Welcome to Day 1449 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomJournal Articles and Cross-References for Bible Study – Meditation MondayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1449 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.

We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our first few insights will focus on study habits to build a strong foundation. Today let us meditate on:

Journal Articles and Cross-References for Bible Study· Insight Nine: Read Journal ArticlesWhen people see the word “journal,” they think of a diary or travelogue. Those aren’t what I’m talking about in this situation. Instead, think academic research journals. I understand that academic journals make for challenging reading. Scholars write them for scholars and their students (pastors, seminarians, or graduate students). That being said, they are an excellent tool for biblical research. Since they are published a few times every year, they are more up-to-date than commentaries and Bible dictionaries. They are the cutting edge.

Academic journals are like magazines. They usually have between five and ten articles covering a hundred or so pages. They are not magazines. There are crucial differences.

Journal content is peer-reviewed. Articles that appear in a magazine like TIME are not submitted to a panel of field experts. They are written by journalists who may or may not have academic exposure to the field of their article. For example, there is a clear difference in tone and quality between an article on Alzheimer’s that appears in the Journal of the American Medical Society (JAMA) and TIME magazine. An article in TIME will be written for nonspecialists and have a strictly imposed word count. It’s a diluted summary of the topic. You get the basics.However, an article in a journal may run thirty pages, use technical vocabulary, and will have undergone peer review. It’s scientific research discussed by experts. You get all the hard data.

You ought to know about scholarly journals in biblical studies and read them from time to time. Major news magazines seem to annually produce hit pieces on the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels every Christmas and Easter. What readers get in those articles is the work of a journalist, not a scholar. That journalist might interview a handful of scholars for a half-dozen quotations. Those are sound bites. You’re getting crumbs that a nonexpert with no expert supervision decides you need to read.

As a serious Bible student, you should know that anything you’d ever read in a popular magazine about the Bible is selective in content and guided by an editorial agenda. Academic journals will show you what experts in the field, of all theological persuasions, including those with a high view of the Bible, are actually saying. Read them.

· Insight Ten: Lookup...