How I Study My Bible Beginner Tips For Bible Study

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Reading The Bible With Mind And Heart

washingtonpost.Com: The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

Chapter One: What's It All About?

Many years ago when I began my service as minister in Harvard's Memorial Church, an anonymous benefactor offered to present as many Bibles as were needed to fill the pews. No particular translation was specified, and no objections were made to the Revised Standard Version. Before proceeding too far along the road of this benefaction I felt it wise to take the advice of some colleagues, and I found their reaction to be apprehensive, and in fact quite suspicious of the motivation behind the gift. "What does the benefactor want or expect?" I was asked, and warned that placing Bibles in the pews would create an invitation to steal them. Further, I was warned that "people will think that this is a fundamentalist church. If they see Bibles in the pews you will have an image problem." My colleagues and counselors meant well, I knew, and wished only to protect the church from secular and religious zealots. These concerns notwithstanding, however, we accepted the gift, placed the Bibles in the pews, and, happily, over the years we have lost quite a few to theft.

A Nodding Acquaintance

One of the more embarrassing social situations, upon which even Miss Manners and other arbiters of social etiquette have failed to provide a useful strategy, is the one in which you have more than a nodding acquaintance with someone. At the point of introduction you got the person's name, forgot it, asked it again, and forgot it again. Meanwhile you go on meeting this person, chatting and being chatted with, but you have clearly passed beyond the point where you can ask for the name again. It is easy enough to maintain the facade of friendship until that awful moment comes when you are required to introduce your nameless friend to a third party. What to do? I have seen artful evasions such as "Surely you two know each other?" followed by a discreet withdrawal while they got on with the job themselves, leaving you unexposed. Another stratagem is to avoid the risk of introduction altogether by declaring emphatically, "Ah! Here's an old friend!" What we should know, pretend that we know, and wish that we knew, we don't. Worse still, we do not know, without risk of embarrassment, how to ask about what we need to know.

This, I suggest, is the way it is with so many people and the Bible. Once, perhaps a long time ago in childhood or in early youth, or even as late as in college, you were introduced. You have a nodding acquaintance with the Bible, or at least you feel you ought to, and you can recognize some familiar phrases, especially if they "sound" like the King James Version of the Bible; yet, to all intents and purposes, the Bible remains an elusive, unknown, slightly daunting book. It is awkward to concede that you don't know very much about the Bible, given its cultural prominence, and it is difficult to figure out how to get reintroduced without conceding your illiteracy. Perhaps the lament I have heard more and more frequently in recent years is the one that says, "I wish I knew more about the Bible."

Poll after poll continues to find the Bible atop every best-seller list, and one survey after another confirms the fact that an astonishingly high percentage of American households claims not only to own a Bible, but to read it on a regular basis. Hardly a hotel room in the world is without a copy of the Bible in the bedside table, placed there courtesy of the Gideons; and through the unremitting efforts of the Wycliffe Society the Bible has been translated into nearly every language on earth. There are Bibles for women, Bibles for children, Bibles for Asians, Bibles for African Americans. There are so many translations, paraphrases, revisions, and editions now available, many of which are the products of the last twenty years, that the market for the Bible may well be saturated. In the introduction to their 1983 study of twentieth-century English versions of the Bible, So Many Versions?, Sakae Kubo and Walter F. Specht observe, "Some people are of the opinion that there is a 'glut' of translations on the market today. Some feel it is time to call a halt to the work of translation for a while until we absorb the flood of recent translations."

Despite the ubiquity of the Good Book, it is increasingly clear that the rate of biblical literacy has gone down rather than up. A recent American poll conducted by the Barna Research Group discovered that 10 percent of the sample of more than one thousand persons polled said that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife, 16 percent were convinced that the New Testament contained a book by the Apostle Thomas, and 38 percent were of the view that both the Old and New Testaments were written a few years after Jesus' death. These replies are worthy of the old Sunday school howler in which the epistles are defined as the wives of the apostles. The president of the polling firm commented, "Clearly, most people don't know what to make of the Bible. Adults constantly gave us answers which contradicted or conflicted with previous replies." It is not that people lie about their knowledge of the Bible; it is that they often feel that in order to maintain their moral credibility they must reply in the affirmative when questioned by pollsters, since most believe that they ought to read it. Many of these modern Christians are much like the Emperor Charlemagne who, it is said, slept with a copy of Saint Augustine's magnum opus, The City of God, under his pillow in the hope that this passive proximity to a great but difficult work might be of some benefit to him.

Hearing the Word

Hearing the Bible in church presumably helps people become better acquainted with it. In fact, hearing the Bible in church was the way in which most Christians for a thousand years became familiar with scripture, and in most Christian churches today pride of place is still given to the reading of appointed passages from the Bible. In the Anglican and Protestant traditions these readings are called "lessons" because it is believed that they are not merely liturgical acts but have a moral teaching function as well. This tradition of hearing the Bible read aloud in public is as old as Christian worship. When Saint Paul instructs the Christians in the Corinthian church on a suitable order for worship, he tells them: "When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification." (I Corinthians 14:26)

In my naivete as a pastor I thought that this tradition of edification in church was alive and well until I once said as much to a regular churchgoer who every Sunday hears 2 psalm and at least two lessons, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, and has done so for years. Her response caught me up short. She said that listening to the lessons in church was like eavesdropping on a conversation in a restaurant where the parties on whom you are listening in are speaking fluent French, and you are trying to make sense of what they are saying with your badly remembered French 101. You catch a few words and are intrigued, trying to follow, but after a while you lose interest, for the effort is too great and the reward too small. That is a pretty vivid image of a fairly common modern dilemma, and most people find themselves too embarrassed to confess that this is their situation. It used to be said that most Christian adults live their lives off a second-rate second-grade Sunday school education, and that the more they hear of the Bible in church, the less they feel they know about it.

Many people want to do something about their biblical illiteracy. There is something there that they feel they ought to know about, and yet they are frustrated in their attempts to read the Bible and to make sense of it for themselves. Because it is unlike any other book, reading the Bible is an intimidating enterprise for the average person. To remind the reader that the Bible is not a book but a library of books, written by many people in many forms over many years for many purposes, is to further complicate the ambition and add to the frustration. Bound in its authoritative black leather and gilt-edged pages, with, in some editions, the words of Jesus printed in red, the physical artifact of the Bible has a certain aura. Add to this the powers attributed to it, with its designation as "holy" and therefore suitable for use in oath-taking and in sanctifying proceedings both civil and sacred, and the Bible is much more easily reverenced than read.

Inhibitions and Complexities

It is not its status as an icon or holy object, however, that inhibits the reading of the Bible. It is the sense as well that the Bible is a technical book, requiring a level either of piety or of knowledge not available to the average reader. There are also admitted obstacles. What does a person who has no knowledge of the biblical languages, no formal theological training, and no experience in the very technical fields of translation and interpretation do with the Bible? An ancient answer was to submit oneself to those who did possess those qualities. The image of formative Christianity as a "Bible-centered community," one continual scripture seminar for the faithful, is an appealing one, but totally false. Saint Augustine, for example, opposed Saint Jerome's heroic project of translating the Greek Bible into the more accessible Latin because making the Bible more accessible would be more likely to cultivate a conceit on the part of those who, because they could understand the language, would now also assume that they could understand the book. Vernacular translations of the Bible were forbidden to those few pre-modern Christians who could read, and English translations of the Bible up to the time of King James's version of 1611 were generally regarded by the religious establishment as doing more harm than good.

Ironically, it was the tremendous explosion in scholarship about the Bible itself, an enterprise whose highest motivation was to make sense of the Bible and to clarify its complexities, that made it harder rather than easier for the average person to read the Bible with any degree of self-confidence. By the close of the nineteenth century, a period of unprecedented attention to the complexity of biblical scholarship, the frustration of the average reader was represented by no less a figure than Grover Cleveland. In some exasperation, the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States said, "The Bible is good enough for me, just the old book under which I was brought up. I do not want notes or criticisms or explanations about authorship or origins or even cross-references. I do not need them or understand them, and they confuse me."

A century later we can understand his frustration and his desire to return to what the scholars call a precritical stage, and in fact many have attempted to do just that. After all, we should not have to be a certified electrician in order to enjoy the benefits of the lightbulb.

