Bible Study Methods

When you open your mailbox, do you ever find mail that was delivered to your address by mistake? Have you ever accidentally opened mail for someone else? What if you just assumed that mail was for you? Would you pay someone else's bills? What if it was a personal correspondence? Would you jump into the conversation and write back to the sender, as if you were the original recipient?  

Have you ever received an email sent to you by mistake? Did you let the original sender know that they have sent the email to the wrong address? Did they say something that was funny or silly that you responded to? Were they pretending to be someone that they weren't? Did the sender of the email knowingly send the email to the wrong address, hoping to find a new customer, or some kind of opportunity?

When we approach the Bible, there are all sorts of questions about who is the Bible meant for, and how does a person read it effectively and appropriately? Is the Bible for today's readers, and if so... how?

Bible Study Methods attempt to help make sense of these questions.







Introduction

I. The Problems of Biblical Interpretation

1. Time Gap

2. Space Gap.

3. Culture Gap

4. Language Gap

II. The Process of Narrowing the Gaps

1. The Goal (of Biblical Interpretation)

2. How to fix the problem

III Perspective & Worldview (Presuppositions of Believers)

1. The Bible is God's Word

2. The Bible is inerrant

3. The Bible is unified

4. The Bible is authoritative

Basic Foundations of Christian Interpretation

I. Process of Bible Study

1. Observations

2. Interpretation

3. Application

II. Author, Audience, and Context

1. The Authors of Scripture

2. The Audience of Scripture

3. Context

III. Presuppositions Continued

What is the Bible? Old Testament

I. Arrangement, Timeline, & Authorship

II. Languages & Alphabets

III. Manuscripts Families & Translations

IV. Transmission & Textual Criticism

What is the Bible? New Testament

I. Arrangement, Timeline, & Authorship

II. Language & Alphabets

III. Text Type Families & Manuscripts

IV. Transmission & Textual Criticism

What is the Bible? Canonicity

I. Canonicity

II. Old Testament Canon

III. New Testament Canon

What is the Bible? English Translations

I. Methods of English Translations

II. History of English Translations

History of Biblical Interpretation and Philosophies

I. Value of Historical Interpretation

II. History of the Bible, Interpreters, and Translations

III. Conclusion

Observations - part 1

I. Observables

1. Lexical Syntactical Grammatical

2. Textual Content

3. Contextual Content

II. Diagramming

1. Purpose of Diagramming

2. Diagramming the text

III. How to do a Word Study

Observations - part 2

I. Figures of Speech

II. Genre features

III. Flow of the Text

III. Synthesis

Interpretation

I. Synthesis 

II. Principles of Interpretation 

III. Process of Interpretation 

IV. Theological Interpretation 

Application

I. Principalization

II. Application

III. Erroneous Methods of Interpretation








Helpful References

Highly Recommended Reading

Additional Texts:

Additional Resources: