If you came here through hanksbiblestudy.com, you may have noticed a new name at the top of the page. This site is now The Berean Heart, and its new address is thebereanheart.com.

Both addresses work. Every post is still here. Links you’ve saved or shared will still bring people to the right place.

But I want to tell you why I made the change, because the reason is the whole point of what we do here.

Until now this site has carried my name. Hanksbiblestudy.com did its job. It told you whose study you were reading. But a name on the door tells people what to expect inside, and a site named after the teacher points the wrong direction. I want people coming here for the text.

Luke tells us about a group of people who understood that.

Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. (Acts 17:10-11, NKJV)

Look at who they were checking. The apostle Paul. And Luke praises them for it. The word translated “searched” is anakrinō (ἀνακρίνω, G350), a word Greek courts used for examining evidence before a ruling. The Bereans heard Paul out with eager hearts. Then they opened the Scriptures and tested every word he said.

And look what happened next. The trouble that ran Paul out of Thessalonica followed him to Berea, and the brethren sent him away to the sea (Acts 17:13-14). Paul left. The Scriptures stayed in that synagogue, and so did the people who had learned to search them.

That’s what I want for you. I want you able to open your own Bible, read it carefully, and check everything you hear. That includes what you hear from me. My job is to point you to the text. Your job is to check my work.

So why add the word heart?

Because Berean gets used a lot these days, and sometimes it gets swung like a club. Some folks treat Bible study like a hunt for other people’s errors. They know a great deal and love very little. Paul had a word for that. “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Corinthians 8:1).

And Jesus told us what all that searching is supposed to produce.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40, NKJV)

Notice the last sentence. All the Law and the Prophets. That is exactly what the Bereans were searching. Every scroll they unrolled in that synagogue hangs on two commands. Love Jehovah your God with everything you have. Love the people around you. A Berean search done right ends there.

And “heart” is a better word for this than you might think. Matthew’s word is kardia (G2588). When Jesus gave that answer, He was quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, and the Hebrew word there is levav (לֵבָב, H3824). In Scripture the heart is where a person thinks, weighs, and decides, as much as where he feels. Jesus once asked a room full of scribes, “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?” (Mark 2:8). So a Berean heart is a mind that searches the Scriptures joined to a heart that loves what it finds. God never meant for those two to come apart.

I’m still the one writing. The studies will keep coming, with the Hebrew and Greek where it helps and plain talk where it doesn’t.

If you’ve been reading here a while, thank you. Update your bookmark when you get a chance, or don’t. Either address will find us.

Then open your Bible and check my work.