Suppose, however, that that lightbulb does little to illumine the dark places in which we find ourselves in these last days of the twentieth century? What are we to do with a Bible about which we know less and less, and which itself would appear to have less and less to say to us in language that we can understand? The question is not a new one. In 1969, in a small book with the provocative title The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church, lames D. Smart addressed the gap between the fullness of modern biblical scholarship on the one hand, and the poverty of biblical literacy on the other. In an America racked by the intensities of the struggle for civil rights, the battles of the counterculture, and the depredations of the Vietnam War, the Bible seemed unequal to the morally demanding times, and its silence was deafening. How could this be? In his Preface, Smart, a Presbyterian minister and biblical scholar, attempted an answer:

Responsibility for this strange silence of the Bible in the church does not rest upon preachers alone. Much too often they have borne the whole reproach without there being any recognition of the complex character of the dilemma in which they find themselves. Rather, there had been a blindness which scholar, preacher, teacher, and layman alike have shared--a blindness to the complexity of the essential hermeneutical problem, which, in simple terms, is the problem of how to translate the full content of an ancient text into the language and life-context of late 20th century persons.

Contemporary Christians tend to avoid complexity as being hazardous to their faith, and are thus unprepared to cope with complexity when it confronts them. In April 1996, for example, all three major U.S. Weekly newsmagazines featured Jesus as the cover story for Holy Week. What was the reason? This was hardly an outbreak of newsroom piety, but rather the "discovery" that scholars were debating yet again the relationship between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and that many of the words and actions attributed to Jesus in the New Testament were in fact, in the view of much of modern scholarship, the work of writers of the early Christian movement. "Some scholars are debunking the Gospels," ran Time's cover headline. "Now traditionalists are fighting back. What are Christians to believe?"

I was asked by many sincere believers as well as by the vaguely curious what I thought of Time's story. Would it do damage to the faith? Hardly. As the sign in the old antique shop reads: NOTHING NEW HERE. Questions about the nature of the gospels and of their place in the life of the church are as old as the gospels themselves. Questions about the resurrection are as old as the Apostle Paul's writings on the subject. These are matters that have always belonged to the church, and always will. Time's discovery of Christianity's two-thousand-year-old debate suggests only how far Time is removed from the intellectual life of biblical scholarship. But alas, the story also revealed the large gap between the basic working assumptions of biblical scholarship long held by the scholarly community and the conventional wisdom or general knowledge of a less and less biblically literate Christian population. To make a story there must be winners and losers. The not too subtle implication of this Holy Week Special is that what the scholars believe they know and what the believers believe they believe are seen to be at odds, and if the scholars are right, then the believers must be wrong, and the Christian faith folds like a house of cards.

What Are We Doing?

What can be believed about the Bible? What do we need to know about the Bible? Can the Bible survive the efforts to interpret and understand it? Can we? Is it wrong to ask critical questions of the Bible? How do we reconcile the parts we understand, and perhaps dislike, with the parts we do not understand but which may be salutary? When we speak of the authority of scripture, as certain Protestant traditions delight in doing, does that mean that we suspend all of those faculties of mind and intelligence which we apply to all other books and all other instances of our life? How indeed do we, as James Smart suggested, "translate the full content of an ancient text into the language and life-context of late 20th century persons" without risking our intelligence or the integrity of that text?

Over the years of my ministry in a university and well beyond it, I have come to the conclusion that most sincere Christians are curious in these matters, unlike Grover Cleveland, and want to become better acquainted with the Bible. I am further convinced that the more importance one attaches to the significance of the Bible both for the self and for society, the more one is driven to a consideration of questions which in an earlier day might either have been ignored or left to the competence of the experts. As making sense has as much to do with formulating useful questions as it has to do with developing useful answers, the thoughtful but uninformed reader will want to know how to go about doing both.

The Episcopal Church, while not known as a "Bible" church in the sense of those evangelical and free churches that advertise themselves as such, nevertheless exposes its worshipers to a great deal of scripture on Sunday mornings. There is a movement to do something about biblical literacy among what one social historian of the Episcopal Church has called "God's frozen people." Understanding the Sunday Scriptures, a release of Synthesis Publications, is designed to provide help to people who have finally reached the awareness that they need it. The Reverend Dr. H. King Oehmig, editor of the first volume in a series on the Episcopal lectionary, says of it, "The Episcopal Church has more scripture on Sunday than any other denomination in America. After listening to the desires of the people in the pews for a responsible yet inspiring study resource to prepare them to hear the Word on Sunday morning, we have produced this unique resource."

The United Methodist Church, America's second-largest Protestant denomination after the Southern Baptists, is also attempting to respond to the felt needs of biblical literacy. It has produced not only a series of books and study aids but a series of films utilizing the most sophisticated of contemporary biblical scholarship. When I asked some Methodist pastors how this worked, nearly all of them were pleased with the results in their churches. The study program is organized into small groups that pledge to meet during the week for nine months, and are meant as bonding fellowships as well as study groups, designed to combine the best elements of the old adult Sunday school class, the Methodist class meeting, the prayer meeting, and the support groups that have become the local units of our secular therapeutic culture. Apparently these groups help in developing a better knowledge of the Bible, and provide an informed lay leadership which enriches the work and the life of the local congregation at the same time. As one of the pastors said to me, "The church is in bad shape when the only person who knows anything about the Bible is the pastor."

These are clearly new initiatives taken to meet what is generally recognized to be the crisis of biblical illiteracy. We might well ask how this illiteracy came to be, given that the Bible has always had pride of place in Christian worship and particularly in American Protestantism, but any of us who have had experience of what passes for "Bible study" in recent years in most churches can answer that question. For many the Bible served as some sort of spiritual or textual trampoline: You go onto it in order to bounce off of it as far as possible, and your only purpose in returning to it was to get away from it again. It is the lay version of what Willard Sperry, one of my predecessors in The Memorial Church, used to lampoon as "textual preaching." The preacher who was keen to practice what he preached would follow this formula: "Take your text, depart from your text, never return to your text."

Bible studies tend to follow this route. The Bible is simply the entry into a discussion about more interesting things, usually about oneself. The text is a mere pretext to other matters, and usually the routine works like this: A verse or a passage is given out, and the group or class is asked, "What does this mean to you?" The answers come thick and fast, and we are off into the life stories or personal situations of the group, and the session very quickly takes the form of Alcoholics Anonymous, Twelve-Step meetings, or other exercises in healing and therapy. I do not wish to disparage the very good and necessary work that these groups perform, for I have seen too many good effects and have known too many beneficiaries of such encounter and support groups to diminish by one iota their benefit both to individuals and to the community. I simply wish to say that this is not Bible study, and to call it such is to perpetuate a fiction.

Bible study actually involves the study of the Bible. That involves a certain amount of work, a certain exchange of informed intelligence, a certain amount of discipline. Bible study is certainly not just the response of the uninformed reader to the uninterpreted text, but Bible study in most of the churches has become just that--the blind leading the blind or, as some caustic critics of liberal Protestantism would put it, the bland leading the bland. The notion that texts have meaning and integrity, intention, contexts, and subtexts, and that they are part of an enormous history of interpretation that has long involved some of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world, is a notion often lost on those for whom the text is just one more of the many means the church provides to massage the egos of its members.

Opening the Bible is the easy part. What to do with it once it is opened is more difficult. At the start of Lent each year, when the time for taking up a Lenten discipline is upon us, invariably a number of people will tell me that they intend to read the Bible from cover to cover. They mean to start at Genesis 1:1 and stop when they get to Revelation 22:21. The enterprise is not as easy as it sounds, and people begin to waver in their resolve when their expectations of narrative inspiration are not sustained by genealogies, codes of Jewish law, and ancient Jewish history. The New Testament is somewhat easier to digest, in part because it is smaller and its subject more easily identified as Jesus and the early church. Nevertheless, it is not always clear what is going on in the Acts of the Apostles; the expectation that the letters of Paul provide a systematic correspondence is often disappointing; and while they find it fascinating, not many know what to make of the book of Revelation. Those who get through usually feel as if they have run a marathon, where the object of the course is to finish and not necessarily to observe the landscape along the way. Those who do not cross the finish line often feel like moral failures who have broken their diet or fallen off the wagon and taken a forbidden drink.

The risks of discouragement notwithstanding, I think there is something to be said for taking on the Bible in this way. It is a bit like total immersion in a foreign language; eventually, if you stick with it, you will get some sense of what is going on, you will see and feel the shapes of the language, and you will acquire a sense of those places to which you wish to return, and those places you wish to avoid. This is not a bad thing.

