How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth Lesson

The Word of God

As Evangelicals we believe that the Bible is the Word of God.

We also believe it is the way God speaks to us

We also stick to what the biblesays and put it above all else in our lives

We are people that quite literally take what the bible says and does it.

Yet are we good at interpreting the bible?

A Good Translation

Can Some people tell me the Translation you like to use when reading God’s Word?

Do you use One , Two or Many Translations?

One Translation

The Trouble with One Translation is that you only get the view point and interpreatation of one Scholar or Interpretor therfore you are at the peril of only their translation.

As we are not reading the Original Greek Or Hebrew we are therfore reading a translatied text of the bible.

Except some translations are good translations and others are more of a what is called a literal translation.

It doesnt mean a literal translation is a bad translation it just means you are getting the whole viewpoint of a new author of the text instead of what the original author wrote. Yet they are good to use to understand in mordern terms what was meant by the original author and gives an all round deeper understanding.

Example: Message Bible with the ESV.

The point of a translation is to actually understand what God originally intended in the writers writing.

Your hope in reading the bible is to get the Purpose and the Intent from the original author. What did they actually mean what was their purpose in writing a certain letter, Gospel or Psalm. What is God truely saying through this text.

Example of Using many translations to truley understand what God is saying.

Lets look at an Example of using many translations.

The following four translations of :

NKJV:

NKJV:

“If any man thinks that he is behaving improperly toward his virgin …”

NASB/U:

“If any man thinks that he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter …”

TNIV:

“If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to …”

NEB:

“If a man has a partner in celibacy and feels that he is not behaving properly towards her …”

ESV:

English Standard Version Chapter 7

If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed,

“If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, ”

What one of these is the correct translation?

The King James is to leteral and not very helpful here, what does it mean by Virgin could it be a daughter, wife or something else?

Does The King James help to anwser the question what does paul mean by this?

What about the ESV what does it mean by betrothed?

The best translation in this instance is the TNIV it is demonstrating clearly what paul is intentionaly writing to the corinthians. You can only be engaged to one person and that would be the person you wish to marry.

It shows you that paul is anwsering the Corinthains question of how do we treat our future wifes?

Do you see the need to look at different translations when you study?

When using or choosing your translations you should ask yourself, is this as close as possible to the original text.

Is it as close to the Hebrew or Greek as it can possibly get.

Different pieces of text and manuscripts that were made on ancient parchment yet the texts we have because of history and the decomposing of parchment we only have manuscripts from 1400. So when Choosing a Text to read you need to make sure it is as close to what the author intended as possible.

So you need to ask yourself this question

What Manuscripts does my translation use?

This is important because this will help you to truly understand how close the translation is to the Authors original intent and purpose of what God is saying.

Each manuscript is thousands of years old.

The KJV and NKJV only use manuscripts from the medieval times that were available to the translators these came from latin manuscripts that had already been translated.

Thus the translation misses the true intent of the author and the purpose of what was being said at that time.

At the time the KJV came around it was a great version to use because it spoke in the everyday language of the people. For example the use of words like “coals of fire”, “the skin of my teeth”, “tounges of fire” these were words used by people in their everyday language. It became essentially what the message version is to us today. A great bible to help christians understand the overally meaning of what was going on in that time and what God is saying through the text.

NKJV/NASU:

“he will take … your finest young men and your donkeys”

NRSV/TNIV:

“he will take … the best of your cattle and donkeys”

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth The Question of Text

The text of the NRSV/TNIV (“your cattle”) comes from the Septuagint, the usually reliable Greek translation of the Old Testament made in Egypt around 250–150 B.C. The NKJV/NASU follows the medieval Hebrew text, reading “young men,” a rather unlikely term to be used in parallel to “donkeys.” The origin of the miscopy in the Hebrew text, which the NKJV followed, is easy to understand. The word for “your young men” in Hebrew is bḥrykm, while “your cattle” is bqrykm (they’re as much alike as “television” and “telephone”—i.e., the error could not have been oral.) The incorrect copying of a single letter by a scribe resulted in a change of meaning.

