Free Web Resources

[Diane Jacobson]

There are so many helpful resources available on the web. We will begin collecting and posting these soon. But let's start a conversation now. Below are just some of the resources I myself have found helpful or others have told me about. Please comment or add your own:

For Preaching:
http://www.textweek.com
sermon, art, and movie indexes… amazing
http://www.workingpreacher.org/
text studies, terrific site from Luther Seminary
http://www.sermonspice.com/
illustrations, visuals, etc

For Art:
http://www.textweek.com/art/art.htm/art/art.htm
my all time favorite for biblical art linked to texts
http://www.bible-art.info/
another terrific site
http://www.biblical-art.com/index.htm
search by subject, text, artist, word
http://www.allpostors.com/
lots of posters
http://catholic-resources.org/Art/
art and music, links to lots of other websites

For Articles, Bibliography, and Other info:
http://bookoffaith.ning.com/
lots of engaging conversations around Bible and teaching
http://www.feautor.org/en
tons of great, free articles
http://www.covenantcluster.net/
look at history and resource tabs for articles, info, and other sites
http://westernmission.ning.com/
ning site, not much there yet

 
For Deep Biblical Knowledge:
Enterthebible.com
Coming soon from Luther Sem
http://www.biblegateway.com/
read and listen to the Bible in lots of different versions
http://www.blueletterbible.org/
versions, commentaries, plus lots of stuff
http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/
free mp3 downloads of the Bible
http://www.ccel.org/wwsb/
worldwide study Bible, a lot of Calvin and others
http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/
Introductory Charts, Lists, Glossaries, and other Handouts
http://levsoftware.com/
great for beginning Hebrew

Maps plus:
http://www.virtualworldproject.org/
explores the ancient world through virtual reality
http://www.deeperstudy.com/link/paul_journeys_index.html
great maps
http://www.biblemap.org/events/Pauls2ndJourney/

[Greg Kaufmann]

Diane,
I think a great resource is the personal faculty pages at our colleges and seminaries. Here is one I use all the time, when I teach Revelation or Paul.
http://www.luthersem.edu/ckoester/
Greg

[Greg Kaufmann]

http://www.thebricktestament.com/
Diane, this site is a wonderful way to play into cross generational Bible experiences. Why not take a peak and then get your own pile of legos and build Bible stories together. Better yet, film them and show them on Sunday morning!
Greg

[Anna Marsh]

The Thoughtful Christian is also great.

I also follow a few blogs that I think have great conversation-starters (and sometimes resources) for Bible Study, etc.:
The Christian Century Blogs
The Speaking of Faith Blog
The Image Journal Blog

[Diane Jacobson]

Thanks. These are terrific.

Chad Thompson said:

A few from my bookmark pile:

God Pause Devotions, from Luther Seminary
http://www.luthersem.edu/godpause/daily_view.asp

Daily Prayer, Devotional Resources (Anglican bent):
http://www.oremus.org/

A searchable, usable online NRSV (You can create custom links, etc.):
http://bible.oremus.org/

The Book of Concord:
http://www.bookofconcord.org

Journals/Articles:

Logia: http://www.logia.org
Lutheran Quarterly: http://www.lutheranquarterly.com/
Lutheran Forum: http://www.lutheranforum.org/

[Anna Marsh]

We're in the process of building our new Resources page for the BFI website. In addition to the wonderful resources that Augsburg Fortress has been developing to support the initiative, we'd like to create a really helpful list of other resources for Bible study, especially free ones! If you have other ideas for web-based resources, please add them here--we'll consider them for recommendation to the wider Book of Faith Initiative audience!

Thanks!

[Nate Porter]

Logos.com also has developed some very cool free tools:

Bible.logos.com - This Bible search page has less versions than crosswalk or biblegateway but includes code for a search bar you can embed in your own sites that accepts almost any way you could write or abbreviate a Bible reference. It also has unlimited scrolling (i.e. you don't have to reload to move to another chapter or book).

Sermons.logos.com - This is a database of sermons and illustrations from users of their software's sermon addin, so it is constantly growing and changing

wbsa.logos.com - Stands for "What the Bible Says About" - Topical dictionary of the Bible based on Nave's that is easy to search

Also, in referencing it, I realized no one had mentioned bible.crosswalk.com before. It has even more English versions than biblegateway, including the NRSV.

The Unbound Bible has neat functionality displaying parallel versions and includes Greek/Hebrew searching.

More art and media refs at Scroll and Screen.

And last from my bookmarks, the St. John's Bible site, which also includes cool ideas for sunday schools and Christian schools.