The Construction of Scripture

The Bible, however, is more than an endurance contest, and one may know better how to make a useful reading of it if one has a sense of what the Bible actually is. At the risk of appearing to offend those who already know what they need to know in this regard, I begin by stressing the fact that the Bible is not a book but a collection of books, in fact, a library of books. Sixty-six separate books have been collected from the writings of ancient Hebrews and early Christians, and by a rational editorial process have been brought together over a period of centuries to form the book we now know as the Bible. The first thing the reader must remember upon encountering the Bible is that it is a result or consequence of a complex process that is both human and divine. The relationship between the human and the divine in this process is an intimate one. These are writings by human beings who are themselves believed to have been inspired by God. It is further believed that it is by the inspiration of God that human agency is given the wisdom and the will to organize these books, and it is believed that through these books the divine word of God is to be communicated. Thus it is not sufficient explanation of the Bible to say simply that it is either the Word of God or "merely" a human book, such as The Iliad or The Odyssey. The Jews who gathered together these books from a whole range of their writings and called them "scripture" did so in the firm conviction that God spoke through these human writings, and that these human writings brought the people of God nearer to God. Thus, when they call the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures--known as the Pentateuch--the Books of Moses, they mean that here Moses speaks of his understanding of God, and through Moses God speaks to his people.

Although Hebrew scripture takes different forms--poetry, history, law, and wisdom--the subject is always the same: the relationship between God's people and their God. The human element in this relationship is significant and important to understand, for scripture is always understood to be a human response to the initiative of God. The scripture of the Jewish people does not simply record historical facts, but by its interpretation of history, the Jewish scripture seeks to ask and to answer the fundamental questions of human existence. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? What does it mean to be good? What is evil, and how do I deal with it? How do I deal with death? These are both individual questions and, with regard to the Jewish people, also public and communal questions. It must never be forgotten that it is a community of people chosen, beloved, and willful, to whom the Law, for example, is given, to whom the land is promised, and to whom a future is offered. The sacred literature of the Jewish people reflects this conviction, and that literature is therefore regarded as sacred because God is seen to be revealed in it. The determination, however, of what is sacred and what is scripture is a human and rational enterprise, and it tells us as much about the people of God as it tells us about God. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith points out in his book, What Is Scripture?, "Scripture is a human, and an historical fact. We may say: it is a human, and therein an historical, fact intimately involved with the movement, the unceasingly changing specificity of historical process, its grandeur and its folly."

Thus the narrative history of Genesis, the legislative tedium of Leviticus, the books of history--Samuel, Chronicles, and Kings--the lyric, book of Psalms, the salacious, to some, Song of Solomon, the saga of Job, the wisdom of Proverbs, and the salutary story of Esther are all regarded as authoritative and inspired because each in its own way has been proven useful in the people's attempt to understand themselves and their relationship to God. The Hebrew Bible is not merely a book of history or a book of devotion but a library of writings of proven worth, self-consciously composed, collected, and preserved as the repository of wisdom both human and divine. These writings reveal both the nature of the people who wrote and collected them, and the nature of their God. These writings are of course not God, and the writings themselves are not substitutes for God. That would be a violation of the first commandment, which forbids idolatry and false gods.

The Hebrew Bible is organized somewhat differently from what Christians call the Old Testament. The first five books are called The Law. The Prophets are divided into The Former Prophets, which include Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, The Latter Prophets, composed of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and those prophets called The Twelve, comprising Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The third and final section of the Hebrew Bible is called simply The Writings, and includes Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. This authoritative listing is referred to as a canon and evolved between A.D. 70 and 135 into its present form by a process of rabbinical councils. When Jesus refers to the Scripture, and New Testament Jewish Christians speak of the Law and the Prophets, it is this Bible of which they speak.

The Christians' Book

When the early Christians, many of whom were Jewish, came to understand the Hebrew Bible as the necessary anticipation of their own Gospel, they reorganized the Hebrew Bible into four large categories: History, Poetry, the Major Prophets, and the Minor Prophets. Thus the elements of the Hebrew Bible were reconfigured into an "old" testament, which together with the authoritative Christian writings, the "new" testament, comprised the Christian Bible. The Christian scriptures were chosen from a wide range of early Christian writings, and the final product, the present canon, represents the consensus of usage and dignity confirmed by the earliest churches in A.D. 367. The New Testament is not arranged in chronological order. For example, all of the epistles of Saint Paul are older than any of the gospels. Recent scholarship places the Epistle of James as first by date, followed by I Thessalonians. To read the New Testament in chronological order is not necessarily superior to reading it in its canonical order, but it does allow us to follow the construction of the New Testament, and it reminds us once again that the New Testament is also the product of a self-conscious, human, and rational set of decisions. The canonical structure of the New Testament consists of History, which contains the four gospels and the Book of Acts; the Epistles of Paul, both those by him and those attributed to him; the General Epistles; and in a category all by itself, the Apocalypse, or the Revelation of John.

The Apocrypha is a category of books that tends to confuse most Protestants unfamiliar with the construction of the Bible and the political implications of its various translations and editions. The books in the Apocrypha are those books and fragments that do not appear in the Hebrew Bible but which were placed into the Latin Vulgate as part of the Old Testament. These books were to be found in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, but did not end up in the Hebrew canon. The Roman Catholic tradition regards these books as part of the canon, and since 1546, by decree of the Council of Trent, anathematizes anyone who says otherwise. Luther placed the Apocrypha between the two Testaments, and the English translations, while acknowledging that the apocryphal books were extra-canonical, found them to be useful and instructive. The Puritans decided that the Apocrypha was not inspired and thus removed it from their Bibles, and most modern editions of the King James Version, following the Puritan influence, exclude the Apocrypha, as do most of the newer English versions. The New English Bible, however, and of course versions approved for use by Roman Catholics, include it.

The place of the Bible in Christian theology is a subject of some complexity and goes back to the earliest debates of the forming Christian churches as to whether scripture or tradition took precedence in the determination of faith and practice. The dominance of the Bible in the Protestant traditions, particularly that part of Protestantism known as the Reformed Tradition, and in more modern times, the Evangelical branch of Protestantism, has generated what is generally known as a "high view" of scripture. This view has generated a number of slogans, which themselves are decidedly nonbiblical but which nevertheless convey certain doctrinal convictions by which the Bible is understood. The most famous of these is Luther's sofa scriptura, which means "by scripture alone." Under this view, scripture itself is the sole sufficient rule of conduct and belief for the Christian. Another principle, which is derived from this one, is the "authority of scripture," and it is to that authority that the church and its members must submit. The scripture in this context is viewed very much like the federal Constitution of the United States, except, of course, that it cannot be amended.

Various other slogans designed to affirm the primacy of scripture actually in some cases make it harder to take scripture seriously. For example, in order to defend the integrity of scripture, some will say that either all is true, or all is false. This is meant to discourage picking and choosing from scripture the things that we like as opposed to the things that we dislike, but it strains credulity, and indeed the function of scripture, to argue that the Ten Commandments must be received in exactly the same fashion as the Song of Solomon, or that the Levitical Holiness Code is for Christians of the same order as the Beatitudes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount Critics of the Bible are quick to point to the implausible parts, the petty anthropology attributed to the Hebrew God, for example, or Jonah and the fish, or the dubious morality by modern standards of certain of the patriarchs and kings of Israel, and on this basis argue that the morality of the Bible and its claims to authority are either suspect or irrelevant. The "all true or all false" argument works both to defend scripture and to defame it, and as a principle of interpretation probably does more harm than good.

In the next chapter we will discuss in more detail the question of interpretation. What we suggest now, however, are some broad principles which the reader of the Bible ought to bear in mind in becoming more familiar with the shape and content of scripture. These have to do with the character of the Bible, which is public, dynamic, and inclusive.

A Public

When I say that the Bible is public, I mean to say that it is a treasure that is held in common, it belongs to the community of believers and not to any one individual or to any one part of the community of believers. The Bible may have its private uses, and it may be used privately and as a source of great strength in private devotion, but its fundamental identity is as a resource, a treasure for the people. In the sacramental sense which Christians recognize from the Communion Service, the Bible too is the "gift of God for the people of God." It is a very public record of the relationship between these people and their God, meant to be heard, understood, and remembered. When we realize the oral origins of scripture, and the fact that in the days before general literacy the only way that people became acquainted with the Bible was to hear it in the company of others, read aloud by one who could do so, then we realize that like the ancient tales of Homer and the histories of Greece and Rome, these were public stories that communicated public truths in the most public of ways. Even today in the churches of Christendom pride of place in the public liturgy is given to the public reading and hearing of the Bible.

The internal architecture of sacred space says it all. There is nearly always a splendid lectern upon which the book is placed, not simply for efficiency but for display as well. On the altar the gospel book is given a place of great honor, and in certain liturgical traditions the reading of the gospel is made all the more public and grand by a ceremonial procession of the book so that it can be read in the body of the church, and all turn toward it as it passes in procession. The pulpit itself is meant to be the place in which the public nature of the Bible is given its most explicit expression. A sermon that does not attempt to address the Bible is in fact not a sermon.

