How To Study The Bible

 

I. Essential Preparations for Biblical Exegesis

Successful biblical study requires specific spiritual and academic preparations prior to engaging with the text.

The Right Heart Attitude

The student must approach the text with four specific dispositions:

• A New Heart: Requiring the Holy Spirit as a guide to understand spiritual truths.

• A Hungry Heart: Possessing an intense, persevering desire to know God's will.

• An Obedient Heart: Demonstrating a passion to actively perform God's will, which turns academic knowledge into wisdom.

• A Humble Heart: Maintaining a willingness to learn from others and correct erroneous thinking.

The Right Convictions and Tools The student must operate under the conviction that the Bible is the inspired word of God, consisting of 66 books written by roughly 40 authors over 1500 years, conveying a singular message of mankind's redemption. Essential tools include notebooks, reference materials (commentaries, lexicons, concordances), and an understanding of Bible translation principles:

• Literal Translations: Translates word-for-word. While it offers a close rendering of original texts, it can be stiff to read. (Recommended as the primary study Bible).

• Dynamic Equivalence: Translates the meaning of the words rather than literal phrasing, offering higher readability but distancing the reader from the original vocabulary.

• Paraphrase: Translates original languages into modern colloquial equivalents.

II. Step One: Observation (What the Scripture Says)

Observation requires a meticulous, objective investigation of the text before drawing any interpretative conclusions.

Structural Diagrams To see the "big picture," students should create structural diagrams. This visual tool involves separating the passage into significant clauses and indenting subordinate clauses under primary ones to clearly map how thoughts relate to one another.

Key Elements to Observe During repeated readings, the student must scrutinize the text for specific structural and grammatical elements:

Element Category	Specific Details to Identify PDF
Key Words	Words essential to meaning that answer Who, What, When, Where, and How.
Connectives	Words linking ideas (e.g., but, therefore, because, in order that) indicating reasons, conditions, or conclusions.
Grammar	Verb tenses and numbers, noun relationships, and precise descriptions by adverbs and adjectives.
Literary Devices	Repetitions, progressions of ideas, rhetorical questions, and emphatic statements revealing emotion.
Comparisons & Contrasts	The association of opposite things (often signaled by "but") or similar things (similes and metaphors).
Logic Flow	Cause-and-effect relationships ("If... then") and explanations justifying a command or action.

III. Step Two: Interpretation (What the Scripture Means)

The goal of interpretation (Hermeneutics) is exclusively to discover what the original author meant, guarding against personal biases.

The Six Principles of Hermeneutics

• Context is Paramount: Scripture must be interpreted in light of surrounding verses, the wider chapter, the entire book, and ultimately, the entire Bible.

• Scripture Interprets Scripture: Interpretations must correlate with the teachings of the Bible as a whole; a biblical interpretation of another passage is definitively correct.

• Proper Definitions: Students must uncover the correct meaning of original words utilizing Bible dictionaries, contextual clues, and concordances.

• Grammatical Conformity: Interpretations must strictly adhere to the grammatical rules of the text, correctly identifying subjects, verbs, and pronoun antecedents.

• Historical and Cultural Background: The student must bridge the temporal and cultural gap by researching the era, geography, and customs of the biblical authors using encyclopedias and atlases.

• Literal Meaning First: Passages should be interpreted according to their normal, literal meaning unless linguistic devices (such as poetry, hyperbole, parables, or prophetic symbolism) explicitly dictate a secondary meaning.

The Quest for Meaning To synthesize these principles, the student must ask targeted questions regarding the text's meaning (e.g., "Is this phrase literal?"), its significance (e.g., "Why did the author use this specific word?"), and its implications.

IV. Step Three: Application (What the Scripture Means to Us)

The ultimate objective of Bible study is to incarnate God's word into daily life. Without application, study yields only head knowledge, not spiritual wisdom.

The SPACE Acrostic This tool helps uncover personal applications within a text:

• Sins to confess.

• Promises to claim.

• Attitudes or Actions to adopt or avoid.

• Commands to obey.

• Examples to follow.

• (Plus) Truths to believe.

When developing broader application principles from a text, they must represent universal truths that transcend time and culture, and they must be entirely supported by the preceding observational and interpretative work.

V. Modalities of Study and Teaching

The principles of exegesis can be applied across different scopes of study and methods of teaching.

Methods of Study

• Book Study: Analyzing an entire biblical book. This requires preliminary research into the human author, historical setting, date of writing, and primary purpose, followed by charting the specific topics covered in each chapter.

• Character Study: Examining the complete life of a biblical figure. Students use exhaustive concordances to compile every passage mentioning the character, mapping out chronological events to isolate spiritual truths.

• Topical Study: Investigating a specific theological or general subject (e.g., salvation, marriage) by tracing all related verses throughout the scriptures to form a comprehensive doctrine.

Methods of Expository Teaching Teaching should aim to explain the meaning and application of the text clearly and accurately.

• Verse-by-Verse: A sequential explanation of each verse in a passage, ensuring a thorough handling of the individual texts alongside relevant illustrations.

• Thematic: Organizing the individual truths uncovered in a passage around a single, central supporting theme, presenting the text logically rather than strictly chronologically.