Taking the Bible to English Class

This post is part of an ongoing series on reading, interpreting, and studying the Bible. Click here for all the posts in this series.

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Last week we talked about the importance of paying attention to the immediate context of what we’re reading in Scripture. Today, I want to talk about words.

I love words. I love how they can be spun and stretched and woven into a thing of beauty. I love that meaning can be conveyed not only mechanically or simply for the sake of information but as a crafted work of art.

God chose to reveal His Word to us through human language—and what a masterful work of art it is. The artistry of its language, its complexity, its imagery, its beauty—it invites us to study and consider it as we would any other great work of literature. But unlike any other piece of literature, we approach it with awe and reverence, knowing that what its pages communicate is not concocted by a human mind but by the mind of God. Its pages reveal who He is. Its words are alive.

When we pay attention to the literary nature of the Bible, we are not undermining its power. We are embracing it for what it is and how God has chosen to reveal himself. He revealed himself in a way we could understand—in a book, written in human words, using stories and poetry and logic, using the same literary tools we use today.

Words, Context, and Imagery

This is where some would say, “Yes, Diana, but this is for nerdy English-major types like you. Why should I care about this?”

I will admit I probably get more excited about this than some. But this isn't a matter of nerdy-ness or liking literature. If we're seeking to be sensitive to the context of Scripture so that we read and understand it properly, there are some important words and literary devices we should pay attention to.

Physical Time and Space 

• Speaker and audience, “I”, “you”—Who is speaking? Who do they assume is listening? How does this influence the way we understand the passage?
  

• Place markers—Are you given any information about where this is taking place? Where the people involved are located? What does this have to do with the passage?
  

• Time markers—Are you given any indication of when something is happening? Are you given a month, day, year? Is it put in the context of someone’s life or death? What does this time frame have to do with the passage?

Logic and Train-of-thought

• Sequence markers—Are there words indicating an order of events? Look for words that imply a ‘first this, then that’ or ‘that was then, this is now’ relationship. Words like “after,” “now,” “then,” “when,” etc. How does this order of events affect the passage? Are they talking of something in the future or the past?
  

• “Therefore,” “For this reason,” “Thus”—These words signal a conclusion based on previously given information. What is being concluded? Look back at what came before. What supporting evidence or logic led to this point?
  

• “For”—Often used to introduce an example or supporting piece of evidence in a logical argument, particularly when it starts a sentence. How does it relate to what came before it? To the entire flow of the chapter?
  

• “But”—This word signals a contrast with what came before. Example: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…But God, being rich in mercy…” (Eph. 2:1,4). How does the verse contrast or give a surprising conclusion compared to what came before?

Literary Devices

• Repetition—Repeated words or phrases usually indicate emphasis. What words or phrases continue to reappear in a verse, chapter, or book? (Think about words related by a root, for example, joy and rejoice, or encourage and encouragement.) How do they relate to or point to the main message?
  

• Metaphors and Similes—Both use imagery to make a comparison. A simile uses “like” or “as” (“the devil prowls around like a roaring lion”) and a metaphor does not (“the Lord is my Shepherd”). How does the imagery relate to the passage? What point is it trying to make? What is it illustrating?
  

• Contrasts and Comparisons—Are two things being compared or contrasted? Are there connections being made to how they are similar or different from each other? (Example: Paul contrasts law and Gospel and life in the Spirit vs. life in the flesh in the book of Romans.) How does this relate to the passage? What point is it making? How does comparing/contrasting these things help to make this point?
  

• Quotations—Is something else being quoted? Is it another passage of Scripture? Is it another source from the time? Is it someone else’s words? How does it relate to the passage? Is it being approved of or criticized? If it’s another passage of Scripture, look back at that other passage (you’ll usually go back to the OT from the NT), and read it in its own context. How does this context relate to what is being said in the NT passage?

Remember that our goal is to read and interpret Scripture well. Noticing these words and literary features helps us to read a passage of Scripture in the right context. They ground a verse in a train of thought or story as a whole. When we see it in its proper place in the whole, we are better equipped to understand it correctly. 

This is true in a small verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter sense. It’s also true with the Bible as a whole. Next week, we’ll talk about the big-picture of Scripture and how to locate what we’re reading within the overarching redemption story.

A Tale of Two Sermons

I once heard two sermons. They spoke of the same little passage—a mere eighteen verses, hardly a column of text. But how different they were. 

It was not merely a matter of skill or style. It was not a matter of truth or falsehood, right or wrong.