The public nature of the Bible is meant to have an impact upon public life. Again, it is not a secret of private vocation but a public proclamation of what can be discerned of God's intentions for the creation from the witness and testimony of scripture. People should not be surprised, therefore, that Christians always want to translate their understanding of scripture and its demands into the public lives that Christians lead. The Bible is meant to play a role in society, as are Christians. This public dimension of the Bible invariably produces conflict, even in allegedly homogeneous Christian societies, and certainly in secular and pluralistic societies. This, however, is a conflict responsible Christians cannot avoid, and the working out of the proper relationship between the public dimensions of one's biblical faith and one's citizenship in a community that does not necessarily share or appreciate that faith is part of the inevitable and uneasy burden that every responsible Christian must shoulder. The early Christian martyrs would have lived to ripe old ages had they not found it necessary to proclaim their biblical convictions in public. To try to create a "Christian society" where there is no risk to the public nature of the Bible and the faith that cherishes it is a form of arrogant escapism. The Bible is a public book, and as such will always give offense. Christians who take the Bible and themselves seriously have to be prepared for that.

A Living Text

The second thing to be remembered about the Bible, as we proceed in our thinking about it, is that it is dynamic, living, alive, lively. "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, or joint and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12) This means that behind the letter of the text is the spirit that animates it, the force that gave it and gives it life. Thus there is something always elusive about the Bible. This fixed text has a life of its own, which the reader cannot by some simple process of reading capture as his or her own. The dynamic quality of scripture has to do with the fact that while the text itself does not change, we who read that text do change; it is not that we adapt ourselves to the world of the Bible and play at re-creating it as in a pageant or tableau "long ago and far away." Rather, it is that the text actually adapts itself to our capacity to hear it. Thus we hear not as first-century Christians, nor even as eighteenth-century Christians, but as men and women alive here and now. We hear the same texts that our ancestors heard but we hear them not necessarily as they heard them, but as only we can. Thus the reading and the hearing of scripture are for Christians in each generation a Pentecostal experience. That experience is described in the Book of Acts as the great moment when the Holy Spirit descended upon the great and diverse crowd of believers in Jerusalem. The writer of Acts goes to great lengths to describe the diversity of that crowd, people from all over the known world who had little in common but Jerusalem as the object of the pilgrimage. They all were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in tongues.

Now often the emphasis here is placed on the ecstatic utterance, the Spirit-filled glossolalia, the exotic sounds of people under an extraordinary spell. Anyone who has ever experienced an outbreaking of speaking in tongues knows the exotic nature of that experience. What must be emphasized, however, and what is in fact the point of the writer of Acts, is that the people understood what was going on, and even more to the point, they understood in their own languages: not a paraphrase, not a delayed interpretation, not even a translation; they understood in their own languages. "We hear them telling in our own tongues," says the writer of Acts in Chapter 2, verse 11, "the mighty works of God."

The dynamic aspect of the Bible has to do with this quality of communication--not simply out of context or beyond context, but within our own singular and unique context--of the timeless and the timely message of the Bible. Christians believe that this dynamic quality is attributable directly to the power of the Holy Spirit, the agent of Pentecost. In other words, all our scholarship and research, our linguistic and philological skills, the tools of every form of criticism available to us, are merely means by which the living spirit of the text is taken from one context and appropriated totally into ours. The history of interpretation, perhaps the most useful field in which to study the dynamic dimension of scripture, bears witness to this in every age. In this sense, then, scripture is both transformed and transformative; that is to say, our understanding of what it says and means evolves, and so too do we as a result. This transformation does not always repudiate what was before, but it does always transcend it. The Buddhists say, "Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; rather, seek what they sought." To understand the dynamic aspect of scripture, we must appreciate the fact that "what they sought" seeks us, and in fact, "what they sought" is apprehendable to us in terms and times that we can best understand. So in the Bible we handle lively things, which means that we must be subtle, supple, and modest, all at the same time.

An Inclusive Word

The third and final landmark for those on this pilgrimage, in which we try to make sense of the Bible, is the fact that in addition to being both public and dynamic, the Bible is also inclusive. That is to say, it has the power to draw all people unto itself. Historically, we see the ever-widening circle of the Bible's appeal, and we can perhaps explain that by the cultural developments that moved out and beyond the provincial Mediterranean origins of the Bible into the Greco-Roman world, and then into the West, and then throughout the whole world. That, however, is simply a map maker's view of the matter. What is more significant to observe, and indeed more profound, is the fact that people and cultures foreign to the people and cultures of the Bible find themselves drawn to the Bible and understand it not as somebody else's book made available to them as an act of charity, conquest, or missionary endeavor, but as their own book, theirs legitimately and on their own terms. In the story of the Jewish patriarchs, non-Jews see themselves. In God's particular activity in Jesus Christ, people beyond the little world of primitive Jewish Christianity see themselves and their story included in God's activity. When in John's gospel (John 10:16) Jesus says, "And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd," this is a great mandate for inclusivity which these "other sheep" recognize. As Jesus himself included among his own companions winebibbers, prostitutes, men and women of low degree, people who by who they were, by what they did, or from where they were excluded, so too does the Bible claim these very people as its own.

It is one of the unbecoming but unavoidable ironies of Christianity that Gentile Christians, who were excluded from the Jewish churches, and who in the times of the Roman persecution were themselves excluded from all hope in this life, should themselves become the arch practitioners of exclusion. Even centuries of Christian exclusivism, however, extending into our very own day, cannot diminish the inclusive mandate of the Bible, and the particular words of Jesus when he says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." What Roman Catholic social theory teaches as the church's "preferential option for the poor," to the annoyance of Christians rich in the things of this world, is the same principle that extends the hospitality of the Bible, indeed preferential hospitality, to those who have in fact been previously and deliberately excluded. So the Bible's inclusivity is claimed by the poor, the discriminated against, persons of color, homosexuals, women, and all persons beyond the conventional definitions of Western civilization.

The Bible is not inclusive simply in the abstract and in principle. It is inclusive in particular. Your story is written here, your sins and fears addressed, your hopes confirmed, your experiences validated, and your name known to God. The most reassuring conviction of the witness of scripture is that we are known by our own names. In Hebrew's 2:12, Jesus says, "I will proclaim thy name to my brethren," and the most telling moment of John's account of the resurrection is when the risen Christ addresses the distraught and confused Mary Magdalene by her own name, and in hearing her name called, she discovers who the risen one is.

One of the great paradoxes of race in America is the fact that the religion of the oppressor, Christianity, became the religion of the oppressed and the means of their liberation. Black Muslims ask incredulously how any black person in America could possibly be a Christian, given the legacy of white Christianity. The answer, of course, is that if Christianity in America depended upon white Christians, there would be no right-minded black Christians. What is the case is that Christianity, and the Bible in particular, did not depend upon Christians for its gospel of inclusion, but upon God. Thus black American Christians do not regard their Christianity as the hand-me-down religion of their masters, or an unnatural culture imposed upon them and thus a sign of their continuing servitude. No! They understand themselves to be Christians in their own right because the Gospel, the good news out of which the Bible comes, includes them and is in fact meant for them. We will find that when we look at the life of the Bible, and the life of the world in which it is to be found, we discover that the heart of its public dimension, and indeed the source of its dynamism, in the principle of inclusion by which all of the exclusive divisions of the world are transcended and transformed.

In thinking about the Bible--its public nature, its dynamic, living qualities, and its inclusivity--as we try to make sense of it with mind and heart, we would do well to remember these three principal characteristics. They serve as landmarks, points of departure and of return, and they will guide us even as we seek guidance in opening the Bible.

Copyright � 1997 Peter J. Gomes

William Morrow and Company, Inc.

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Podcast: 12 Key Tools For Bible Study (Lydia Brownback)

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Tools for Studying the Bible

In today's episode, Lydia Brownback discusses 12 key tools for Bible study that all Christians can use—tools that will help us go deeper into the biblical text and understand the Bible’s life-giving message for ourselves.

Lydia Brownback

In this 10-week Bible study for women, Lydia Brownback explores James verse by verse, addressing trials and temptations, the relationship between faith and good works, and choosing the wisdom of God over the wisdom of the world. 

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

Matt TullyLydia, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Lydia BrownbackIt’s always great to be here with you, Matt.

Matt TullyToday I want to spend some time talking about Bible study, and in particular some key tools that we can use for Bible study to help us go deeper into the text. I thought it would be fun to ask you because you are a well-known Bible teacher, you’ve written Bible studies for the church, and so I think you’re going to have some good insights into this.

Lydia BrownbackI hope so!

Matt TullyThe first thing that, obviously, we need when it comes to studying the Bible is a Bible—an actual Bible that we’re reading from. To start us off, what do you look for in a good print Bible?