[Edward WH Pease]

If you are looking for images I would suggest using Pitts Theological Library's Digital Image archive. http://www.pitts.emory.edu/dia/woodcuts.htm There are 21,000 images mainly woodcuts from the Kessler Reformation collection. Many of the woodcuts are taken from Luther's works.

[Diane Jacobson]

Edward WH Pease said:

If you are looking for images I would suggest using Pitts Theological Library's Digital Image archive. http://www.pitts.emory.edu/dia/woodcuts.htm There are 21,000 images mainly woodcuts from the Kessler Reformation collection. Many of the woodcuts are taken from Luther's works.

Thanks! This is a great resource.

[Nate Porter]

2 other relatively new Ning sites of interest to BoF:
http://workingpreacher.ning.com - Online text study group and other discussions related to preaching
http://imagineyourself.ning.com - Community of (ELCA) young adults asking tough questions about the Bible, God, and life

[Nate Porter]

Great news for social networking fans who like the Bible: Logos launched a new website today that makes it easy to create short Bible links. Here's part of their promo material:

"Ref.ly is a URL shortening service with a twist. Simply go to ref.ly, type in a Bible verse, and a custom link is automatically generated that you can use to link your friends and followers to the Bible. The added beauty of ref.ly is that the URL structure is really easy to remember, so you can simply create the link on your own. In fact, ref.ly recognizes almost every conceivable Bible referencing scheme, so you can share Matthew 16:18 [Open in Libronix (if available)] as http://ref.ly/Mt16.18, http://ref.ly/Mat16.18, http://ref.ly/Matt16.18, or http://ref.ly/Matthew16.18.

Along with an easy to remember structure, you also have the ability to share a single verse (http://ref.ly/Ro8.28), a range of verses, (http://ref.ly/Jn1.1-18), a chapter (http://ref.ly/Ps23), or an entire book (http://ref.ly/3Jn). You can even specify a particular version by simply adding @ followed by the version abbreviation (http://ref.ly/1P2.2@ESV).

With ref.ly you can now help your Twitter followers and Facebook friends engage more deeply with scriptures you reference in your updates."

I posted a link to my statuses in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and it works very well. Except no NRSV. You'll have to settle for NIV, ESV, or a variety of English and other language translations.

[Diane Jacobson]

Great info! Thanks.

Nate Porter said:

Great news for social networking fans who like the Bible: Logos launched a new website today that makes it easy to create short Bible links. Here's part of their promo material:

"Ref.ly is a URL shortening service with a twist. Simply go to ref.ly, type in a Bible verse, and a custom link is automatically generated that you can use to link your friends and followers to the Bible. The added beauty of ref.ly is that the URL structure is really easy to remember, so you can simply create the link on your own. In fact, ref.ly recognizes almost every conceivable Bible referencing scheme, so you can share Matthew 16:18 [Open in Libronix (if available)] as http://ref.ly/Mt16.18, http://ref.ly/Mat16.18, http://ref.ly/Matt16.18, or http://ref.ly/Matthew16.18.

Along with an easy to remember structure, you also have the ability to share a single verse (http://ref.ly/Ro8.28), a range of verses, (http://ref.ly/Jn1.1-18), a chapter (http://ref.ly/Ps23), or an entire book (http://ref.ly/3Jn). You can even specify a particular version by simply adding @ followed by the version abbreviation (http://ref.ly/1P2.2@ESV).

With ref.ly you can now help your Twitter followers and Facebook friends engage more deeply with scriptures you reference in your updates."

I posted a link to my statuses in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and it works very well. Except no NRSV. You'll have to settle for NIV, ESV, or a variety of English and other language translations.

[Nate Porter]

Side note: I discovered that if you don't specify a version, ref.ly picks a random one out of those available.

Diane Jacobson said:

Great info! Thanks.

Nate Porter said:

Great news for social networking fans who like the Bible: Logos launched a new website today that makes it easy to create short Bible links. Here's part of their promo material:

"Ref.ly is a URL shortening service with a twist. Simply go to ref.ly, type in a Bible verse, and a custom link is automatically generated that you can use to link your friends and followers to the Bible. The added beauty of ref.ly is that the URL structure is really easy to remember, so you can simply create the link on your own. In fact, ref.ly recognizes almost every conceivable Bible referencing scheme, so you can share Matthew 16:18 [Open in Libronix (if available)] as http://ref.ly/Mt16.18, http://ref.ly/Mat16.18, http://ref.ly/Matt16.18, or http://ref.ly/Matthew16.18.