One told me what I had to do. 
The other, what had been done for me. 

One sent me off with the suggestion to reflect on what I was doing wrong. 
The other sent me with thanksgiving of the One who came for me in my lostness. 

One piled on guilt. The other mercy.
One gave a word of law. The other the message of grace. 

I am no master homilitician, but I know which I prefer. 
I know which one drives me to awe and praise, and which to morbid introspection.
I know which one inspires me to change, and which makes me despair of ever being good enough. 
I know which one turns my eyes to Jesus, and which turns my eyes to myself. 

The secret to true transformation is never law. It is never the litany of my wrongdoings, my misplaced loves, my sins. It is never the rehearsal of how I don’t measure up. Yes, I fall short, this I know—the Bible tells me so. But I thought the song was about Jesus.

How easily we forget our own message—the one that tells a story of grace coming to us in our unworthiness, the story of what has been done for us—not of our performance or our rehabilitation. All we truly have to give the world is Gospel—all else is just a Christianized rebranding of the “earn your way” slave drivers. 

Grace transforms us. It transforms my behavior and my attitudes. It possesses me with its glorious, excruciating, intoxicating light.

The Spirit transforms us. He peels away the thick dragon skin of my selfishness and pride and makes me a new creation. He gives me a soft heart, an obedient heart. My life bears His fruit.

To assume that this can be manufactured through guilt tripping or pump-you-up inspiration is to miss the point. It’s to forget our history. It’s to forget the gateway through which we walked into glory.

Our story will always be about grace. Our life will always be shaped and molded through a response to what has already been done for us. It is finished. We respond in thanksgiving. This thanks changes our hearts, and our newly transplanted, resurrected hearts change our lives.

This is the message I can never get enough of. It’s the one my parched soul laps up in rejoicing desperation.

Reading the Bible in Context: Part 1

This post is part of an ongoing series on reading, interpreting, and studying the Bible. Click here for all the posts in this series.

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Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the man who wanted to discern God’s will for his life. He let his Bible fall open on the table, and, with his eyes tightly closed, jabbed at a point on the page with his finger. He opened his eyes to read what the Lord had “revealed” to him. It was Matthew 27:5: “Judas went and hanged himself.” 

He was stunned. Surely he must have gotten something wrong. Perhaps he should try again. He repeated the procedure, Bible falling open, blindly picking a verse. This time, he randomly picked Luke 10:37: “You go, and do likewise.”

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It is a basic commonsense reading practice to pay attention to context. We do it with books, with poetry, with the newspaper, even with a letter from a friend. We would scoff at someone who presumed to pull a single line from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and attempt to explain its meaning clearly apart from the lines surrounding it. It’s challenging enough to do this with the entire poem before you! 

What if someone presumed to read Anna Karenina by daily flipping to a page at random, plunging her finger onto the page, reading a sentence or two at will, and closing the book until its appointed literary roulette the following day? It would be laughable. She may know a few names, perhaps stumble on a plot point or two. Over time, she may piece together some of the story or themes. But her grasp of these would be limited, and she would surely miss the power of the story arc, the intricacy of language, the shifting character development. She would miss the message of the book as a whole. She would miss the story.

Why do we think we can treat the Bible this way? 

I want to talk today about the importance of context. We talk about context in relation to the Bible in two important senses. 

• The immediate context—What words, thoughts, arguments, etc. surround the verse or verses we read?

• The Redemption-story context—How do these verses, this passage, and this book fit into the big-picture, overarching story of Scripture?

We’ll talk about the first one, the immediate context, this week. 

Why Is the Context of Scripture Important?

Simply put, we need a context to understand the full meaning of words.

We realize this quickly when we drop into the middle of a conversation. We get confused: Wait, what happened? Who was that? What did they do? Why were you there? We ask someone to back up and explain what came before. We need a summary of the back story. We need caught up. 

Can you sort through these questions without stopping to ask for some context? To some extent, yes. If you listen carefully, your friend may retrace her steps and reexplain. You may be able to piece together the details. But you also run the risk of catastrophically misunderstanding her entire story.

So it is with the Bible. We can drop into the middle of a book like the middle of a conversation. We may be able to piece together the correct meaning. Or we may completely misunderstand. This could be avoided if we take the time to pay attention to the context of what we're reading. This does not require a seminary degree or advanced skill. As I said last week, you do not need to be an expert to study and understand the Bible well. 

It does require us to pay attention. We recognize that we’re dropping into the middle of things, and then we are careful as we listen. We’re wary of jumping to conclusions. We look for clues. We ask good questions. In short, we look for the context.