Lydia BrownbackI look for a literal translation. I think that’s really important.

Matt TullyWhy would you say that a more literal translation is helpful in particular for Bible study?

Lydia BrownbackWe want to understand the Bible in its original context before we make application to our own lives today. In order to best do that, we have to be sure we’re accurate in understanding how the people originally would have read it and written it. We want to understand in the original context how God spoke through those writers of Scripture and how the original readers, as well as the writers, would have understood it, because that is the way we are supposed to understand it if we want to accurately know God best.

Matt TullyWhat about when it comes to the actual physical Bible itself? Obviously, this is pretty subjective. There are lots of different types of Bibles with different sizes and typesettings, but what is it for you? What are you looking for in a Bible that you’re going to study from?

Lydia BrownbackI love a big, giant study Bible with articles in it and lots of notes that have been carefully handled, done, prepared by a reliable team of Bible translators. I love study Bibles. They have all kinds today. They have women’s Bibles and men’s Bibles and kid’s Bibles. They’re not changing the text of Scripture for these. They are just having specific notes or articles tailored to a demographic when they do that. There can be all kinds of helps for young believers. There are some that have articles that are focused so much on the gospel, that help people grasp the gospel and see where it is threaded all through the storyline of the Bible. I do think a study Bible, of whatever sort someone might choose, is going to prove very helpful.

Matt TullyThat was actually another one of the tools I had listed here was a study Bible. If you think about all the features that are often included in a study Bible, what’s the one or two that you use the most?

Lydia BrownbackI think especially when I’m doing a challenging passage and reading through it, after I’ve read the passage I’ll go see what the notes say. There are usually one or two really helpful insights that set it in context, that help me understand what that passage says. And then the other thing I love are the cross-references—either there in the notes or back up in the verses—that will take you and link you to other related passages in the Bible. That is such a helpful thing. When you want to see what the Bible says about a particular theme, or when you want to see how what you’re reading in Galatians ties back to something in Deuteronomy, it’s helpful to have the cross-references that link back so that you can directly go and say, Oh! I see how the Old Testament factors into the New, and how the authors of the New Testament drew from what Moses said. It really does help you get an idea of the big picture of the Bible.

Matt TullyAnother key tool that we will often have when it comes to Bible study is a pencil or a pen. What are the kinds of things that you are writing in your Bible?

Lydia BrownbackI use pencil because it’s funny how, when I’ve written a little notation in the side, I will find a few years later when I encounter it that my thinking might have changed. So, I like to erase that.

Matt TullyYou’ll actually be erasing stuff that’s two years old?

Lydia BrownbackOh yeah. Usually it’s more like ten years, but yeah, some last two years. It’s interesting to go back and see my own notes and how I’ve grown spiritually in my own understanding, in my own walk with the Lord, and to see, Oh! I understand that more deeply now, or in a different and more accurate way. If it’s in pen, I don’t want to have to be crossing it out. I would just rather erase it and write something new. Some people reverence their Bible so much that they don’t feel comfortable marking them up, but a Bible can become like a friend. I think about someone I know whose had the same Bible for almost forty years. It’s falling apart now, but she doesn’t want a new one because it’s her friend. She knows what she’s marked, the highlights, and the little notations she’s made. Her own notes speak to her and help her in her reading as she goes through it. I think it’s wonderful to feel comfortable marking up your Bible and making it a friend.

Matt TullyWhat are the kinds of things you’re writing in the margins?

Lydia BrownbackI’ll note a cross-reference or I will say something specifically about how the Lord might be speaking to my heart about that text, something that really strikes me. Last week I was reading Psalm 115, and it was about idols and how those who make them become like them. I made a few notes in there about some temptations to idols in my own life and how that passage spoke directly to my heart that day—what it’s communicating about the Lord, what happens with idols, and what the Lord wants us to know about them. Then, maybe I’ll jot down, Swing over here to Jeremiah 2 because there’s more on that here, or something in Hosea. I’ll make my own set of cross-references.

Matt TullyThat’s so fun. It’s exciting to see those connections and to get to put them in there yourself. They oftentimes have a deeper significance for you. It’s an exciting thing to come back across those.

Lydia BrownbackYes, it is!

Matt TullySometimes people will have elaborate systems of certain marks or characters that they use. They’ll circle words and make a certain kind of mark there to indicate certain things. Have you ever done anything like that? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Lydia BrownbackI haven’t. I know a lot of people who do, and they use different colored pens and pencils and markers. They color different types of speech and different patterns. That’s very helpful to them to do. Their Bible becomes a study tool in a very deep sort of way that can be—I wouldn’t say academic, but I would say it’s helping them learn. They found their own pattern of learning. Whatever it takes for somebody to enter into the text, to know God more deeply in what he’s saying. All these tools can be really helpful.

Matt TullySpeak to that a little bit—the process of figuring out how you learn and how you want to engage with the Bible with a pen or a pencil. I think some people might see a pattern demonstrated to them, maybe from a mentor or from a book they read, or maybe they’re going to listen to this interview and think that’s the way that it has to be done and that’s the best way to do it. How have you thought about that as you’ve developed your own approach to studying the Bible?

Lydia BrownbackI think if we try to follow a formula, or what someone else has done, that can be helpful to us to get going. But if we feel we have to do it a certain way, we’re missing the relational connection with the Lord. I think the best approach, at least for me and what I would suggest, is to always sit down and do it prayerfully and conversationally with the Lord. I’ll talk to him out loud about a passage I’m reading. Even when I say, Lord, I don’t understand this, so I pray for understanding. I always begin my Bible-reading time with, Lord, what would you say to me through your word today? I pray for a tenderized, humble heart that would be open and receptive to what I’m seeing there. Let’s say when we hit the genealogies and our temptation is to skip right over those, or, It’s in our Bible-reading plan, so we have to read it, it doesn’t have to be that we just check it off. Let’s ask the Lord, What would you say? What would you show me? And even if you don’t get it in that hour, he’s going to answer that prayer sooner or later. The more Bible study we do, the more illumination we’re going to get, even about those difficult portions. I think doing it prayerfully is the best approach, even if we follow someone else’s ideas of how to go about it. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong as long as we do it prayerfully and keeping faithful to what Scripture is telling us there. Not imposing our ideas of what we want the Bible to say. It’s taking out of the Bible rather than trying to read into it.

Matt TullyThus far we’ve been talking about marking in our Bibles themselves, but some people also will study their Bible with a journal—a separate little volume of paper essentially. Have you ever done anything like that—journaling alongside your Bible study? What could that look like?

Lydia BrownbackI do it everyday, and it just sort of happened naturally. I probably started that thirty years ago. While I’m reading, when I’m finished, or even when I’m going into it, I will journal, but it’s always addressed to the Lord. These are journal entries—

Matt TullyYou’re writing and praying to God in that?

Lydia BrownbackKind of, but I’ll start it almost as—sometimes I’ll even write, Good morning, Lord. I will speak back to him in my journal what I’ve just read in Scripture. It does sort of become a prayer for illumination, and sometimes it’s just sort of rehearsing what I’ve just read and learned, but saying it back to him on pen and paper. Thank you for showing me this. I never realized such and such. I wonder how that is going to apply to this thing in my life. I want to know about this. Would you open my eyes? That kind of thing.

Matt TullyHave you kept all of these old journals?

Lydia BrownbackYeah.

Matt TullyHave you ever gone back and looked at them?Lydia BrownbackYes, I have!

Matt TullyWhat’s that like?

Lydia BrownbackIt’s amazing to see how my view and my understanding of Scripture has changed over the years. From being a baby believer when I would think that when you would pray and when Jesus said, “As for whatever you wish,” I took that literally. I want this. If I ask it, God will give that to me. Now, when I look back, I’m so thankful that the Lord showed me the truth and that he doesn’t do things our way. To be able to recognize how Scripture has changed me by means of the Spirit and reading it each day. He does change our understanding over time. Having those journals and then looking back on them is a great way to chart the Lord’s work in our own life and heart that we otherwise might not be in touch with because we’re living with ourselves everyday and we don’t see it.

Matt TullyI can imagine someone thinking about looking back at something they wrote maybe ten or twenty years ago and feeling, I wouldn’t want to see that. I would be embarrassed. Have you ever felt those feelings? Or is it more of an encouraging thing that you get?

Lydia BrownbackThat’s funny that you say that because I recently said—only half-jokingly—but I said to my family member, If something happens to me and you have to deal with my stuff, there’s this pile of journals over there. Please just burn them. Because some of it is really private. It’s between me and the Lord—things I was wrestling with, sins I was struggling with, and some embarrassing things about being immature that I look back on now and I don’t need anyone to remember. But it’s good for me to remember because it does show me how far the Lord has brought me.

