How to Study the Bible
By Michele Ferris
You’re here because you’ve studied the Bible in Sunday School or in small groups, but it’s not enough; you want more! But the Bible is so big. There is so much to read. It’s not like a school text book. There are no review questions or answer keys. It seems like too much to tackle on your own.
The fact is, until you study the Bible on your own, you don’t “own” it. Gaining new knowledge, struggling through difficult passages, praying for clarity, showing God your devotion to His Word…it all adds up to a new level of faith. The more you know about God, the more you know God and the more you love and respect Him. Your relationship with God grows stronger and you draw closer to Him.
Isn’t that the reason we were created?
Surprisingly, you only need one thing to learn how to study the Bible: a Bible! Choose a Bible translation, not a paraphrased Bible like the Amplified Bible or the Living Bible. Several good choices for studying the Bible are:
· New Revised Standard Version
· New International Version
· New American Bible
· GNB
Two other helpful resources are a concordance and a Bible dictionary. Luckily, you can access these for free on the internet.
We are going to talk about how to study the Bible “inductively,” which means that you will use the Bible to study the Bible, and thereby determine what it is saying. There are three parts to inductive study: observation, interpretation and application.
1. Observation means reading a Bible passage slowly, determining the context, theme and main ideas of the passage, gathering facts and noting what the scripture says.
2. Interpretation involves looking at how specific words and ideas are used in other parts of the Bible, in order to have a fuller understanding of what the scripture means.
3. Application reveals what the scripture means to your own life.
How to Study the Bible: Observation
There are many different ways to spend your observation time, and you won’t always have time to fully study your passage. Don’t feel like you have to complete all the following steps in order to be successful. With practice, you will observe the basics more quickly and will have more time to spend on the details. The most important thing is to pray for illumination and then read your passage of scripture slowly several times before picking up your pencil. Then start organizing your thoughts on paper as detailed below.
You may want to photocopy the scripture or print a copy of the scripture from the internet so that you can make notes on the copy, rather than in your Bible. You may find that there is not enough room to fit everything in your Bible, and it is hard to make changes later. Plus, it can make your Bible too messy to read clearly.
Let’s get started!
1) Choose a passage of scripture. Pray for the Holy Spirit to help you understand the passage. Then read it slowly at least two times.
If you are just studying a few verses, enlarge your initial reading to include enough scripture to understand the context of your verses. For example, if you want to read just one chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, you really should read the whole Sermon to understand who Jesus was talking to and get the general gist of his message.
2) Be a reporter and answer these questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
3) Identify the type of literature you are reading: prophecy, letter, poetry, history or biography. It may be a combination of them.
4) Make a list of key people and events described in the scripture.
5) Mark key words or phrases that are repeated in the scripture. These help you determine the main idea of the scripture. You may also want to decide on a standard way you will mark certain recurring words from now on. For example, you may want to underline God and every name for God in a certain color, and choose a different color or symbol for words like Jesus, Holy Spirit, sin, and covenant. You choose the words and the marking scheme.
6) Write one sentence that you think summarizes what you just read: the general theme of the passage.
How to Study the Bible: Observation
Now you have an idea of what the passage is about. But you still have a general knowledge of the scripture. It’s time to go deeper with your observations!
7) Make a list of what the scripture tells you about each key word. Make sure that you only write down what the scripture actually says, not what you think it says or what you want it to say! This may be the hardest part!
8) Highlight conjunctions that show contrast, and figure out what is being contrasted. For example, if a sentence has “but” in the middle of it, figure out the two things that are being described as opposites.
9) Mark words that show a time relationship, like “then” and “after” and “in that day.”
10) Mark transition words like “because of this” and “for” and “therefore.” These words indicate that something significant happened in the scripture just before this. Find out what just happened and how it is affecting what follows.
11) Make an outline of the scripture in your own words, listing the main idea of each paragraph and chapter that you read. Title your outline with the theme for the whole passage.
If you are studying a whole book, make an outline for each chapter. When you have completed your study of the whole book, look back at your outlines and write a new outline with just the main idea of each chapter. You will be amazed at how the chapters flow and how much you have learned.