Practices to Read the Bible in Context

Reading well is a skill. Understanding the flow of an argument is a skill. Seeing the big picture around a sentence—and its role within that picture—is a skill. But these skills can be learned and developed. If this is a struggle for you, be encouraged—you can get better at this.

Becoming a better Scripture reader will not come all at once, but we can take steps in the right direction. The practices I’ve outlined here are suggestions to get you started. Other basic reading and reading comprehension skills are also helpful here. 

• Work your way through an entire book of the Bible from start to finish instead of choosing verses at random. Pay attention to how what you read yesterday relates to what you’re reading today.
  

• Read a book of the Bible the whole way through in one sitting. You may miss some details, but the larger themes and repeated portions will stand out better. Remember, these books were originally listened to aloud.
  

• As you seek to interpret or apply a specific verse, read the verses that come before and after, the entire paragraph, or the entire chapter. Look for clues that would indicate a connected flow of logic, the borders of a story, or the bounds of an illustration.
  

• Ask—How do the verses I’m reading connect to those that came before and those that come after?
  

• Use basic Bible study tools, like the book outline or notes in your study Bible. These outlines will trace the basic skeleton of the book and help you to see how the part you’re reading fits in with the whole. Good study notes should also help with this. Use these as a tool when you get lost or are struggling.

There’s another important practice I haven’t mentioned. We’ll talk about that next week…

Why We Can't "Just Read" the Bible

This post is part of an ongoing series on reading, interpreting, and studying the Bible. Click here for all the posts in this series.

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“Right now, Miss Di.” If I only had a dollar for every time I heard it. It didn’t take me long after moving into the large home bustling with children to realize our understanding of the term “right now” was drastically different. To them it meant something akin to our American phrase “Just give me a minute.” I would hilariously emphasize my words to communicate my desire for them to hurry. “No, now. Now now” it would come out, my pointer finger jabbing in emphasis. 

I didn’t realize how much I’d adopted the phrase until I said it to pacify my little cousin on one of my trips back to the States. He quipped, “You don’t mean ‘right now.’ Why did you say that?” And so the cultural confusion continued.

The issue was more than simply language and phrases. The issue was cultural. I’m American. I like things to be speedy. I judge “timing” by a clock. Central American culture has a different perspective. 

I had to take time to understand. To understand the language. To understand the culture. Then I could interpret correctly what they were saying. It was not complex. It was not beyond my ability to comprehend. But it did require recognizing that I had to pay attention to both the words used and the cultural background behind them.

Why Can’t I “Just Read It”?

Reading the Bible is similar to my experience in Central America. It is an inherently cross-cultural experience and asks us to pay attention as we read it.

The Bible is God’s Word to us, and it is applicable and true to people in all times and places. It reveals to us who God is and the way He has and is working in the world. It tells us the story of Redemption, and it teaches the way we are to live in light of it. 

But because God chose to reveal Himself through the means of human language, embedded in history, the Bible requires careful study to interpret it well. He used dozens of authors, from different languages and continents, over the span of at least 1500 years to tell the story of His work in the world. We read the Bible’s words today in a different language, a different millennium, a different continent, a different culture. 

This does not mean the Bible is only understandable if you’re an expert or if you can read the original biblical languages. It does not mean there is a secret and hidden meaning to Scripture that can only be grasped by the elite and intellectual. 

It does mean we should be aware and careful as we read, interpret, and apply the Bible. We pay attention to the possibility of linguistic and cultural dynamics we might not see on a first read through. We are careful not to assume the Bible was written from a Western, post-Enlightenment perspective. 

Treating the Bible with the care it deserves as God’s Word invites us to go beyond “just reading it.” We are invited to study it. 

First, It Was His Word to Them

We easily forget when we read the Bible that we’re already interpreting it. The translation you choose involves many interpretive decisions already made for you. Reading (or any kind of communication) itself is an interpretive practice, as you derive meanings from groupings of words, illustrations, logical progressions, etc. Then add the cultural understandings of words, images, and values as a lens through which you understand everything...

Interpretation is happening. The key is to set ourselves up for a good interpretation.

The first step in a good interpretation of a Bible passage is this: Start with what God’s word was to the original audience, in the original context. Remember, it was His Word to them first, so we must consider what they would have understood then and there. This isn’t just the first step with tricky passages of the Bible. It’s always the first step.

