How to Study the Bible

As you begin to study the Bible, determine your goals, methods, and resources. If you simply want to be a more careful reader of the Bible, perhaps begin by reading a small portion of the text daily with a Bible reading plan. If you want to put serious effort into learning the Bible, you will need to make a greater commitment. Such an approach may involve several hours a week of focused study and the use of resources such as commentaries. If pursuing this level of Bible study, you will benefit from acquiring at least one Bible dictionary and two kinds of commentaries—one-volume Bible commentaries and commentary volumes corresponding to individual books of the Bible are both valuable. Using these as you study the Bible passage by passage will provide you with some of the same help you would get if you were to study the Bible in an academic institution. There are also some basics that apply.

Take seriously the importance and quality of the book you’re studying.

Although we may wish the Bible were entirely clear, students of literature would never expect that from other important books. When it comes to the Bible, it should be obvious that we have to study the Bible to understand it.

Some writing—a newspaper story, for example—might be understood by almost any mature reader. Other writing—such as a Shakespearean play—might require readers to consult dictionaries, study guides, and other aids because of the nature of the language and the subject matter. Yet other writing—a calculus textbook, for example—might require years of prior study as well as patient, focused effort to understand even a single page. The Bible contains literature at all these levels: some parts any reader can follow, some parts that require help, and some that are difficult enough that even seasoned scholars struggle to comprehend them.

This is to be expected. A book claiming to be authored by the one whose thinking and communication can range from the simplest level to far above human understanding should require serious effort from seekers of its truth. It is naïve to think that the Bible differs from other literature in being automatically comprehensible, or that our good intentions and love of God will overcome our need to study in order to appreciate the quality of the ideas He has put into writing for us.

Respect the Bible’s genres.

No serious Bible student can ignore the various genres in the Bible. Ten predominate: narrative, law, wisdom, psalms, and prophecy in the Old Testament; and gospel, parable, Acts, letter, and apocalypse in the New Testament. To understand and appreciate the Bible’s content, each of these genres must be read differently.

Consider two examples: Parables are stories told to willing students, not those who refuse to bother with what seems irrelevant to them (Matt 13:10–17). Thus, they resemble puzzles, containing punch lines that help willing readers see a truth they might have otherwise missed. Western culture is not used to parables, but with reasonable study, the parables of the New Testament reveal a great deal about the nature of God’s kingdom.

Similarly, proverbs, part of Old Testament Wisdom Literature, frequently present life’s choices in a semi-riddle fashion, which require that readers take time to understand them. Those who work out the meaning of a proverb often read it repeatedly and thus learn its content while trying to understand its point.

Respect the format.

The format of the Bible requires appreciating it as an anthology of many books, each of which has its own integrity: Readers of the Bible must start by recognizing the genre of a given book and then reading it as both a unique piece of literature and one that contributes to the overall message of the anthology. The Bible is an integrated and univocal text that benefits the reader at both the individual book level and as a whole.

Respect the historical sweep and context.

In one sense, the Bible is like a world epic: It covers the sweep of history from the very beginning of creation to the end of history when our universe is radically transformed. Biblical books always deal with something that is part of this very big picture—the story of God’s creation, its fall, His ongoing redemption of it, and/or the ultimate consummation of all the hopes of God’s people for a permanent establishment characterized by God’s goodness. Few other books, even other religious scriptures, resemble the scope of the Bible.

Respect the multidisciplinary nature of careful study.

There are several different ways to look at any piece of literature. In the case of the Bible, it pays to look from every angle that might yield a payoff. It is convenient to think of 11 such angles, or steps, in the study process:

1. Text—Seeking the original wording to avoid treating a scribal error that accidentally crept into the text as original. (Translations and study notes already depend on this scholastic research.)

2. Translation—Studying how to best convey in a modern language the concepts conveyed by the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. (Consulting multiple translations and study notes aids in this process.)

3. Grammar—Analyzing the language of the passage under consideration to be sure it is not misunderstood. (Even one-volume commentaries will often explain these issues.)

4. Lexical content—Seeking the correct meaning of individual words and phrases found in a passage. (Study notes, commentaries, and Bible software aid in this process.)

5. Form—Studying the literary category and the characteristics that make any passage special. (Study Bible articles on genre serve this process.)

6. Structure—Analyzing the way that the elements of a passage are ordered and how that affects its meaning. (A careful reading of the biblical text, especially with the aid of commentaries, makes this possible.)

7. Historical context—Studying the milieu in which the Bible was revealed, which helps yield the point of its contents. (One-volume commentaries and study notes, like those of Faithlife Study Bible, are designed to reveal this.)

8. Literary context—Studying how a passage fits within the book of which it is a part and how that affects its meaning. (Examining how a passage relates to those before and after it, and to the book as a whole, helps with this interpretive step.)

9. Biblical context—Analyzing what a passage contributes to the Bible as a whole and what the rest of the Bible contributes to understanding the passage. (Reading through the Bible as a whole, and reading passages that are cross-referenced, help with this.)

