Answered By: Jim Darlack
Last Updated: Nov 16, 2017     Views: 37

Doing a word study in the New Testament is pretty straight forward. All the books referred to in the instructions below are in the VU Library Biblical Studies Reference room. You can look up the titles in VANCAT to find the call number to find them on the shelves.

Start by looking the verse up in King James version to see what term it uses. Then lookup that term (in this case it is still firstborn) in the Strong's Exhaustive Bible Concordance. Then look at the small number to the left of your verse listed under firstborn. Look for that number in the book titled The Word Study Concordance by Wigram. Once you have found that number's section, look at the Greek word and look at the series of numbers listed left to right and note the single number followed by a colon and another number.

The number pertains to the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (10 Volume Set) by Kittel and Friedrich - the number before the colon is the volume number, and the number following the colon is the page number. Once you are on that page number in the right volume, you will see at the variations of the Greek word that you are looking for. Scan through and find the definition of the exact Greek word in the verse that you are looking for in that section. Fair warning, this could be a few pages after the initial page number you found depending on your word.