Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Study Method

  • Nice Note on the Johannine Comma

    This article by Daniel B. Wallace includes some nice material about how the groundwork for textual criticism is done.

  • Keeping Your Greek (or Not)

    Via Dave Black, I came across this review of the book Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People. I’m going to try to get a copy of this book at some point, as I deal with many people who would like to keep some Greek but really haven’t.

    Dave comments:

    In the teaching world we often speak of “outcomes” when we write our syllabi. Here’s what I tell my Greek students: “By the end of the course you should be able to read your Greek New Testament with the use of a lexicon.” Now, many different roads can lead to this outcome. The most important is probably grammar; then comes vocabulary (which unlocks the door to rapid reading). But should students be discouraged from using other helps in their pursuit of this objective — interlinears, for example? Looks like one writer thinks so — that students should “burn their interlinears” (see Mark Stevens’ review of Con Campbell’s book Keeping Your Greek.)

    I respectfully disagree. It is a day of conformity. Individuality is being erased until we all are like eggs in a carton. It is amusing to me to hear people proscribing tools that get students into the text. There is freedom in Christ, and it is unrealistic to think that our graduates will always master the languages to the degree we want them to. I’ve quoted it before, but the words of an old preacher bear repeating:

    Halitosis is better than no breath at all.

    Isn’t that great?

    I must respectfully agree with Dave, though my disagreement with Mark Stevens and the book itself must be very respectful, as I’ve had some nasty things to say about interlinears myself.

    I work largely with people who are either learning Greek for their own use, or who are in great need of keeping their Greek or Hebrew. Their primary need is to keep the tool available for their own use in teaching or sermon preparation. They’re not looking to pass a Greek proficiency exam (though I’ve had the pleasure of helping some people successfully for such), nor are they looking to doctoral studies.

    What they need to do is maintain enough proficiency with the language in general so that they can study specific things they need to study.

    I think there are two elements to this:

    1) Learning Greek or Hebrew as a language in the context of the texts we have available. By this I mean not learning it simply as a set of rules which you can apply to a text, but getting to the point where you see meaning in the text without processing every detail consciously. If you don’t get to that point, maintenance will always be incredibly difficult.

    2) Maintaining exposure to quantities of the language. We don’t remember our English vocabulary because we memorized lists. We remember it because we make use of it. The same thing goes for grammar.

    In order to accomplish these goals, I strongly recommend reader’s lexicons. I was introduced to these by my teacher in third year Greek exegesis class, Sake Kubo, co-editor of A Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. These allow reading quantities of text provided you have a minimum vocabulary (words over 50x memorized, which is a good idea in any case), and know enough basic grammar.

    Now when I’m teaching, I don’t like students to use interlinears, but used correctly, I think they can be of benefit. You need to use it to provide quick glosses to let you cover a quantity of the text. Reading quantity gives you context. If you’re getting dependent on the interlinear, then you need to spend some time away from it.

    Don’t use it in your detailed study of a text. The gloss provided by an interlinear is not enough to give you a serious understanding of a particular word or form. The same goes for the Reader’s Lexicon, however. But the either of these tools can help you get an overview of a passage, after which you apply your more detailed study techniques to specific portions as necessary.

    There are two dangers in this, I believe. First, you may get the idea that the interlinear’s gloss is the meaning, and thus become a person who studies in English but cites Greek words. Second, you can become lazy, and never get to the more serious study. But I think you can avoid both of those problems.

    I see the interlinear as a good tool for the fastest reading. The reader’s lexicon is the next level. Following that, you can get into detailed, word-by-word study. Hopefully after that you’ll get to the point that you can burn your interlinear (or give it to some poor soul who is not so far along).

  • Two Bible Reading Plans Compared

    How’s that for a boring headline?

    I mentioned in an earlier post that I was trying a new reading plan by Robert Murray McCheyne. I don’t usually like Bible years, and I still have some problems with this one, but I still plan to use it through the year. I’ve made this my evening Bible reading.