10. Application—Seeking to conform beliefs and actions to the guidance the Bible imparts. (Act on what the Bible says.)

11. Secondary literature—Examining the wisdom and diligent study of others as they have put it into books and articles. (This step should be used throughout study, but is usually best to do after attempting to draw your own conclusions, and is best done in conversation with other believers in Jesus.)

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, and don’t go it alone.

As you read through the Bible, look up anything you don’t fully know or understand. Make use of the many good resources available to help you be a better student of the Bible than you would be on your own.

Bible dictionaries give an overview and a brief analysis of virtually any topic mentioned in the Bible, and they also connect that information to the various books and major doctrines of Scripture. Likewise, Bible commentaries explain Bible passages from an expert angle. Reading with a good study Bible provides additional help. Such resources introduce Bible books and special topics, and provide aids that explain the particular verse or passage under investigation.

Take notes, like a good reader should.

If you rely entirely on your own memory, you’ll eventually lose many valuable insights. But if you develop an external memory—your notes of observations or what you’ve learned—you will preserve them. Writing down what you have learned also forces you to express your thoughts more cogently and carefully than if you merely relied on memory. Memory fades with time, but written notes provide you with an element of stability and continuity for what you’ve learned in Bible study.

Respect the difference between words and concepts.

Most people are not aware of the difference between words and concepts, yet respecting these differences is essential to accurately interpreting the Bible. For example, in Luke 10 when Jesus illustrates what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself,” He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. This account does not include the words “love,” “neighbor,” or “self,” but the story richly includes the concept of loving neighbor as self and shows how that concept works in an exemplary illustration.

A significant aspect of Bible study is understanding the words used in the text. But even more important is understanding the concepts used—the point, significance, or meaning of a passage, verse, statement, or word.

Pray for help and study with other Christians.

Ask God for help and guidance in your Bible study. God will empower you with the desire, patience, and discernment to recognize the simple truths of the Bible and understand the complicated concepts. In addition, read the Bible in Christian community, as that is a critical component of growing as a Christian.

Biblical Theology

Biblical theology is theology drawn from the Bible rather than theology applied to the biblical text. Biblical theology helps Christians understand the broad biblical message, discern developments in the canon—the authoritative collection of Scripture—and see how each particular text fits in with the larger story of Scripture. In studying biblical theology, interpreters are trying to determine across the entire canonical spectrum what the authors of the Bible thought or believed in their own historical contexts.

Historical research plays a significant role in biblical theology, as interpreters focus on understanding what the biblical texts meant for the original author and readers, rather than on the development of doctrine over time (which is called historical theology). Before Christians can apply Scripture accurately to the present or systematize it around various topics, they must first interpret it correctly in its historical context and with its original intended meaning. Biblical theology lays a foundation upon which other fields—such as systematic theology and practical theology—can build.

The title of this article includes an all-important assumption: the Bible is not just a diverse assortment of stories and materials; it altogether comprises a master narrative. This is not to say that the Bible is written like a novel with a tight, simple plotline—not at all. It contains many individual stories and a lot of nonnarrative material. But just as J. R. R. Tolkien produced thousands of pages of narratives, poetry, articles, maps, and even lexicons over the course of decades in order to tell one very sweeping story, so God, the author of every part of the Bible, is also telling one overarching story about the real world he created. There is a basic plotline to which all the parts relate and which makes sense of all the pieces.

The Bible begins with God making the world “very good” (Gen 1:31)—without the corruption, decay, and death that now dominate the world (Rom 8:20–21). In the world he placed human beings as his masterpiece, made in his image to reflect his own glory (Gen 1:27). We were created to adore and serve God and to love others. If we had chosen to live like that, we would have enjoyed a completely happy life and a perfect world. But instead, we wanted God to serve us and do what we wanted because we made our will the sovereign measure of all things. Instead of living for God and loving our neighbor, we turned away to live self-centered lives (Gen 3:1–7). Because our relationship with God has been broken, all other relationships—with other human beings, with our very selves, and with the created world—are also ruptured (Gen 3:8–19). The result is spiritual, psychological, social, and physical decay and breakdown. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” (William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”)—that describes the world under sin now.

How did God respond? Did he respond with wrath toward the human race or with love? The answer is yes—to both (Rom 1:18; John 3:16). God insists on truth, demands that we do right, and threatens to punish all disobedience and evil. Nonetheless, he pursues the human race in love, declaring his intention to save and not allow all to perish in their sin. The Lord calls a people to himself in order to create a new human society—people who know his holy character and his law, his love, and his grace. This community began as an extended family (Gen 12:1–8) out of which God created an entire nation: the people of Israel, whom God delivered from slavery and established under Moses. With this people God made a covenant in which he promised to be their loving God and they promised to be his faithful people (Exod 19:1–8). But the history of this covenant relationship is one of almost unrelieved failure of the people to be what God called them to be.

