So what would be the basic concepts you would want to teach someone about Bible study? Let’s say that someone who has been a Christian a year or so comes and says, “I want to learn to study the Bible better.” Besides offering resources, what are some of the concepts that you would think they would need to learn?
I’ll throw out a few to get things started:
- Context. That’s the biggie for me. The whole idea of context: literary, historical, cultural… all the different kinds that you can think of.
- Big picture thinking. I often tell new learners that one way to remember this is to think about how we cite a passage. John 3:16, for example. To study that passage, start with John, then think about chapter 3, then look at verse 16. That’s overly simplistic, I know, but it gets the point across. We start with the big picture and work down. Along the same line, people need to think in terms of the whole biblical story.
- Basic history. We need to know the basic flow of the history told within the pages of the Bible and have an idea where a certain passage fits within that timeline (both in terms of what is told and also in terms of when the book was probably written).
- The concept of the Bible as a translated book. Even when a study of the original languages may not be practical, an awareness that there are original languages behind what we are reading is very important. We mustn’t get too hung up on individual words and prepositional phrases. We should spend time reading in multiple versions, to get an idea of what things might be translated in different ways.
- Focus on themes. What does the Bible itself emphasize? It’s amazing how often this one gets overlooked. What things are said time and again? Rather than straining out gnats, we need to make sure we’re not swallowing camels. (Matthew 23:24)
- Genre. We can’t overlook the differences in the various literary styles we find in the Bible. Reading a symbolic passage literally does not lead you to the truth. Reading narrative as legal code does not help you discern God’s will. We need to learn to recognize different genres and understand the basic concepts for reading each.
Those are some basic ideas. There are lots more. Which ones would you want to emphasize? Which of these do you think are not important for beginners?
Tim,
What do you think about the fact that the early church only had the Old Testament scriptures as their ‘bible’ for many years? Surely they didn’t study the OT with precisely the same principles in mind as the non-Christian Jews who read it, no?
–guy
I’d want to make sure they understand that the bible is first and foremost about God. He’s the main character — the hero of the story. Humans are important, but they’re the damsel in distress. Thus, humans derive their importance in this story b/c they are the object of the hero’s affection.
Never forget that Jesus said that the Scriptures (OT) testify to Him. If that is true of the Old Covenant writings, how much truer is it of the New Covenant!
Jerry,
Yes, but i guess i was trying to draw attention to the question of *how* the OT scriptures should be interpreted as testifying of Christ. Matthew, of course, gives us some ideas. But the church existed and functioned for years prior to the formation of the New Testament. How did they go about understanding the OT as a text that taught them about Christ and their new faith? Surely, they couldn’t have been using identical principles to those of Jews reading the OT in the synagogues who did not believe in Christ. So what was the difference? Some of the early church fathers seem to treat the OT texts as allegorical representations of Christian teachings.
–guy
Andy Stanley emphasizes finding biblical principles in the text. This can be overdone but so can anything else. I think it is a helpful exercise that helps us understand humanity, God and the relationship between the two that unfold in the narratives in scripture.
matt,
andy stanley is emphasizing what is known as the “principlizing hermeneutic” — made popular now by Duvall and Hayes in their book GRASPING GOD’S WORD (which is a great textbook, btw).
Guy,
My comment was general in nature, not specific. The more we understand the gospel (i.e., the work of Jesus), the more we will understand that the entire Old Testament story points to Him and to His work. Of course, we do not find “patterns” for the New Covenant people of God to use in the Old Testament – but we do see how what Jesus did is entirely in keeping with God’s plan for redeeming man, a plan that was in part revealed and that was unfolding bit by bit in the Old Testament.
The more we understand was God was doing, the more we will understand God Himself – and the more we understand Him, the more we will understand the entire Bible. I was pointing to the centrality of Jesus to God’s plan – and therefore to our understanding of the entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments.
Jerry/Tim,
i wonder if looking at how Matthew used OT quotes in his gospel—i wonder what using his gospel as a case study for developing principles would look like. (Or Paul for that matter, i guess.) i don’t get the impression you’d end up with something that looked like the historical/critical method.
–guy
Guy,
I was talking with a friend yesterday about Paul’s outrageous use of the Old Testament. A prime example is Galatians 4:30, where he quotes Sarah at a time when she was doing something pretty despicable. Her words “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son,” are the words of jealous, cold-hearted woman, yet Paul uses them as an admonition to reject law keeping and cling to grace.
All I can say is, I don’t feel that the Holy Spirit empowers me to use the Old Testament as Paul did.
Grace and peace,
Tim