    I didn’t use to have an evening reading plan, but the nature of my work tends to make for interrupted mornings. I’m a publisher, which usually provides for a flexible schedule, but I’m still supplementing that income with computer support work, and that often brings calls fairly early in the morning. So to steady things out, I started to divide my reading time and do part of it at bed time.

    In the morning I read a daily lectionary. Right now I’m following the daily readings from CRI Voice. Daily lectionary readings have the advantage of being relatively short, and sometimes topically related. Since I also read the weekly lectionary passages several times during the week, I find that the two reading plans combine well.

    This morning, the scriptures from the daily lectionary were Psalms 61, 62, and 68 (I combine morning and evening readings), Isaiah 52:1-12, Galatians 4:12-20, and Mark 8:1-10. Each passage is short and they are topically coherent.

    On the other hand, my McCheyne reading plan had me reading Genesis 32, Mark 3, Esther 8, and Romans 3. It’s sort of like reading the Bible through four times at once without bothering to coordinate any of it. I felt like finishing the story when I read Genesis and Esther. The actual plan is to read the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice during the course of one year.

    Overall, I have the same problem with the daily lectionary, except for the fact that it doesn’t even pretend that I’m reading the whole of a particular topic.

    I must confess that I’ve been happier with reading the Bible through, but I think the discipline of following these plans that don’t seem to suit me as well is worthwhile in itself. The daily lectionary is growing on me. Determination is keeping me involved in the McCheyne plan.

  • More About Harder (to Read)!

    Bible Gateway blog has picked up the topic of making the Bible harder to read. Join the discussion.

  • Biblioblog Top 50 and Carnival

    The top 50 is up, and Jim West is hosting the carnival with his usual snark. I’m #25 in the former, and not present in the latter. Enjoy!

  • Making It Hard to Read

    Learning and Living Scripture

    Joel Watts suggests that we might need to make laypeople learn some of the more difficult theological terms, and he quotes an Economist study to support his contention.

    I would relate his comment to my own suggestion about the different ways of reading scripture. I don’t think we always want to read slowly and in detail. There are those who don’t think rapid reading is valuable. It is, but it can be a problem if you only read fast.

    Informally evaluate your own results, and build up an array of approaches to reading and studying. An informal evaluation can involve simply sitting back, closing your eyes, and trying to remember key points of the material you just read. I often ask myself what the key points of each chapter were after reading scripture from one of the reading plans.

    Another technique I use is to read in one or another foreign language. I’m not talking about the original languages, which I also like to read, but I can slow my reading down progressively by moving from English to Spanish to French and finally to German. I’m slowest at the last. It’s hardest for me to read German, but having struggled through the text I’ll remember the key points of the chapter(s).

    But on the other hand I was discussing reading and understanding scripture with my wife just last night and she was commenting on how her study had progressed over the last few years. One of the elements we agreed on was the need to get acquainted with large portions of scripture–getting an overview. Her study is now bringing her more and more insights about the connections between various parts of scripture. That doesn’t come until you become thoroughly acquainted with many books, not just many verses.

    The book Learning and Living Scripture: An Introduction to the Participatory Study Method, which I co-authored with Geoffrey Lentz, devotes an entire chapter to these approaches to reading.

  • The Value (or not) of the Spiritual Warfare Metaphor

    My daily lectionary readings for the day included both Ephesians 6:10-24 and Mark 5:1-20. (I get my readings from The Voice.) It’s an interesting combination, because the Ephesians passage is the famous one about the armor of God and thus features in just about any discussion of spiritual warfare, while the passage in Mark, regarding the healing of the demoniac on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, is spiritual warfare.

    Now what interests me here is the demonstration of what is meant. In his just released study guide to Ephesians, Bob Cornwall notes:

    For Christians uncomfortable with military imagery, this passage can prove challenging. The ingenuity of it, however, needs to be recognized. The author took a picture that every one of his readers would immediately recognize, and used it to encourage them to become actively engaged in their faith, thereby helping to bring to an end the rule of the evil one. Such a calling would be difficult, which is why the word of encouragement is central to this message: Stand firm.