The best and most compelling stories have high stakes and astonishing, unexpected resolutions. If that is the case, there has never been a greater story than this. The stakes are literally cosmic: everyone and everything is at stake. It seems impossible that God could be true to himself—fully good and loving, fully righteous and just—and still save us. It seems impossible that after all we have done there should be any hope. But victory is achieved through one man’s infinite sacrifice on the cross, where God both punishes sin fully yet provides free salvation, where he is revealed as both just and justifier of those who believe (Rom 3:26). Jesus stands as the ultimate protagonist, the hero of heroes.

The Bible, then, is not a collection of Aesop-like fables, fictional stories that give us insights on how to find God and live right. Rather, it is both true history and a unified story about how God came to find us in the person of Jesus Christ, who lived and died in our place so we could be saved by grace through faith and live with him forever in a remade world, the Garden-City of God (Rev 21–22). From this basic plot there emerge profound insights, principles, and directives on how to live. But the Bible is not primarily about us and what we should do. It is first and foremost about Jesus and what he has done.

This is the Greatest Story not merely because of its infinitely high stakes and the endless wonder of its resolution but also because of its transforming power. How different is the Bible’s story from the dominant one told in the Western world today—that we are accidents, here for no purpose other than what we create for ourselves, living in a world that is marked by one operative principle: the survival of the strong over the weak. Just as MacIntyre’s response to the incident at the bus stop will be completely determined by what he discovers the story to be about, how we respond to suffering, death, sex, money, and power will be profoundly influenced by whether we understand and believe the story of the Bible about Jesus—or not.

It has been said that the Bible is like a body of water in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim. The youngest Christian can read the Bible with profit, for the Bible’s basic message is simple (see “The Story of the Bible: How the Good News About Jesus Is Central,” p. 2319, and “The Gospel,” p. 2372). But we can never exhaust its depth. After decades of intense study, the most senior Bible scholars find that they have barely scratched the surface. Although we cannot know anything with the perfection of God’s knowledge (his knowledge is absolutely exhaustive!), yet because God has disclosed things, we can know those things truly.

Trying to make sense of parts of the Bible and of the Bible as a whole can be challenging. What kind of study should be involved when any serious reader of the Bible tries to make sense of the Bible as a whole? Appropriate study involves several basic interdependent disciplines, of which five are mentioned here: careful reading, biblical theology (BT), historical theology (HT), systematic theology (ST), and pastoral theology (PT). What follows looks at each of these individually and shows how they interrelate and how they are more than merely intellectual exercises.

CAREFUL READING

“Exegesis” is the word often used for careful reading. Exegesis answers the questions, What does this text actually say? and, What did the author mean by what he said? We discover this by applying sound principles of interpretation to the Bible.

Fundamental to reading the Bible well is good reading. Good readers pay careful attention to words and their meanings and to the ways sentences, paragraphs, and longer units are put together. They observe that the Bible is a book that includes many different styles of literature—stories, laws, proverbs, poetry, prophecy, history, parables, letters, apocalyptic, and much more. Good readers follow the flow of texts. For example, while it is always worth meditating on individual words and phrases, the most important factor in determining what a word means is how the author uses that word in a specific context.

One of the best signs of good exegesis is asking thoughtful questions that drive us to “listen” attentively to what the Bible says. As we read the text again and again, these questions are progressively honed, sharpened, corrected, or discarded.

BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

BT answers the question, How has God revealed his word historically and organically? BT studies the theology of individual biblical books (e.g., Isaiah, the Gospel of John), of select collections within the Bible (e.g., the Pentateuch, wisdom literature, the Gospels, Paul’s letters, John’s writings), and then traces out themes as they develop across time within the canon (e.g., the way in which the theme of the temple develops, in several directions, to fill out a “whole Bible” theology of the temple). At least four priorities are essential:

1. Read the Bible progressively as a historically developing collection of documents. God did not provide his people with all of the Bible at once. There is a progression to his revelation, and to read the whole back into some early part may seriously distort that part by obscuring its true significance in the flow of redemptive history. This requires not only organizing the Bible’s historical material into its chronological sequence but also trying to understand the theological nature of the sequence.

chiasm — A literary structure where parallel elements correspond in an inverted order (i.e., A-B-C-Cʹ-Bʹ-Aʹ).

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you’?”

Moses said to the LORD, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”

14 Then the LORD’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. 15 You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do.

12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.

17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” 18 So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle.

By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. 22 Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, “What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!”

As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

יְשׁוּעָה (yĕšûʿâ). n. fem. salvation, deliverance, victory, help

19 Then the angel of God, who was going in front of the Israelite forces, moved and went behind them. The pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and stood behind them. 20 It came between the Egyptian and Israelite forces. There was cloud and darkness, it lit up the night, and neither group came near the other all night long.

21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back with a powerful east wind all that night and turned the sea into dry land. So the waters were divided, 22 and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on their right and their left.

The water came back and covered the chariots and horsemen, plus the entire army of Pharaoh that had gone after them into the sea. Not even one of them survived.

29 But the Israelites had walked through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on their right and their left. 30 That day the LORD saved Israel from the power of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 When Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and believed in him and in his servant Moses.