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Bible Study- Reading Strategies

 If you read the last post in this series, hopefully you are committed to dwelling in the selected text in order to hear what it has to say. This post will give you some techniques and strategies for that process. Here we go!

1. Read aloud/ use an audio Bible. 

When the Bible was written, nobody could afford to have a copy of it. Books were extremely expensive because everything had to be hand copied. Therefore, the Scriptures were written to be heard in a public reading rather than read silently. The Bible is for our ears. That means that when we only read it silently, we are likely to miss some of what is there. Luckily for us, there are tons of great audio Bible resources out there to listen to (I use an app called Dwell. It requires a paid subscription, but it has a ton of useful features that free resources don't have, and paying the subscription motivates me to use it), and most of us are able to read aloud. I find that hearing the passage helps me notice repetition, emphasis, and unique or interesting aspects of my passage that I had previously missed. Generally, I think listening to the text a bunch is a good place to start.

2. Mark it up.

If I can, I print out every text I'm going to study. I turn the Word Doc to landscape layout and adjust the margins so that I have as much note-taking space as possible while keeping it all on one page. Then I go to town with colored pens and highlighters, marking everything that I notice in a way that will make sense to me later. Just like you'll never remember a meeting you don't put in your calendar, you'll never remember an observation or insight that you don't write down. Plus, getting more senses and body parts interacting with the text vastly improves your retention. 

3. Tailor your reading to the genre.

The Bible contains a wide variety of writing forms and styles, so we need to employ a wide variety of reading strategies, methods, and mindsets. Don't try to trace the argument of the Gospel according to John, because the Gospel of John is a story, not an argument. Don't try to draw out the timeline of the book of Revelation, because it's an apocalypse, not a timeline. You wouldn't make a plot arc for your vehicle manual, and you don't distill an episode of The Office into 3 moral platitudes when you describe it to a friend. These things are common sense to us, but we do very similar things when we read the Scriptures. There are tons of resources discussing biblical genres (including this podcast series I did with my Senior Pastor Tim Trudeau). This will change the way you read the Bible if you have not considered the issue of literary type before. 

4. Consciously commit to curiosity and imagination.

Untethered imagination can lead us to some strange interpretations, but I don't think my readers (all 10 of you) are untethered. You are bound by your respect for the Scriptures, love for God, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. So I want to encourage you to curious and imaginative. I wonder what the Isrealites saw as they looked into the wall of Red Sea water on their right and left. Maybe they saw a world as simultaneously beautiful and mysterious as the freedom that would meet them on the other side. Maybe they saw darkness as deep and suffocating as the spiritual and physical oppression they were leaving behind. That moment was about a lot more than socio-political independence, so let the text guide your imagination into the multi-faceted point the author is communicating. Similarly, let your curiosity and hunger for the truth of God trump your desire to perfectly understand the text. The Bible, the God who produced it, and the reality it describes are all incredibly complex, so fall in love with the mystery rather than idolizing understanding. Contrary to what we might think, this submission to the mystery will actually draw us into our Bibles. It produces a great desire for more because we recognize how much more there actually is. Sounds like fun doesn't it?!

Come back for the next article, where I'll discuss context and cross-referencing. 

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