For more than a decade I've wanted an easy way to make Bible references like these: Amos 9:7; Ruth 4:7 link to the Bible or to popup the verses cited, I put a lot of work into doing that for the Amos commentary.
Now, thanks to the nice folk at Logos, who I expect will benefit from their kindness through lots of links ;-) I have been able to add this facility to this blog, and to my others,. It automatically takes most Bible references I type and uses Sean's clever Bibleref system to add the verse as a popup, and make the reference a link to the passage. My only two disappointments are
that apparently it does this without rewriting the source code for the page, so probably Google etc. will not be able to use this semantic markup :( maybe in a later implementation?
and that somehow though I asked for the version to be TNIV it shows up as New Living... maybe this is a temporary glitch, rather than a sign from heaven as to which really is the New Inspired Version to follow the NIV which followed the AV.
My tradition (the Baptist part of the Nonconformist or radical Reformation) has stressed the idea that Scripture is perspicuous, that the Bible is easy to understand, and that anyone can understand it - or at least grasp its essentials - without special training or equipment. Yet there are for sure some difficult passages. There are also passages that seem to flat out contradict other parts of the Bible. How can you call a book like that "perspicuous"?
In this post I'll argue that one key mistake we make is to think of the Bible as if all its parts were also "Bible", they aren't they are merely fragments!