The text of the NRSV/TNIV (“your cattle”) comes from the Septuagint, the usually reliable Greek translation of the Old Testament made in Egypt around 250–150 B.C. The NKJV/NASU follows the medieval Hebrew text, reading “young men,” a rather unlikely term to be used in parallel to “donkeys.” The origin of the miscopy in the Hebrew text, which the NKJV followed, is easy to understand. The word for “your young men” in Hebrew is bḥrykm, while “your cattle” is bqrykm (they’re as much alike as “television” and “telephone”—i.e., the error could not have been oral.) The incorrect copying of a single letter by a scribe resulted in a change of meaning. The Septuagint was translated some time before the miscopy was made, so it preserved the original “your cattle.” The accidental change to “your young men” was made later, affecting medieval Hebrew manuscripts, but too late to affect the premedieval Septuagint.

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth The Question of Text

Mark 1:2

NKJV:

“As it is written in the Prophets …”

TNIV:

“as it is written in Isaiah the prophet …”

The text of the TNIV is found in all the best early Greek manuscripts. It is also the only text found in all the earliest (second-century) translations (Latin, Coptic, and Syriac) and is the only text known among all the church fathers, except one, before the ninth century. It is easy to see what happened in the later Greek manuscripts. Since the citation that follows is a combination of Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3, a later copyist “corrected” Mark’s original text to make it more precise.

NKJV:

“As it is written in the Prophets …”

TNIV:

“as it is written in Isaiah the prophet …”

The text of the TNIV is found in all the best early Greek manuscripts. It is also the only text found in all the earliest (second-century) translations (Latin, Coptic, and Syriac) and is the only text known among all the church fathers, except one, before the ninth century. It is easy to see what happened in the later Greek manuscripts. Since the citation that follows is a combination of and , a later copyist “corrected” Mark’s original text to make it more precise.

What translation do you go for?

Formal Equivalence (literal)

Functional Equivalence (dynamic)

Functional Equivalence (dynamic)

Free

Free

Functional Equivalence (dynamic)

1. KJV

1. KJV NASB RSV NIV NAB GNB JB NEB LB

NASB

Free

NASB

RSV

RSV

NIV

1. KJV NASB RSV NIV

NIV

NAB

NAB

NIV NAB GNB

GNB

GNB

JB

JB

JB NEB LB

NEB

NEB

LB

LB

2. NKJV NASU NRSV, ESV TNIV NJB REB NLT The Message

2. NKJV NASU NRSV

2. NKJV

NASU

NASU

NRSV, ESV

NRSV, ESV

TNIV NJB REB NLT

TNIV

TNIV

NJB

NJB

NLT The Message

REB

REB

ESV

NLT

NLT

The Message

The Message

ESV

A well balanced one would be the anwser.

Fee, G. D., & Stuart, D. K. (1993). How to read the Bible for all its worth (3rd ed., p. 42). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

One that gets as close to the original text as possible but also keeping to the oringal intent of the author and is still relevant and understanable today.

Yet you cant find that all in one translation so a few should be used.

Interpretation

Interpretation

Have you ever heard.

“You don’t have to interpret the Bible; just read it and do what it says.”

Which in some ways is an admirable thing and it is the thing to do when you first become a christian to begin to understand what Christianity is about.

But if you have been a Christian for a while your going to want to put into practice what you have read.

To do that effectivley you have to learn how to interpret the text.

There are two ends of the scale when it comes to interpretation. One End of the Scale will say the following.

The “good news” is that God’s will for you is financial and material prosperity!

One of the advocates of this “gospel” begins his book by arguing for the “plain sense” of Scripture and claiming that he puts the Word of God first and foremost throughout his study. He says that it is not what we think it says but what it actually says that counts. The “plain meaning” is what he is after. But one begins to wonder what the “plain meaning” really is when financial prosperity is argued as the will of God from such a text as , “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (KJV)—a text that in fact has nothing at all to do with financial prosperity.

Another end of the Scale is this.

(“A woman must not wear men’s clothing”), argue that a woman should not wear slacks or shorts, because these are deemed to be “men’s clothing.

