Real Bible Study

The Nugget:

Jos 1:8  This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (KJV)

Jos 1:8 This law scroll must not leave your lips! You must memorize it day and night so you can carefully obey all that is written in it. Then you will prosper and be successful. (NET Bible)

Jos 1:8 Let this book of the law be ever on your lips and in your thoughts day and night, so that you may keep with care everything in it; then a blessing will be on all your way, and you will do well. (BBE, Bible in Basic English)

Jos 1:8 Never stop reading The Book of the Law he gave you. Day and night you must think about what it says. (Contemporary English Version)

My Comment:

Many who would read the Bible today need some help about how to understand it. Some people need to learn how to read old books! The Bible is a great work of literature. In that light, I share some quotations and thoughts about reading great literature and then apply these principles to the Bible itself.

I have shared these thoughts with students in my English classes:

“Literature is news that stays news.” Ezra Pound

“The Reader and His Taste”:

The goal is to adopt the adult attitude, “If I do not understand this or like it, there is something the matter with me and not the selection.” What do others find in this? What have others found in it? Why does it continue to be a favorite of discriminating people? It has often been said that Pilate did not judge Jesus but judged himself. So often this is true of us in relation to art. The selection is not on trial but we are. If we say we do not like a selection we indicate more of our own limitations than the limitations of the work of art. –Selected [From my English III lesson plan, Monday, Ninth Week, November 13, 1967, CTHS]

“What Makes a Classic”:

What makes a classic is not that it is praised by critics, expounded by professors, and studied in college classes, but that the great mass of readers, generation after generation, have found pleasure and spiritual profit in reading it. –Somerset Maugham [From my English III lesson plan, Tuesday, Ninth Week, November 13, 1967, CTHS]

New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge Note at 1 Corinthians 2:13

the words. This is a specific claim to verbal inspiration. Divine inspiration of Scripture is asserted also at 2Ti 3:16, as is the divine inspiration of the Scripture writers, 2Pe 1:21.

Failure to accept the Bible’s own testimony to itself has closed this Book to so-called “modern scholarship” (a misnomer if ever there was one!). Much modern scholarship is dishonest, for instead of explaining the Bible, it attempts to explain away the Bible, refusing to honestly come to grips with its claims and message.

In an effort to escape the Bible’s obvious message, dishonest scholarship has tried to deny its authenticity and authorship, ascribing, for example, the books of Moses to multiple late authorship;

denying the unity of Isaiah;

asserting that the gospels, particularly John, are of late origin, and do not reflect the so-called “historical Jesus.”

Some “modern scholarship” asserts the Gospels do not reflect true history but the views and traditions of the early Church of the third or fourth century—not explaining, of course,

(1) how books can be quoted or translated before they were written,

(2) or how such stupendous claims could be foisted upon a gullible public long after the possibility of disproof by eyewitnesses has passed.

The only way to get at the message of the Bible is to be completely open to its message.

To approach Scripture with humanistic and naturalistic (i.e. anti-theistic) presuppositions is to try to twist Scripture to fit a world view which it most emphatically will not support.

The only valid approach to Scripture is to be honest to its claims and message and grant its right to set forth a theistic, supernaturalistic world view.

To deny the possibility of miracle (as Hume and his modern counterparts) is to deny the possibility of history, for both are based upon the record of eye-witness testimony, and such denial is absurd.

There are more pathways to truth and knowledge than an arbitrarily narrowly defined so-called “scientific method.”

Like missing the right exit on a freeway, continued advance in the wrong direction is not progress; genuine progress will require a return to where we went wrong, and a fresh start in the right direction.

Much “scholarship” needs to recognize it has pursued a wrong path, and recognize that it needs to return to sound principles of former generations of reverent, truthful, believing scholarship.

It is neither truthful nor fair scholarship to approach a work of literature from a consistently unsympathetic and hostile world view in the attempt to legitimately understand its message.

Rather, in our attempt to understand a work of literature, we must let it speak for itself. The task of scholarship is to place the reader as close as possible in sympathetic relationship to the viewpoint of the original writer and recipients of the literary work, and not to attempt to explain it away in an effort to force it to agree with popular contemporary philosophical presuppositions. Mat 10:20, **Luk 8:15, **1Th 2:13, +*2Ti 3:16, 1Pe 1:10, 11, 2Pe 1:20, 21; 2Pe 3:1, 2.