Global Online Service Helping to Evangelize Nations or GOSHEN is a Bible Study Tools Web site. It includes many biblical research tools packed into one site which can be used together or separately to study the Bible and other Christian works. Aimed at just about anyone wanting to explore the Bible and Christianity, it is most useful to students and researchers. The main components of the site are the Bible dictionaries, commentaries, concordances and lexicons. There are eight commentaries including Matthew Henry Complete and The Geneva Study Bible. There are five dictionaries including Smith’s Bible Dictionary and Easton’s Bible Dictionary. Nave’s Topical Bible, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, and Torrey’s Topical Textbook are the concordances available. There are Greek and Hebrew lexicons. Additional research tools include an Interlinear Bible, the AutoIllustrator for sermon help, the book of Josephus, text of different creeds, confessions and catechisms, and various church histories. Individual study tools can be browsed separately or they can be searched together with the site search engine.
The search engine would be the most versatile approach if a user is starting from scratch. Users can specify which versions of the Bible they would like to search and also limit to which books or sections of the Bible they would like to concentrate on. If they choose to include the study tools at the start of the search, the resulting passages are accompanied with links to the appropriate places in each of the aforementioned dictionaries, commentaries and lexicons.
There is also a help screen to explain how to construct a search and different approaches to use. The results are clean, consistent, and provide similar information to a search performed with print sources. The benefits are the speed and clarity at which the results are returned, and the ability to limit by version and specific books. Of course, there are a few drawbacks to the site as well. The sources included are by no means to be considered comprehensive. The Anchor Bible and its companion dictionary are not among the sources the site has rights to; and other standard biblical reference works are missing as well.
However, it still can provide more than one perspective which is usually necessary for biblical study. It also makes working with the print sources simpler since users can find which passages they are interested in quickly and then continue their research in other sources. Overall, the extra components of the page were the biggest distractions from its use as a research tool. It has advertising banners representing Christian organizations, businesses, and Web sites ranging from highly conservative to the extremely radical. Unfortunately, it is necessary to keep the site free; but it is a detraction.
The site is run by Media Management, a professional publishing company, which created Global Online Service Helping to Evangelize Nations or GOSHEN. They are up front regarding their beliefs and philosophies, so the user can understand the perspective from which their information is being provided. They also provide adequate copyright information and contact information for the user. They do include links to other parts of GOSHEN including a greeting card service, classifieds, Christian radio stations, and chat rooms which tend to detract from the more scholarly components.
Overall, this Web site is very useful especially to academic institutions which include some components of Bible study either religious or as literature. Though I would not recommend using it in isolation of some of the more standard reference sources, I have already found it very useful for some of the classes here at our college.