    There are several points here that I’d like to emphasize, because I believe spiritual warfare is often misunderstood and certainly misapplied.

    1. Spiritual warfare is a metaphor. It is not intended as an endorsement of violence. Notice how Jesus behaves in Mark. There is no violence or fighting, except on the part of the demonized man.
    2. Spiritual warfare is not a method. We’re not the ones who defeat evil by practicing some set of techniques. I know people who feel that they need to “pray on” the armor of God every morning or they might be susceptible to the attacks of the devil that day. Now as a spiritual exercise, I see no problem with praying through this passage, but this is not some magical ritual that protects you. It’s about belonging to Christ. Bob uses the excellent phrase “actively engaged in their faith.”
    3. A metaphor may be especially valuable to a particular time. I think spiritual warfare provides one way of understanding the conflict with evil. Unfortunately, when it gets into the hands of those who think violence solves everything, it just imports ungodly habits and behavior into our spiritual lives and the damage can be substantial.

    I really liked having these passages together, because the way Jesus is portrayed in the gospels is peaceful and confident. The evil spiritual realm falls, not to combat, but to a confident faith in God.

    Stand firm indeed!

  • Bible Memorization and Reading

    When I wrote about different approaches in reading the Bible I left an important one out–memorization. I was reminded of this when writing an e-mail to some friends and quoting scripture. I quoted the KJV and wasn’t even aware of it until I’d completely quoted the text.

    So what does quoting the KJV have to do with the value of memorization? It goes back to my school experience. For four years of elementary school I attended a small Christian school that required regular Bible memorization. We didn’t do memory verses–well, we did a few of those two–but the bulk of the program was memorizing chapters or groups of chapters. These included Matthew 5-7 (The Sermon on the Mount), Psalm 78, Genesis 1:1-2:4, and Psalm 119 (all 176 verses). All of this memorization was from the KJV.

    Since that time I’ve learned to read Greek and Hebrew, and I include both in my daily devotional reading. I’ve read the Bible through numerous times in a variety of translations, and I’ve written any number of working translations of verses I’m studying. But I still remember most verses, even ones I never memorized, in the KJV.

    I’m not making an argument in favor of memorizing the KJV specifically. Rather, I’m suggesting that memorizing scripture and doing it early will tend to keep that scripture with you later in life.

    There was one aspect of this training that didn’t stick. They hoped that by making us memorize all this carefully selected scripture, they would guarantee that we’d stick with the doctrinal positions they held. That was one of the major reasons they included texts as well as chapters. We had four texts on the Sabbath, four texts on the state of the dead, and various other Adventist doctrines. It was also hoped that having memorized Genesis 1 we’d be protected against the wiles of evolutionary theory. They didn’t consider that one might love those words, and yet understand them very differently.

    Nonetheless I recommend memorization. In fact, to Greek and Hebrew students I recommend memorizing texts in those languages. I have much better memory for both words and constructions that are in passages I have memorized than I do otherwise. Even better, when I’m discussing the meaning of those words of constructions, I can easily cite the memorized text. I wish I had memorized more back when I was a student, but I still can remedy that.

    So I recommend memorization of selected texts as an aid to your Bible study, whether in English (or your native tongue, whatever that is), or in the original languages.

  • Approaches to Bible Reading

    I want to list some attitudes to Bible reading and some approaches with a brief discussion. I may choose to post some more on this. I think there is too much of an either-or approach to how one goes about reading the Bible. Different times may call for different methods and attitudes.

