missionaries), I recommend sticking to the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version), ESV, NASB, JPS Tanach or Jewish Study Bible (Amazon, Logos), and Robert Alter’s literary translation and commentary. Not all translations are good, and some are quite bad! (Much more on this in a later post.)

In fact, it can be a very useful experience to give everyone a different translation and have someone read out loud, and use the differences to jumpstart questions about what the text says and means.

#2 Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible 

 

  • Along with other translations, we need some context to explain the things that could go without being said: the cultural and other backgrounds. This has been a favorite study bible recently.  (If unsure about Study Bibles, do check out Joshua Sears’ “Introduction to Study Bibles for Latter-day Saints,”  (podcast interview here) and note that Elder Holland has talked about his own usage of own study bible. )
  • This study bible— with identical notes and essays— is available with several different Bible translations. Unfortunately, the best one is now very hard to find, the NRSV. If you want this in print, I think the best remaining option is the New King James Version, amazon. I do not recommend the NIV version.
  • If, however, you want to try Logos, you can buy the notes independently of translation, and read them along with whatever translation(s) you want.  Logos link.
  • These notes and essays are actually derived from a multi-volume set called the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. (Logos) You can link those to whatever translation you want too and carry it in your pocket. Or you can buy the 5-volume NT set for $134 and the Old Testament set for $176.

#3 The Bible Story Handbook: A Resource for Teaching 175 Stories from the Bible(Amazon link. Logos link.)

  • This is mostly aimed at teaching the under-12 crowd. Each lesson includes background, teaching ideas, context and common pitfalls. A lot of useful stuff, concise and aimed at teaching and introducing young’uns to biblical stories and ideas.
  • Currently on sale for $13.99 at Logos. I don’t know for how long.

#4 Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Amazon link)

    • This is an excellent introduction and very helpful, but is hard to find and expensive in hardcover. It is available in print-on-demand from Deseret Book, but this is paperback and b/w, so the pictures, images, and charts don’t really pop the same way.  Still, highly recommended for introducing the Old Testament to those encountering it for the first or second time.
    • I reviewed this when it first came out here.

 

#5 A Modern Guide to an Old Testament (Amazon)

BYU professor Joshua Sears and Deseret Book have provided a fantastic and accessible reorientation to reading the Old Testament. Regular readers of my blog will recognize a lot of similar ideas, talking about context, genre, and putting ourselves into ancient sandals. In essence, we need to quit reading the Old Testament through modern lenses, especially those we inherited from the heavily Protestant instincts we inherited in the 1800s. If you like the kind of thing you read on my blog, but your spouse/Bishop/parents don’t, gift them this book.

 

Now, about Logos. Here’s a video (no sound), of setting up a new layout with Logos on my 13″ iPad. It opens blank, and I select a 4-panel layout. You tap the + in a panel to choose what you want opened there. I choose the KJV for the top right, and the NRSV for the bottom right. The middle column gets the notes from the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, and then the left column gets the Jewish Study Bible notes. (Everything that pops up in the library is something I’ve purchased.) Then, I set all four columns to Linkset A, which means that they will all scroll together according to book/chapter/verse. Then I go into the nav bar, and select Genesis 1:1, and they all line up. Then I just scroll around a little.  This will be a bit different depending on tablet size or phone, but you can set a max of 4 panels per page (2 on a phone), but you can have multiple pages simultaneously; you swipe L or R to get into other pages.

I’ve recorded a desktop demo of Logos a few years back, here.

This concludes my first list of recommendations 🙂