Matt TullyAnother tool that we can use when we want to study the Bible is a Bible study book of some kind, whether that’s a workbook that you’re actually writing in and that’s written by somebody to help you understand the Bible, or sometimes it can just be a book that you’re not writing in, but it’s nevertheless walking through a book of the Bible or through a theme in the Bible. Tell us a little bit about how you’ve used those kinds of resources in your own life.

Lydia BrownbackI absolutely rely on those and love those. I will look for perhaps a pastoral commentary on that. Some commentaries are a pastor’s sermons on a particular book of the Bible that have been compiled into a book. It’s not an academic commentary by any means, but it is pastoral and it does teach you accurately what a book of the Bible is saying. To read that through, you’re getting all these sermons, you’re learning so much, but you’re also getting this heart part. Those have been really enriching. I think there are great books that aren’t commentaries, that are just regular books. I think about a new one Crossway has just produced—Nancy Guthrie’s book called, Blessed, which is a walk through the book of Revelation. It’s a beautiful entry point for people who aren’t familiar with the book, to understand how to understand Revelation. There are many out there that are really good and reliable at every level.

Matt TullyCrossway has a Knowing the Bible study series, these little white books that are interactive and meant to help you study each book of the Bible. We have one for every book of the Bible. You, also, are writing a new Bible study series called Flourish, also in a workbook format. Tell us a little bit about what you’re trying to do with that series and how that could fit into somebody’s personal Bible study.

Lydia BrownbackI am more excited about that series than anything I have ever done in my life. My prayer for this series is that the women who do it—people who do a book in this series—will come out of it in love with going deeper in Scripture. My prayer is that it would equip them and get them excited about doing that. If they do one study of mine, my prayer is that they’ll want to go do their own studies of each book of the Bible. In this particular series, each workbook is about 120 pages, and it’s a walkthrough of a book of the Bible. There are questions for reflection to engage the text, and then there’s commentary threaded through as well. I’m finding that there are just as many individuals using the series as there are groups because it doesn’t have to just be done with a group. There’s no video with it or anything like that. People are using it in their morning devotions to learn a book of the Bible. I’m excited about that. I had someone this weekend who had finished the volume on 1 and 2 Peter, and they said that they had seen facets of hope in there. That’s one of the big themes in Peter, but there’s so much about hardship and struggle and trial that they had missed the hope until they spent ten weeks going through Peter’s epistles. By going deeper into a workbook type of thing, it does force us to focus slowly on each verse, each passage, each theme as we go through.

Matt TullyEach of these studies is ten weeks long, is that right?

Lydia BrownbackYes.

Matt TullyI think one experience we’ve all had, maybe from school at some point, is the fill-in-the-blank thing where you have a question, the answer is very obvious, and you’re just looking for that right answer. How are you preventing it from being that? Help us as we think about what this could look like.

Lydia BrownbackI’m trying to get them to see how a particular book of the Bible ties in with the overarching storyline of the Bible. The 66 books of the Bible are not separate books; it’s all one story. We can almost say it’s 66 chapters in one book. We need to set each book of the Bible in context of the Bible as a whole. I think going slowly through a book of the Bible in a workbook type of format helps make those connections, because there’s time to say, Well, today we’re going to spend time going back to the Old Testament and seeing where this factors into this; how this informed this New Testament epistle. That proves helpful. I wouldn’t say there are fill-in-the-blank questions, but I do say, In these verses here, what are the four things Paul is wanting us to do? What are the concrete actions? It’s kind of fill in, but you have to focus on that angle of it.

Matt TullyYou’re forcing them to slow down and actually notice those things. So often we just fly through stuff. We’ve heard it before and don’t really think about what it means.

Lydia BrownbackRight. Exactly.

Matt TullyI know you’ve released a number of volumes in this series, so I’m just kind of curious what you’re writing right now. What book of the Bible are you working on for this?

Lydia BrownbackIt never gets old. It’s so exciting each time there’s a new one. I’m writing Ephesians right now.

Matt TullyWow. What a wonderful book.

Lydia BrownbackThat one’s pretty easy to break into ten weeks. I just turned in Job, which is a very long—

Matt TullyWhat a different genre! Is there a specific approach you’re taking, like doing all of Paul’s epistles together or are you intentionally trying to jump around in the Bible?

Lydia BrownbackI want to cover a wide swath of different books. I want to do some Prophets, I want to do some of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), I want to do some psalms and some of the wisdom literature, and I want to cover a lot of the New Testament (if not most). It’s the longer books that are challenging to do in a ten week study. The longest one I have out right now is Luke. Groups that have decided to do this have decided to go longer than ten weeks, or they follow along and do the ten weeks. But there’s a lot of reading. If you’re going to read through the entire book during ten weeks and do a study on it, there are weeks where you’re doing a lot of Scripture reading. Those are the more challenging ones, but individuals are finding that’s not so much of a challenge in the same way. But again, it’s going slowly through, but it’s doable. I’ve tried to break it down in such a way that it is. In my series, after Ephesians is going to be Jonah, and then Habakkuk is coming out right now and that’s a very short book of the Bible. You could really go in depth and go into the ties of other portions of Scripture because you’re taking a short, three-chapter book and studying it over ten weeks. It’s really fun to do the shorter ones and go into great depth.

Matt TullyIt is amazing how, especially with a good Bible teacher, how you can really go as deep or stay as high level as you need to with Scripture to fit the time or the space. As you were saying, some of these studies could even be expanded to go more than ten weeks if that was helpful.

Lydia BrownbackYes.

Matt TullyYou’ve already mentioned commentaries—a pastoral commentary that would be very applicational in flavor. I would imagine for maybe some listeners that just the mention of commentary sounds intimidating. It sounds like something only a pastor or a Bible teacher could use profitably. Help us understand what the value of a commentary is. What does it offering to the average Christian who just wants to study their Bible a little bit better? What would be some things that you would recommend that they look for in a commentary?

Lydia BrownbackWhen I’m going to study a book of the Bible, I like to have two commentaries for that book. I want to have an academic one and I want to have a pastoral one. For people who are going to teach Bible studies, I recommend that. If you want to go really deep and get into the more technical aspects of it, that’s a great thing to be able to do. If you can’t afford to collect that many, there are so many resources online from reliable websites.

Matt TullyHow many commentaries would you say that you have?

Lydia BrownbackMy goal is to collect two on every book of the Bible. I am slowly but surely doing that. I started my collection thirty years ago, so I am probably halfway there. It’s a great privilege to be able to do it. I would say for someone who is not going to be teaching—someone who just wants to know and grow in their understanding of Scripture—pick a pastoral commentary. You’re going to learn so much about it. You’re going to learn the background, the history, ties to other parts of the Bible, and you’re going to get that application part, too, that is going to be really helpful. I think, for example, when I studied Ezekiel for the first time in my morning reading and I really wanted to spend a couple of months going through the book, I found a commentary that was so great. It really helped me because it set a particular chapter of Ezekiel in its original context, and then it talked about how different aspects were later fulfilled in the New Testament and other parts that were going to be fulfilled even later. Then, it made application to our contemporary context now and our life today. When you look at Ezekiel for the first time, you think, Was this a madman? What was this? I think we need help from those whom God has raised up and equipped to teach us some of the harder aspects. Think about the Ethiopian eunuch who encountered the disciples and they said, Do you understand what you’re reading? He said, How can I, unless someone explains it to me. He wanted to know, he wasn’t afraid to admit that he didn’t know, and so God sent along people he had equipped to help. He’s raised up certain people to teach, to understand, and to be able to communicate his truth. Making use of that for our own understanding of Scripture is really vital. We don’t have to go to seminary for that. There are so many great resources today, whether online or books we can buy. And then, of course, everyone has access to (if they don’t have a computer or online access) is the church and other believers. I think it’s seeking out wise, older believers who maybe know Scripture better. And wherever you happen to be, asking the Lord to provide that.

Matt TullyThat was one of the other tools I was going to mention was just other Christians. Speak a little bit more to the ways that God has used other people to help you understand the Bible.

Lydia BrownbackI think about in Philippians and other places where Paul says Imitate me. Imitate us. Imitate those who walk faithfully. One of the things I imitate is how they study Scripture. Not necessarily the underlining and the highlighting, but when do they read Scripture? How faithful are they? Is it everyday? How long? I’m fascinated by how they live their lives—their time with God, their Bible reading, the resources they use. What are they involved in at their church? How do they grow in their knowledge? It’s exposing myself to their lives as much as I can to try to imitate them.