In technical-speak we call this first step—exploring the Bible in its original intended meaning—exegesis. While the input of “experts” is helpful—and sometimes necessary—there are some basic principles and practices that can help us all to read the Bible better. This is what we’ll be talking about here in our Tools & Resources posts over the next several weeks.

Just a Few Notes Until Next Time…

1. The Bible is fully true and authoritative. We must remember that we—and our favorite Bible teachers—are not. This does not mean the Bible is unknowable and its truth beyond our reach. It does mean we should approach the Bible with humility as we seek to understand.
   

2. We do not worship a book. We worship the Author of the book. Our Trinity is not “Father, Son, and Holy Scripture.” It is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to the truth. We need Him to make our hearts pliable to obey it. We are transformed not by Bible study but by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and making us new.

How to Lead an Inductive Bible Study

I remember sitting at the large folding tables covered with papers and writing implements. It was hot, I'm sure, though I don't remember it. I was in the midst of training for my first summer as a camp counselor, not yet fully aware of the joy, exhaustion, and hilarity I had signed myself up for. We were preparing for the Bible studies we would lead with several weeks worth of campers. We did these OIAs (observation-interpretation-application) for hours, punctuated by breaks and meals and team building exercises - and, eventually, sleep. We were learning to mine the depths of Scripture. And I was learning to do inductive Bible study.

What is an Inductive Bible Study?

Inductive Bible Study is a Bible study tool that uses three steps, Observation, Interpretation, and Application, to study a Scripture passage. Special attention is paid to observing the basic facts of the passage, noting and exploring questions you might have, and paying careful attention to what the passage teaches in context. These observation and interpretation points bring you to an application that springs from the passage.

This process can be used for personal Bible study or as a method for small group Bible study. It can also be used, as we did at camp, as the method of background research to construct a more traditional Bible study or Bible lesson.

Why is it helpful?

The inductive Bible study format guards against several potential Bible study ills.

• Keeps the conversation first on Scripture, not just on “what it means to me”

• Prevents peripheral and derailing topics or applications and keeps the application grounded in the passage itself

• Guards against leader-driven small group Bible studies, in which only one person teaches and answers questions

• Invites the group to dive deep into Scripture rather than remain at a cursory level

• Allows the entire group to participate, regardless of knowledge or experience

• Invites questions of things individuals might not understand

• Provides a context to learn from each other and hear unique insights and perspectives

• It uses a Scripture study model that can be used for group and personal Bible study.

How do I do it?

Inductive Bible studies are run through a series of questions. If you’re leading one with a small group, you can choose questions—or add your own—based on what seems relevant to the passage. 

Resist the urge to only use leading questions to drive people to what your point from the study is. If possible, use questions that could have multiple answers or that will invite the other participants to go back to the passage. Open-ended questions become even more important during the Interpretation and Application stages.

Before you lead a group through an inductive Bible study, I recommend going through the process on your own. If there are any more challenging questions that arise that require more research, seek out possible answers to have on hand if that same question comes up in the group.

Observation - What does it say?

Read the passage out loud at least once. Don't get ahead of yourself (or let the group get ahead). Stick with these very basic observation questions. It's really easy to slip into interpretation. Resist this urge.

• What are your initial observations? What stands out at you from a first read through?

• What questions are you left with?

Then move to questions such as…

• What is the situation and atmosphere?

• Who is here? What happened? When? Where?

• What are the relationships between characters?

• What literary form is used? (Narrative, Poetry, Prophecy, etc.)

• Who is the author? Where is he? Who is he writing to?

• What are key words or repeated words and phrases?

• What symbols, comparisons, and imagery is used?

Interpretation - What does it mean?

Read the passage again out loud. Then answer the questions that arose from your Observation time. As much as possible, have the group answer their own questions through looking at the text and comparing to other parts of Scripture. A Bible dictionary could be handy. Only as a last resort, offer your thoughts on more challenging questions you unearthed during your preparations.

Then move to questions such as…

• How does this passage fit in with what came before and what comes after (in the chapter, the book, the entire Bible)?

• What other Scriptures relate?

• What is the main purpose of this passage?

• What central truth is this passage teaching?

• What would the original hearers have understood? What is he saying to them?

Application - How does it apply?

Stay focused on application points that actually arise from your passage. It's always tempting to jump directly to application, but you must first make sure you've completed the Observation and Interpretation steps thoroughly. Your answers and discussion from them should guide the answers to your application questions.

• What is one way this passage applies to my life?

• What will I do differently because of what I’ve learned?

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Have you ever used the inductive Bible study method? What was your experience like?