If you get really into this, you may want to keep a couple of running lists that you continually add to. For example, I have a list of God’s attributes and I use it to praise Him. Also, I keep a list of things that will occur in the “end times” or “in that day” so that I know what to look for in the coming days. You may want to know more about God’s love or the Holy Spirit, or any other key words that appeal to you.
This is the end of the observation phase of studying your Bible. This is probably more work than you have ever done with your Bible! And you probably already feel like you’ve observed many things that have slipped by you in the past. But there is more to learn, as we delve into interpreting all these facts that we gathered.
How to Study the Bible: Interpretation
We have to be very careful when we interpret scripture. Many a man has gone astray at this point because he now takes his scripture out of context and derives some crazy conclusion about what it means. Since you have complete notes on what the scripture says (from your Observation work), you can now begin to determine what the scripture means. Just remember that scripture cannot contradict itself—if you think you’ve found a problem, the problem must lie in your interpretation, so keep your list of themes and main ideas handy. When you’re done interpreting, you can consult commentaries, if you wish.
Let’s get started!
1) Pray for illumination and that you will be led to the truth.
2) Take your list of key words and people. Use a concordance to find out all you can about how these words and people are used in other parts of the Bible. This can take awhile, but it gets easier as you become more familiar with the whole Bible. The point of this research is to find connections between your passage and other passages. You will find words like “salvation” used throughout the Old and New Testament, and by following the thread through the Bible, you will learn a lot about salvation. Then, when you return to your passage, you will have a more accurate understanding about how the word is used in general, as well as specifically.
3) Use a Bible dictionary to look up some of the key words. You may be satisfied to just learn the definition of the words. However, you may also want to look up the Strong’s number for each word and get a list of where that exact Hebrew or Greek word is used in the Bible. Then you can look in the Bible dictionary for the word indicated by the Strong’s number and determine how the word is used differently in each occurrence.
Scripture will never mean one thing in one place and something opposite in another place. Words will be used consistently throughout the Bible, although the words may have more than one meaning. For example, “love” is always a good thing, never a form of evil.
4) Use the cross-references in the margins of your Bible to determine where else you can read about certain words or phrases.
5) Look up Greek verbs that interest you in the passage. Determine if the verb indicates that the action was performed one time in the past or if it is still continuing today, for example.
6) Consider the historical background of the passage. You may find information in a Bible atlas or book on customs of the day, for example. This can be especially important in understanding things like occupations, clothing and social mores.
How to Study the Bible: Application
Perhaps you are a person interested in the details of the Bible’s stories. Or maybe you are satisfied by learning what previously-confusing passages mean. Or you may just like wallowing in all the knowledge you’ve been accumulating. But some of you are frustrated by all this “work” because you don’t see how it applies to you. Here comes your payoff!
The Bible is God’s message to us. In it He revealed who He is and why He made us. You could say that the Bible is our manual for building relationships with God and people. So studying the Bible just to gain information, then putting it away and not being affected by the information, is inappropriate. If these words don’t mean anything to you, if they don’t change your life in a tangible way, then you have missed the point. Application is “the point” of Bible study.
Let’s get started!
1) Pray for eyes to see the truth in the scripture, for a heart that is willing to accept correction from the scripture, and for ears to hear the Spirit leading you to a deeper walk with Christ.
2) Did you learn any new truths from studying the scripture? Repent of your false beliefs (or ignorance) and ask God to help you embrace the new truth, living in a way that reflects this truth.
3) Did you feel the prick of shame from scripture that revealed some way you have sinned? Repent and accept correction, pledging to God that you will change your habit.
4) Did you learn something important about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit? Tell them so!
5) Did you learn about a Bible character that is like you, good or bad? Consider how you don’t want to be like that character anymore and ask God to help you change. Or ask God to make you more like that character, not for your sake but for the sake of His glory and the glory of His kingdom.
6) Are there any parts of the scripture that you still don’t understand, even after all this study? That’s okay! Ask God to show you the meaning of the scripture at some time in the future.
You get the idea. You take it from here.
Bibliography
Books
Discovering the Bible for Yourself, by Jeffery
How to Study Your Bible, by Kay Arthur
How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart
Web sites
Bibles,
concordances and dictionaries
http://rockhay.tripod.com/worship/translat.htm
Strong’s
concordance and Greek word studies
http://preceptaustin.org/greek_word_studies1.htm