Matt TullyWho would you say in your life has had the biggest impact on you and your own study of the Bible in particular?

Lydia BrownbackIn recent years, I’d say Kathleen Nielson. She is kind of under the radar a little bit. She’s such a sound Bible teacher. When I first heard her speak, she was at a retreat and she was walking through the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel. She did all these sessions just one verse after the next. It was the first time I had been to a women’s conference, and after that I thought, I want to know how she goes about her life. I asked her once, Do you ever teach topically? She said there was nothing wrong with that. It can be a wonderful thing, but she said, The time is short. With the opportunities I have, I have decided that this is the most important thing. I’ve never forgotten that, and so I’ve leaned more and more in that direction.

Matt TullyEven in your own personal study?

Lydia BrownbackYes, in my own study and in my own teaching especially. I read all kinds of books. I read a lot of topical, thematic books. I think about another one that Crossway just put out called, Overcoming Apathy. What an amazing theme that speaks to all of us in our Western culture. We need those books too.

Matt TullyIt’s not an either/or. You’re saying that when it comes to your Bible study in particular you’ve been focusing more on book by book.

Lydia BrownbackYes. And then I think about the pastors I have sat under, learned under, and worked for. A pastor once told me that every morning, in addition to his other Bible reading, at some point in the day he reads one psalm and once chapter of Proverbs. There are thirty-one chapters in Proverbs. He reads one a day, and he’s committed to doing that the rest of his life. What a wise man he is. His marinating in Proverbs shows up in his life. Little tips like that are very helpful.

Matt TullyA few other tools that might be a little bit less common, but nevertheless very helpful. What’s a concordance?

Lydia BrownbackA concordance is one of my favorite things. Often they are in the back of a Bible.

Matt TullySometimes they’re built right in.

Lydia BrownbackYes. I would say many, many Bibles have those built right in. I do recommend Bibles that have those. Say you see a term, like sanctification—or any word at all. What if you’re doing a study on love? You can go to the concordance, and it’s an alphabetical listing of terms. It will have all the references in the Bible that have that word. That’s called an exhaustive concordance. That’s when every single verse that contains the word love is going to appear in that concordance.

Matt TullyIt’s also exhaustive because it’s so big and you’ll feel tired after you’ve picked it up.

Lydia BrownbackYes. Most Bibles don’t have exhaustive concordances; they have a sampling. They’ll have maybe ten or fifteen of the verse.

Matt TullyKey references for that term.

Lydia BrownbackYes. If you go to one of those references, you’re going to see a cross-reference there to other references. So you can sort of build your own concordance as you go. It’s really helpful if you want to understand a particular term, or if you’re doing a thematic study on something. Think about doing a study on the tongue. You go there and you look up tongue, and then it will take you to verses on lying and gossip and other things. Then you can go back to your concordance and look up verses on gossip and verses on lying and verses on all different kinds of speech patterns—good talk and bad talk. So it’s finding key terms, and then sort of building a theology of the tongue, a theology of love—to see what Scripture might say, what the Lord is saying to us in his word by looking all over the Bible at a particular word and understanding not just that word and what it means, but the Lord and where he is in that concept and what he wants for us. It’s such a helpful resource.

Matt TullyHow about a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia? How could that be helpful?

Lydia BrownbackThose are really great too. It’s kind of a similar idea. Say you want to understand more about angels. You have a Bible encyclopedia or dictionary, and it’s just like any other encyclopedia or dictionary. You go look up that term, and if it’s an encyclopedia, it’s going to have a paragraph or two explaining what that is in Scripture, what it’s history was, the background of that term, where you’re going to find that in the Bible, and what it means. Those could be really helpful and important. If you’re building a theological library, it’s really good to have a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia.

Matt TullyWhere would a one-volume Bible encyclopedia fit in your list of priorities if you were someone who was just getting started trying to study the Bible and trying to be a little bit more intentional with their Bible or theological library? Where would an encyclopedia rank in your mind?

Lydia BrownbackI would say underneath a concordance, but if you’re serious about wanting to teach or just to grow at that next level, it would be a really good addition. Maybe before you start collecting a ton of commentaries it would be really good to have that.

Matt TullyYeah, that’s great. Another question: How about a Bible atlas?

Lydia BrownbackThose are great too. I would say that would be a little lower on the list, but so helpful. Study Bibles often have maps all throughout of various spots in the Bible. But having these maps is not just for the pretty picture. It really does help us grasp the original context. In the Old Testament you’ll have maps of the Middle East and what it was like then in Abraham’s day. Then, when you go to the New Testament and you see those same places but with “Paul’s Missionary Journey” stamped on them, you say, Oh! All of this happened in the same general locations. This is how it was different and this is how society had changed. It does help us understand visually the storyline of the Bible and how it’s unfolding.

Matt TullyI know for me, in addition to helping me understand a particular passage a little bit better, there’s also this less tangible sense of when you see these maps and see these town names and roads and rivers, it kind of makes the Bible more real in a sense. It forces you to realize that these were real events that happened in real places. Do you ever have that sense as you have studied a passage?

Lydia BrownbackVery much. Also, what might have been involved? When you look at a map of the wilderness wanderings back in Exodus and you see what was going on there, you can visualize where they wandered and the space that was—the actual area and the geography and what it must have been like. It helps you enter into their world a little bit.

Matt TullyOftentimes, atlases will include photographs of the areas and pictures of structures or diagrams of buildings, so it really does give you a more real, tangible sense of what it might have been like.

Lydia BrownbackBuilding on that, a great resource (I have a couple of these) is Manners and Customs of the Bible. It takes you through each era of biblical history and it talks about what people wore, the food they ate, what the women’s lives were like, what the men’s work life was like, what raising children was like. It will walk you through each era and explain how that changed and what that was like. That is so helpful too.

Matt TullyGetting down to the end of my list here, another helpful tool to have is a Bible-reading (or Bible study) plan. Speak to the importance of having a plan of some sort as we try to study the Bible.

Lydia BrownbackI think it really helps us to be disciplined. If we don’t have a plan, we can wake up and say, I don’t really know what to read today, and before we know if we’re playing Wordle and our Bible-reading time is gone. Having a plan is a really helpful tool to get up, know what you’re going to read that day, and get right into it without having to spend time figuring out what you feel like reading. We miss out on so much that way—Do I feel like reading a psalm today? Maybe I feel like reading a gospel passage? We’re going to miss out if we don’t have a plan. Truth be told, I don’t follow any plan. My church does a Bible-reading plan and I do my best to keep up with that, but I don’t always. They read two chapters of the Bible a day, and I usually just pick one of those and read it instead of two. But that’s even aside from my own Bible-reading plan. This is my Bible-reading plan: on January 1st (this is my annual tradition) I sit down and I map out my own Bible-reading plan for the year. I always begin that day with Psalm 119. I read through that prayerfully, and it’s about a love for God’s word and God’s way. I want to pray through that psalm on New Year’s Day, and when I’ve finished doing that, I make my Bible-reading plan. I always begin with a Gospel, and then I will pick an Old Testament book. Then I set up a New Testament book, and I go back and forth to where I think it’s going to cover enough to get me through the whole year. What I love about that is if I decide I really want to park in a particular book because it’s really gripping me or I want to go deeper, then I can spend a month on a chapter of the Bible. Or I can just read through it and go on to the next one. If I don’t make it through my plan, that’s okay. I bump them to the next year. I just keep a checklist to make sure I’m going through every book and check them off. It can take me a few years.

Matt TullySo you’re not necessarily trying to map out what you’re going to read on every day. Some plans do that for you and that’s great, but you’re just more putting the biblical books in a certain order and then working through them.

Lydia BrownbackYes. I go Gospel first, then an Old Testament book, then a New Testament book.

Matt TullyWhy do you think you always want to start with a Gospel?

Lydia BrownbackI want to be in the words Jesus said, and I want to focus on the gospel message. It’s just so foundational for me. We know that Jesus is everywhere in the Bible, of course. It’s all he said and not just the red letters, but it just anchors me in Christ and his person. It helps me focus on him so much. I don’t even really know for sure, but that’s just my tradition now.

Matt TullyThat’s part of it, too, is I’m sure as you’ve done this for years and decades, you do start to develop little habits that you like to do that aren’t right or wrong necessarily, but are just the way you like to do it. Does that come out in other ways with relation to studying the Bible?

Lydia BrownbackI think so. That’s where I started doing the commentary thing. When I picked Ezekiel, I hadn’t done that and I thought, I’ve got to put Ezekiel in because I’ve never put that in my plan. When I got near to that I was a little intimidated, so I thought, Well, I’m just going to get a commentary to help me with this. That’s now become a habit. I will never read the commentary before the Bible passage. I prayerfully read through the passage, and then after I’ve done my reading and listening to the Lord, then I will read the commentary to be sure I’m understanding correctly. That’s become a habit as well.

