Continuing my suggestions for maintaining Biblical languages skills, I want to discuss briefly the balance between fast reading and the more serious, detailed, grammatical study. Most students who make an effort to maintain their Biblical languages skill–and unfortunately small percentage in my experience–set out on each passage of scripture to study the text as though…
Bruce Alderman disagrees with some of the principles of interpretation from Trivium Pursuit, which I referenced earlier, and has started a series on the same topic. His first principle is: All this is a long way of introducing my first principle of biblical interpretation: “God, what are you trying to tell me through these scriptures?”…
I’m always happy to see discussion about principles of interpretation of scripture, because in general when we have large differences of opinion between Christians they can be traced back to our approach to interpreting scripture and more broadly to our understanding of how doctrine is formed. Thus I was delighted to see General Principles for…
I have written previously about community and Biblical inspiration and more recently about fear that pushes people away from studying the Bible for themselves. So how about a note on some of the dangers of Bible study? My attention was called to this topic by this post on Thinking Christian, in which the basis for…
I was preparing a devotional for my wife’s devotional list on facing fear when it suddenly occurred to me that the verses I was using could also apply to Bible study. I regularly encounter Christians who are afraid to study the Bible. Their concern is that they will get it wrong, but more especially that…
I like to talk about trajectories in scripture. This may sound odd to some. A trajectory, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a path, progression, or line of development resembling a physical trajectory.” When I talk about scriptural trajectories, I’m referring in particular to the last part of that definition–a line of development. (Compare also the use…
One of the key elements of participatory Bible study that I advocate is prayer with Bible study. Brian at RealMinistries.org has posted a number of prayers for Bible study from church fathers. I recommend reading this post.
Yesterday and today I wrote devotionals for my wife’s devotional list that drew lessons from the movement of the cloud and fire over the tabernacle in the wilderness. These devotionals are not truly exegetical exercises, but rather draw on the approach I call “listening to the conversation.” The command here is clearly directed to Israel…
Update: I forgot to tag the places the New Testament quotes (none in this case) or alludes to this passage. In my series on Biblical criticism I discussed the division of Isaiah 24-27 into various segments and discussing their form. In that article I suggested taking Isaiah 26 as a unity even though it would…
Lingamish has a post on a preaching peeve of his–seed pickers. You’ll have to go to his post to see all the details, but he defines a seed-picker as: A seed-picker is a preacher who grabs verses from all over the Bible and slaps them together in a puking pastiche of public preaching. A seed-picking…