    • Fast Reading (Overview)
      When I returned to active church membership some years after I left seminary, I chose this approach first. I had kept up some reading so as not to use my language skills, but that was always short passages with focus on grammar and vocabulary. I chose to read the entire Bible (NIV at the time) as I would a novel. It was the book I kept by the bed. I completed the reading in 11 days. I find great value in this approach to help orient oneself in the canonical text, though it would be excessively confusing for someone not already acquainted with the text, I think.
    • Detailed reading (outlining, exegesis)
      This involves slower reading and spending time over specific texts. Most of my reading ends up here. I’ll read longer passages quickly, but some specific text will drag me in and then I’ll spend time dissecting the passage from all points of view.
    • Passage Overview, Multiple Readings
      One of my own approaches to studying shorter passages is to read the passage multiple times. This differs from the fast reading in that I choose a reasonable length passage along with a more temperate pace. Sometimes I read the passage in other languages (not original, usually modern, Spanish, German, French) to slow my reading. The longest passage I’ve done this was was the book of Ezekiel. Normally I choose something more like the Sermon on the Mount.
    • Original Languages
      Obviously this method is for those who know the languages. Here I vary my reading speed and approach much as I do in English. At the slowest level, I’ll go through the scripture indexes in the Greek or Hebrew grammars I have on my shelf and read the sections that cite the verse I’m reading. I might also prepare a personal translation. At the faster level I try to read several chapters in succession, and mark words or constructions I want to go back and look at in more detail.
    • Devotional Reading
      This is simply reading my Bible prayerfully, listening for what God has for me. This is one of the more difficult options for me; I slide into a more technical reading very easily.
    • Historical Reading
      Reading biblical books either as history or from a historical point of view. I find that Samuel-Kings and Chronicles reads very differently when seen devotionally rather than historically.
    • Literary Reading
      This is a fairly broad category. Think of Samuel-Kings. One might read this to study the history of Israel (historically), one might read it looking for theological points, one might read it devotionally (What is God saying to me here?), or one might look at it as literature, looking for characters, plot, and so forth. What type of literature? That’s part of the fun!
    • Critical reading
      Reading the text looking for sources, redactional issues, genre, canonical connections, and so forth. I don’t specialize in one or another of the tools of biblical criticism. I think they all have their place, and they also all have places where they don’t work so well. In my view Form Criticism is probably the most abused by being applied where it just doesn’t apply.
    • Liturgical reading
      Reading as worship or as preparation for worship. In my experience, this is largely lectionary reading. I like to read the lectionary passages for the week several times, and I also have occasionally, but not consistently, read from one or another daily lectionary. I would see this as an attitude to reading as well–reading the Bible as part of the church’s heritage and as part of the church’s worship.
    • Bible Year, or Reading the Bible Through
      Other than my 11 day thing under the first point, of course! Right now I’m trying a year’s reading from a booklet by Robert Murray McCheyne, More Precious Than Gold: READ THE BIBLE IN ONE OR TWO YEARS (Didasko Files),which tends to line up a chapter each from four different places in the Bible. I haven’t warmed to it very much thus far, but I’m going to try it for a while before I decided it doesn’t work for me.

    That’s the list for today. I’ve probably left out plenty, and have certainly left out details. I may blog some more about Bible reading. In the meantime I recommend two things: 1) Find and use a Bible reading method that is comfortable for you and 2) Make sure you use some methods other than the one you found in #1.

  • Time Spent in Bible Study

    I’ve created a new poll. I’d like to get an idea of how much time people spend in Bible study, average, per day. This is not really aimed at Bible professionals (teachers, preachers, and such) and many of my readers come from those classes, so that will probably skew the answers again.

    This came up for me when we were discussing various things to study in our Sunday School class. One of the criteria class members specified was that they wanted something that didn’t require them to read during the week.

    I’ve had similar responses in Bible study classes and in various series I’ve taught for quite a number of classes. Class members will buy a study guide, but often need to get a Bible from the book case in the classroom, and the vast majority won’t read during the week, either from the study guide or from the Bible itself.

    With that attitude, there really isn’t much chance of alleviating Bible illiteracy.

    The poll is posted in the lower left-hand corner of this blog, as well as in this post.

    [poll id=”3″]