Bible Study Basics

Study your Bibles! Study your Bibles! The only way you will know the truth is if you study your Bibles!

Few are the Christians who have not heard this statement proclaimed time and again by elders and preachers, and very few are those who would disagree with the statement. While some do not read because of a "heart problem"-- not desiring, for whatever reason, to put the effort into Bible study, I fear that many desire to study their Bible and to understand God's Word, but for whatever reason have some difficulties in understanding exactly how to go about studying the Bible. Let us now consider some basics of studying the Bible.

Establish the type of Bible study. All Bible study is not the same-- there are different types of Bible study to suit different purposes in understanding. The three primary types of Bible study are survey studies, textual studies, and topical studies.

Survey studies are useful when starting out or when trying to get a better understanding of the "big picture" of the Biblical story. In a survey study of the Bible, you get to see the whole Bible and the major themes contained therein. Survey studies, however, only scratch the surface of the text-- the very broad scope of such a study, and the restraints of time, hinder any attempt to dig deeply into any given text. Having the "big picture" is very helpful, nevertheless, and there are many programs wherein you read the Bible in one year to give you that picture.

Textual study is the standard type of Bible study. In a textual study, you select a book of the Bible (say, 1 Corinthians), and you dig deeply into that text and try to understand everything going on in that text. While studying one book will not give you a broad picture of the entire Bible, such a textual study will fill in a part of that big picture. Just as one begins building a house by building a frame and then finishing each room in turn, it is profitable to first have an idea of the entire picture of the Bible and then fill in the details in good textual study (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15).

Topical study works well when attempting to ascertain what God desires for you to do in your life. A topical study is a study of all the various Scriptures that speak of a given topic (say, self-control). One must always try to keep the various contexts of the different passages in mind while engaging in a topical study, lest one come to a wrong conclusion, but topical studies on the whole can be very beneficial.

Once you have determined what type of study in which you intend to engage, you must then dig into the text and try to determine what the text is trying to communicate to you. The first goal in any Bible study is to understand the text-- once the text is understood in its own right, one can then draw application. If we are to understand the text, we are going to have to ask questions of the text and seek to find answers to them.

We must first seek to learn what we can about the author of the text. Yes, God is the ultimate author of the entire Bible (2 Timothy 3:16), but the Bible was written by men "moved by the Holy Spirit" to write (2 Peter 1:21). Different authors wrote to different people at different times for different reasons. To understand any given text, therefore, we must determine who was the author, about what time was he writing, when were the events of which he writes, to whom is he writing, and why he is writing. While we read the text, we must continue to ask ourselves these questions as they relate to the specific context. Does the audience change while the author writes? Why does the author present the material in the way he does? What is so special about a particular speech or story? We must answer these questions according to the text itself-- what is explicitly written and what we can infer necessarily.

After gaining an understanding of the author, audience, and specific purpose of what we're studying, we can then go on to read and ask questions of the material.

Who is involved? Who is speaking or acting? Who is hearing or receiving the action? Many times people will get easily confused because texts will have many different people under discussion. If this is the case, then take a piece of paper, and write down each name that you come across, and begin to write down what the text says about that person-- who s/he is related to, what s/he does, etc. That way you have your notes to help you sort out who is whom in the text.

When are the events occurring? This question is easier to answer if you have already determined when the author is writing and when the events of which he writes occurred. Nevertheless, texts on occasion will give you a big picture and then go back to fill in detail (cf. Genesis 1-2), will present a collection of sayings that are not dated and may not have been presented in exactly that order in time (cf. Hosea), or the text may indeed be presenting a series of events in proper progression.

What is going on? If you cannot understand the basic message of the text, you are not going to be able to understand much of anything about the text. It is important to establish a basic understanding of what the text is trying to relate. When there is a speech, what is the message of that speech? When there are events chronicled, what happened in those events? When these basic questions are understood, you can move on and gain a deeper understanding of the text at hand.

How do various matters relate? Why are things said or done as they are? Once basic understanding of the text is achieved, you can then try to relate the material in the text to itself. Why does a person respond to another in the way he does? How have previous actions led to the current situation, and what will be the result of the actions now taken? Why are various things said and done as they are? Answering these questions will help greatly in understanding the meaning of a text.

These are just some of many concepts that must be taken into consideration when studying the Bible. They are not necessarily easy, and they may require you to read a text over and over again. It is important for us to get as many of these answers as we can from our own study of the text and from the text itself. Let us study as we ought!

Ethan R. Longhenry
evangelist@norwalkchurch.org

Commentaries

Commentaries represent the two-edged sword of Bible study, so to speak. There is the potential for great benefit or great harm from their use or misuse.

Commentaries can be very helpful when used properly. They can help present parallel Scriptures to what is under discussion, can provide insights from our knowledge of history and culture, and sometimes can present interpretations that are more consistent with the rest of the Scriptures than what we considered on our own.

On the other hand, commentaries are written by men and often espouse the doctrines of men. Not a few commentators have used their commentaries as a means of proclaiming their deviant doctrines.

Commentaries can be good-- but always be watchful!

Ethan R. Longhenry
evangelist@norwalkchurch.org

The church of Christ in Norwalk, Ohio

Thank you for reading the electronic version of our bulletin, Good News for Norwalk. If you live in Norwalk or happen to be traveling in the Norwalk area, we would certainly love to have you visit one of our assemblies!

Our location:

386 North Edgewood Drive (just off US 250 just north of Norwalk's city limits)
Norwalk, Ohio 44857

Our assemblies:

Sunday morning assembly: 10:30am
Sunday evening assembly: 6:00pm

Our Bible studies:

Sunday morning Bible study: 9:30am
Wednesday evening Bible study: 7:00pm

For More Information

If you have any questions or comments about anything you have read here, or desire more information, please contact our evangelist, Ethan Longhenry, at evangelist@norwalkchurch.org.

Please click here to return to the 2006 archive of Good News for Norwalk, or click here to return to the main page of Good News for Norwalk. Thanks!