Halleys Bible Handbook.

I own one but never use it. It's not a bad resource, but I just find other resources to be more helpful. I like the Holman Bible Handbook. Plus, you can find much of the same information in study Bibles, commentaries, etc.

Plus, my little blue copy gets lost in my mammoth volumes on my shelves. Poor little fella gets a Napolean complex when placed near my BAGD or my Hebrew Bible

 

Henry H. Halley was a died in the wool Campbellite, and if you look carefully, it comes out.

 

American-born denomination (that claims it is NOT a denomination). Called "Churches of Christ" or "Independent Christian Churches," or liberal branch, "Disciples of Christ." They follow the teachings of Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell. Baptismal Regeneration, extreme arminianism, in the case of Churches of Christ, no instrumental music in church. Called "restoration theology," they believe they are the restoration of true NT Christianity, and some of them believe they are the only true church and the only ones going to Heaven.

 

Actually, many smaller churches formed out of a split with the Main Church of Christ....some of them hold to some of the original teachings, but many of them actually saw the erring in their beliefs and believe something far more evangelical. As for Halleys bible handbook, I have an 88th printing, made in 1998.........I also found it to be an excellent resource and would highly recommend it.

Peace

 

Wow! 88th edition! Mine is Eighteenth edition printed in 1948. It has been around for a long time, and still in publication. I always read it when approaching study.

I also read Eerdmans' Handbook to the Bible. I prefer the Eerdmans to Halley's.

Cheers,

Jim

 

I';ve heard good things about Eerdmans. What do you like about it, Jim?

 

Amen to that! Was born and raised in the Campbellite church and after I was born again, I began looking things up in my Halley's and quickly saw some erroneous teachings.

 

Tom,

It is up-to-date and gives many sides of an equation, where there are multiple suggestions for a given problem area. It is scholarly and does not, as much as possible, lean to any bent of theology.

It is an easy read.

Cheers,

Jim

 

In the USA, the "Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)" and the "Christian Churches and Churches of Christ" each has a bit over a million members in somewhere between four and six thousand congregations.

They are in many respects Baptists, particularly in their congregational polity/autonomy and their believers' immersion. Early in the 1800s Alexander Campbell himself was within (and then expelled from) a Baptist association in Kentucky or Ohio or someplace, as I recall, and was excluded because of his teachings on Baptismal Regeneration and his "sacramental" view of Communion. (Disciples of Christ congregations, in my experience, usually celebrate Communion weekly, and regard it as more instrumental than symbolic compared with Baptist views.) In the second quarter of the twentieth century there was a movement towards union of the DoC with the Northern Baptists (now ABCUSA) which ended up falling through, but they did produce a common hymnal (the 1941 Christian Worship).

My father was co-accredited by ABC and DoC as campus minister at the University of Washington (Seattle) 1953-1967, and when I was a kid we normally worshipped once a month at University Christian, the rest of the month at University Baptist.

See? They are Baptists!

Haruo

 

I very likely had a similar edition in the late 60s——early 70s. The only thing I recall specifically about it that was news to me was its numerological derivation of the Number of the Beast (Rev. 13:18) from "VATIKANOS" in Greek (or some such). Since I had not long before learned, while visiting Brezhnev's Siberia with my family, that the Number of the Beast stood for Lenin(istic Communism - click for story), I found Halley's version amusing.

Haruo

 

A book vendor that I worked for sold me a "Halley's Bible Handbook" for $2.50, and I use it as a jumping off point. I have the 24th edition, 86th printing of 1997, published by Zondervan.

On Revelation 13:18 it refers to Irenaeus who said that the Greek word "Lateinos" when the letters are regarded as numerals totals 666 and means Latin Kingdom. Does that seem far-fetched?

I also own "Eerdmans Handbook to the Bible" from the former employer for the same amount, and I have "Smith's Bible Dictionary," a gift from my aunt. After that I use Matthew Henry Complete Online.

 

I consider all these types of handbooks as tools. No more, no less. You know the old adage about tools: A good workman never faults his tools.

Be studious. Be dilligent. Use all the tools in your shop.....and as many as you can borrow!

Cheers,

Jim

 

A good workman never faults his tools.

Thanks for posting that. I had forgotten that saying but it is words to live by.

Actually, I have about four or five hundred books. They are all over the apartment just about. Some of them are books on Christian topics. My interest in theology stems from the Peoples Temple cult of Jim Jones about twenty-five years ago. Actually, Jim Jones started out in Indianapolis as a Disciples of Christ minister--that denomination is headquartered here. Indianapolis people will not talk about Jim Jones much. Of course, it has been many years and he has been forgotten. Indianapolis has many different cults active here. Very sad.

 

That's it, Lateinos not Vatikanos. Anybody know where Irenaeus wrote that? (Of course it fits better with preterism than other eschatologies.)

Haruo

 

All (I think) of his works translated into English are available at New Advent, the Catholic Encyclopedia.

For the passage that you want try http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103530.htm

This is in "Adversus haereses" Book 5 Chapter 30

[ June 18, 2003, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: church mouse guy ]

 

Thanks!

Leave it to Halley to resurrect this clearly (unless you're a preterist, which he wasn't that I ever heard of) out-of-date suggestion!

BTW, anybody know what Irenaeus's grounds for the assertion that the last of Daniel's four kingdoms is or was named "Lateinos"?

Haruo