We realize that today's post is a little long, but we're covering a few days of work and hope you stick with us for this unusual length of this post. For the most part, we will cover the various literary types and genres found in the bible (don't worry, we'll explain what that means), however, we thought it might be good to start with some basic tips that will help you understand any book better. We should take a minute to give some credit to Mortimer J. Adler and his book "How to Read a Book", which is not a recreational read, but is full of outstanding insight and we've taken a few of his ideas into account with our tips for the week. The following paragraphs are some summary of what we taught in our opening class.
study vs devotion
Before we go any further we should talk about the difference between bible study and devotional reading. Every believer needs to both spend time in devotion and time studying the bible. Devotion is great! It's our time to hear from God about how he directs our lives personally and simple techniques for that are very effective. I have many friends who use the "soar" method (read the Scripture, make an Observation, find the Application to your life and Respond to God) and that can be very helpful. However, you also need time set aside where you simply try to think logically about what the bible's plain message is. I spend my devotion times in the evening and am usually spending my commute time or break time at work thinking about what I'm studying. This may not work for you, but it's one way to make sure that you're both studying and spending time listening to God through devotion.
We will spend our time in this course almost exclusively with bible study and encourage you to not neglect a time spent in devotion, listening to what God is trying to tell you.
...the bible can never mean what it never meant...
As Stuart and Fee say in their book, "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" (mentioned in previous post), and as you'll see us continue to promote; the bible can never mean what it never meant. If you keep that in mind and think about what that really means, you'll have a great start at getting at what God is trying to tell you. The fact is that the bible is God's word revealed not hidden; God's not trying to stump you so he can laugh at your puny understanding. If we begin our search into the bible with the understanding that the original people who first read/heard each individual verse would have understood what it was saying clearly, we can be a lot more confident that our interpretation is what God intends for us to hear.
Some helpful bullets
We could make this a several page, hundred-paragraph post, but we think it might be more effective to keep this a summary of the course and encourage you to listen to the audio recordings as well as read Stuart and Fees "How to Read..." (previously mentioned). What follows will be some brief bullets to summarize our first week.
- everybody interprets! The fact is that reading the bible always makes the reader the interpreter. You have to decide, "Is this literal?", "...am I reading a poem?" We aim to help you see, more clearly, the original intention of the text so that your application is solid.
- Pre-read: Wait?? I should "read" before I "read??" Yes and no... you should skim through the entire section that you're going to study (I recommend the entire book), not getting hung up on individual verses or messages, but just try to understand where things are in relation to each other; Romans 8, which says that all things work together for the good of those who believe (roughly) is part of the same message and overall point that Paul is trying to make when he urges us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices in Romans 12. This brings us to bullet #3...
- putting things in order... When studying the bible, it can be very helpful to create a rough outline after a pre-read. For example, say we wanted to study the book of Titus. First we would employ our "pre-read" and get everything in it's place (what arguments come before and after which encouragements, etc). Once that is in our heads, we should take some scratch paper or a journal and jot down a quick outline. If I were to write up an outline of Titus, it might look something like this:
- Greetings (v1:1-4)
- Instructions for various groups within the Cretan church (v1:5-2:15
- Elders (v1:5-9)
- False teachers (v1:10-16)
- Men and Women of various ages (v2:1-8)
- Slaves (v2:9-10)
- Concluding rational (v2:11-15)
- Concluding exhortation: Do what is good (v3:1-11)
- Closing (v3:12-15
- Context! Context! Context! We will harp on this all the time and throughout our blog. We use these three words to remind us of to big theological terms, "exegesis" and "hermeneutics". Exegesis is a fancy word that basically means, "what the author originally meant" and hermeneutics is a large word for, "how the meaning applies to me now." We hope we can simplify their use in your study with our little catch-phrase, "context, context, context."
- context! we first need to ask what historical context the passage was written. You can do some simple google searches and find some summaries or purchase a good study bible and it will typically have a few paragraphs about what was going on at that time in history before each book. Discovering the historical context gives us a sense of what the author might be addressing and what the listener might be dealing with or thinking about.
- context! we next need to ask what the "literary" context is; what do the entire words of the book tell us about what the author is saying as well as what type of writing is it (poetry, a letter, etc)? Whoever wrote Hebrews had a message he was trying to convey, an overall-entire-book message. Finding out what that message is will help guide us into what a specific verse or paragraph might be trying to say.
- context! The previous two "contexts" can be summer up as "exegesis" for the most part and this last "context" sums up the term "hermeneutics" as we'll use it for this blog/course. The last thing we need to ask about "context" is "what does this passage mean to me now, in my current world?"
By remembering to look for three contexts, (historical context, literary context, and what is my context?), we can get a better sense of what might have been intended by the original passage and how we can learn from it.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions! Check back tomorrow for a much shorter guide on various versions of the bible and how they can help you in your study.