Matt TullyI think that’s one of the dangers of commentaries, or even just a study Bible, is we maybe too quickly rely on that commentary to help us understand. We don’t really want to take the time to do the hard work ourselves.

Lydia BrownbackAnd to listen. We’re so quick to want an answer. What about just thinking about it prayerfully and meditating on it? I will never automatically go to the notes. That is always backup to make sure my own understanding is accurate and Spirit-imparted. It’s there as a reinforcement or as a corrective, so I think it is important to serve in that way. But I think it’s a mistake to start out reading the passage, then reading the notes, and then just saying, Okay, I’ve done my Bible reading today. It really should just be a reinforcement.

Matt TullyThat’s a great segue into the last thing I wanted to highlight. It’s something you’ve already mentioned a little bit, but that’s just prayer—having prayer be a foundational part of what it means to study and read the Bible. I wonder if you could just walk us through what would be the key things that you’re praying after you’ve read your Bible for the day?

Lydia BrownbackWhen I’ve asked God to open my heart and illuminate what he would say to me that day, there’s always some conviction of sin. And even if I don’t feel it, it’s there on the page. Or, there’s an application point of some sort, and there’s always, always, always something about God that’s been revealed. I will thank him for that attribute, I will praise him for it, I will ask for deeper understanding, and I will ask him to help me think on it during the day and to understand what about his character that it is indicating and that he’s showing. People say God told me, God told me. Yes, he did in his word. Are we listening? That’s where he speaks to us is in his word. If we sit down with our Bible and understand that it is God speaking to us, then whether we feel something or not, it is still him speaking to us, no matter our mood. He is always saying something.

Matt TullySometimes I’ve found that as we’re reading a passage, if we don’t understand it it can be hard to apply. It can be hard to see how it is relevant for our lives. All Scripture does speak about Jesus ultimately in the gospel and our need of him. It teaches us about God. Help us understand how sometimes it’s that first step of understanding Scripture that then leads it to feel more relevant to us.

Lydia BrownbackIt’s understanding that this is God’s word to us. It’s God speaking to us, so he has something to say to us in every word of the Bible, even if it doesn’t seem relevant to our lives or our particular situation or context. For example, you think about Ezekiel—a challenging book that you look at and think, What did these visions have anything to do with anything about life today or real life anyway? And then you think, What does it say about God? That’s the question we need to ask. When you think about one of those visions, it’s a picture of God slowly leaving the temple. The temple is where his presence dwelt in those days, where his people would go to meet with him. The people’s sin was so great, God had given them so much time to repent and they had not, so he was withdrawing. What do we learn about that? There is relevance to that because it’s showing us that God is grieved by sin, he’s grieved by our sin, he’s reluctant to leave—he left slowly—so he is not quick to judge and show wrath or anger. He loves to show mercy. That is so relevant to us. You think about another type of thing—the genealogies are another good example.

Matt TullyTwo of the hardest examples in all of the Bible.

Lydia BrownbackYou look at that and say, What does this have to do with today, or anything beyond those initial people? What does it tell us about God? It tells us that he knows people by name. He knows everyone by name, including us. It means that he keeps his promises because genealogies are meant to show us the thread of one generation to the next and how he was bringing a savior out of a line of people—specific people, not just people in general and not just the Israelites, but specific individuals. God cares about people, and he cares about his promises. Even in those things we need to ask ourselves, What do these difficult passages that seem irrelevant tell us about god? Each one tells us something about God.

Matt TullyThanks so much for helping us to better understand some of these tools that help us dig—these tools of the dig that let us get into the Bible a little bit more deeply.

Lydia BrownbackIt’s exciting that we have so many resources that are available to us, and I hope we can all make great use of them.

Popular Articles in This Series

A Quick, Compelling Bible Study Vol. 122: The New Testament's Most Quoted Psalms

Author's Note: Readers can find all previous volumes of this series here. The first 56 volumes are compiled into the book "Bible Study For Those Who Don't Read The Bible."  Part Two featuring volumes 57-113, will be published later this year.

Thanks for joining us to examine the three most quoted Psalms in the New Testament. A more comprehensive view is on this chart showing the chapters where the Psalm verses are quoted.

Let's start with some background. The book of Psalms is the Bible's most read book —  a collection of 150 praises and prayers loved and revered for their magnificent poetry. In modern terms, Psalms are a self-help manual to help one cope with the traumas and tragedies of life. Whatever you are experiencing, there is a Psalm to comfort you, lift your spirits, and help you feel the presence of God. Psalms are about praising the Almighty for His majestic power while loving and trusting Him. 

My NIV study Bible says writing the book of Psalms "spanned centuries" and "temple personnel completed it probably in the third century B.C." We know that many Psalms were King David's prayers when he appealed to God during traumatic times and wrote about glorifying His name with praise and thanksgiving. 

The Psalms are also the Hebrew Bible book from which Jesus quoted most often. 

According to the chart referenced above, what follows is the New Testament's most quoted Psalm verse:

"Of David. A psalm."

"The Lord says to my lord: 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'" (Psalm 110-1).   

And why is that the most quoted verse?

God's authority is connected to Jesus and given to Him.

Researching this study, I found the following explanation with a segment that reads:

"The Bible bears abundant testimony that the Lord Jesus Christ has been given this place [right hand of God] of universal supremacy. Christ is not only above us in honor and power but is seated on the throne of God, above the heaven, the earth and all of God's creation, waiting for the time when every enemy is made a footstool for His feet, and the last enemy to be defeated is death." 

It is essential to understand that a seat at God's "right hand" is the universe's highest place of honor, signifying power second only to Him. And note that "footstool" references ancient kings sitting on their mighty thrones with conquered enemies literally under their feet. 

In the gospels, Psalm 110-1, all or in part, was requoted by Jesus and subsequently, numerous references. Shown below is where the verse appears, all or in part, in the New Testament:

Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42, 43; Acts 2:34, 35; Hebrews 1:13. Compare. Matthew 26:64; Mark 14:62; 16:19; Luke 22:69; 1 Corinthians 15:25; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3; 8:1; 10:12, 13; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22.

Now we turn to the second most quoted Psalm verse in the New Testament:

"The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalm 118:22-23). 

This verse is referenced in: Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10, 11; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11;  Eph 2:20; 1 Peter 2:4. 

The "cornerstone" — integral to the design and structure of a building was similar to Jesus — rejected by "the builders" in charge of the Law. In the three gospels mentioned above, Jesus quotes the Psalm and applies it to Himself during a confrontation in the temple courts when the chief priests questioned His authority: 

"Jesus said to them, 'Have you never read in the Scriptures: "'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes'"? (Matthew 21:42).

I love the Psalm 118:22 footnote in my NIV Study Bible that reads: 

"This stone disdained by the worldly powers, has become the most important stone in the structure of the new world order that God is bringing about through Israel."

We turn now to the third most requoted Psalm verse, also from Psalm 118. A familiar verse associated with Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday: 

"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD" (Psalm 118:26).

The verse is requoted in all four gospels: Matthew 21:9; 23:39; Mark 11:9; Luke 13:35; 19:38; John 12:13.

Let's read part of Psalm 118 because it encapsulates why Psalms are a poetic gift from God, filled with Messianic prophecies, relevant to the Divinity of Jesus, most quoted by Jesus, and why it is the Bible's most popular book: 

"I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

"Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!

"You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you.

"Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!" (Psalm 118: 21-29).

Those powerful verses never get old.

We conclude with another familiar Psalm verse spoken by Jesus from the cross:

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'”(Matthew 27:46).

That question repeats Psalm 22:1 — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In general, this Bible study series always emphasizes how the New Testament fulfills the old. Imagine how much thinner the New Testament would be without quotes or references from the Hebrew Bible?

Our lesson today is that Jesus quoted the Psalms more than any book because of His closeness to His Father about whom the Psalms were written. Thus, reading the Psalms brings you closer to The Father and The Son. 

I hope today’s study has renewed or sparked your interest in reading the Psalms. 

Amen!

Myra Kahn Adams is a conservative political and religious writer with numerous national credits. Her book, “Bible Study For Those Who Don’t Read The Bible,” reprints the first 56 volumes of this popular study. Myra is also Executive Director of SignFromGod.Org, a ministry dedicated to Shroud of Turin education. SignFromGod was a proud sponsor of the Museum of the Bible’s opening events for its high-tech exhibition about the Shroud of Turin, open through July 31. Contact: Umnministry@gmail.Com or Twitter @Umnministry 

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