To say that women should not wear shorts in church or wear a skirt in church.

Yet how do we effectivley put into practice what the true meaning of the bible is?

We have to learn how to do something that Preachers and Scholars call Exergises

This is basically a historical task. It is the attempt to hear the Word as the original recipients were to have heard it, to find out what was the original intent of the words of the Bible.

How many times, for example, have you heard or said, “What Jesus meant by that was …” or, “Back in those days, they used to …”? These are exegetical expressions.

The key to good exegesis, and therefore to a more intelligent reading of the Bible, is to learn to read the text carefully and to ask the right questions of the text.

There are two basic kinds of questions one should ask of every biblical passage: those that relate to context and those that relate to content.

The questions of context are also of two kinds: historical and literary.

Historical Context

The historical context, which will differ from book to book, has to do with several things: the time and culture of the author and his readers, that is, the geographical, topographical, and political factors that are relevant to the author’s setting; and the occasion of the book, letter, psalm, prophetic oracle, or other genre. All such matters are especially important for understanding.

It simply makes a difference in understanding to know the personal background of Amos, Hosea, or Isaiah, or that Haggai prophesied after the exile, or to know the messianic expectations of Israel when John the Baptist and Jesus appeared on the scene, or to understand the differences between the cities of Corinth and Philippi and how these differences affected the churches in each.

The Literary Context

Whats the Point?

We must trace the authors train of thought

What is the author saying?

Having made the point what is he or she saying next?

The goal of Exergises is to find out what the original author intended.

To understand Literary we must understand content

“Content” has to do with the meanings of words, the grammatical relationships in sentences, and the choice of the original text where the manuscripts (handwritten copies) differ from one another.

Exergesis

To successfully do an Exergesis you need three good tools at your hand.

A good translation or two.

A good bible dictionary

And Good Commentaries.

Exercise

Exercise

When people come to study the book of Acts they come to do it as a devotion

Some people try to copy exactly what is writted in acts to today.

Which is fine and commendable but yet many miss the point of Acts and through some Good exergesis (Interpretation).

We are going to go on a treasure hunt and find out what the point of Acts is.

Chapter Analysis Form

Study.

Use Sheets Given To You

One is a Commentory (Step 3 and 5)

One is a Bible Handbook (Step 3)

Three Translations of The Bible (Step 4)

Follow the Steps

Step 1: Read the chapter a couple of times and write a summary of what is going on.

Step 2: This step begins the verse-by-verse analysis of the chapter. You start with the

activity of observation. In this step you are looking in detail at every sentence and

word and then writing down everything you see. You are trying to answer the question,

“What does it say?”

Step 3: After observing all you can in the passage under study, you are ready to move on

to interpretation. This step involves asking questions about meaning, then trying to

find answers to them. In this exercise you discover the biblical writer’s purpose and

message by uncovering what he means by his idea.

Interpretive questions include asking what or why. Some examples:

• Why did the writer say this?

• What is the meaning of ____________?

• What is the significance of ____________?

• What is the implication of ____________?

• Why is this important?

Remember to Check the Context on this step.

• Who is speaking?

• Who is being spoken to?

• When is it being spoken?

• Where is it being spoken?

• What is the occasion or circumstance?

• What is the main subject of the message?

• Is the aim of what is being said revealed?

• What other background material clarifies this statement?

Step 4: Compare Your Chapter with Other Scriptures.

Step 5: The last part of the verse-by-verse analysis is to write down some possible applications.

R emember that your goal in Bible study is not just interpretation but application.

Because of the many applications a chapter may have, you will only be

listing them here. Later on, in Step Seven, you will choose one of these to write out

and to work on for a week.

Step Six: Write down your concluding thoughts

Step 7: Write out the application you can do for the week.

Books Used.

How to Read the Bible for all its Worth by Gordon D, Fee and Douglas Stuart

Rick Warrens Bible Study Methods

ESV Bible, NIV Bible, Message Bible.

The Macarthur Bible Handbook

Life Application Bible Commentary