In-Depth Bible Study

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Adam
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by Adam »

Bootstrap wrote:
Adam wrote:All of the above. I am not limited to those writing from an Anabaptist perspective. I am just curious to see how others dig down deep into the Scripture and what methods they use.
So how do you currently approach this? You obviously have done a fair bit of in-depth Bible study yourself ...
I wanted to give a few examples of how translation and in-depth Bible study are different. To do an excellent translation of the book of Matthew, I do not need to know any of the following, but these would all be aspects of good in-depth Bible study:

-Matthew is structured into 5 teaching units, probably as a parallel to the five books of Moses, thus showing that Jesus is a new Moses. Similarly, the narrative of Matthew unfolds in such a way as to parallel the story of the Old Testament, with the great commission being reminiscent of Cyrus's call to return to Israel at the end of 2 Chronicles (the last book of the Jewish Bible).

-The three groups of 14 generations in the genealogy of Jesus set the stage for Jesus as the seventh seven, which signals absolute perfection and completion.

-The first beatitude and last beatitude end with "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven". This is an inclusio that signals the beginning and end of this particular literary unit.

-The eight beatitudes match eight curses (at least in the Byzantine text) that appear later in the text.

-While Matthew is considered by many modern scholars to be written after Mark and after the year AD 70, the early church believed that Matthew was the first gospel written.

Again, it is not really necessary to know any of these things to do a really good translation of what Matthew actually says. In fact, a good translation should capture many of the literary and stylistic units without even knowing that they are there. (Although it doesn't hurt to know that they are there.) So that gives more detail as to what I mean when I say that translation and in-depth Bible study are quite different.
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MaxPC
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by MaxPC »

I agree, Adam. The level of depth you're seeking is one I've seen taught in seminaries but not in kits for the average person, at least in Catholic World. We were taught to use the inductive method with an excellent commentary, an excellent Bible dictionary, and a simple notebook to track our inductive analysis.

I'm sure your knowledge base is beyond the average Bible study kit. Here's a good article on how to use the inductive method and hopefully it helps.
How to use the inductive Bible study method.
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Max (Plain Catholic)
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Neto
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by Neto »

In respect to what Adam has already said regarding the differences between translation & personal devotional Bible study, I will echo that. I find at times that the approach to the Scriptures necessary for translation can interfere with personal Bible study. What I mean is that my thoughts wander from "How should the text influence my life?" to "How would I translate this for the Banawa people?" It is different because as much as I have 'become Banawa' in my thinking, I am still from a different unique culture, and culture influences not only how we look at Scripture, but also what we need to hear from Scripture.

Let's be honest, and admit that there are assumptions we make before we approach this sort of task - that is, we accept a particular attitude toward the text. The decision (whether conscious or not) regarding how the "best reading" of the Greek text comes to us will influence our preference for one English text over another. If we follow the textual theory that the oldest Eastern texts, often fewer in number, should be given comparatively more weight than the more numerous later Western texts, then we will favor English translations like the NASB & NIV over KJV & NKJV, or even the ESV.

In translation work I avoided commentaries until I had formed a basic understanding of the text myself, based on study of the Greek text, and several translations in different languages. For Banawa translation, I also studied the text in Jamamadi, a closely related language, so close in fact that I can often easily read it with understanding. I don't speak a wide range of languages, so in addition to English translations, I read the Portuguese in several versions, the NVI (similar in approach as the NIV), Almeida (an old translation in Brazilian Portuguese with the same the textual presuppositions as of the KJV), Linguagem de Hoje (basically the Good News for Modern Man. This version is the most widely read & understood by the back-woods Brazilians, who speak a significantly different version of Portuguese than do city Brazilians), and one translation in Iberian Portuguese. If I spoke German, or if I understood PA German significantly better than I do, I would read those translations as well. Looking at the commentaries was the last step, and I seldom looked at what I call 'devotional commentaries' at all (for translation work). There are not a great number of exegetical commentaries available, and they would be pretty dry for devotional Bible study, but they are the ones I found most useful for translation work. One of our translation consultants once told me "You don't need to read everything in the commentaries - just for the passages where there are textual problems or questions." (Her underlying meaning was that I was taking more time than necessary in study before translating.) My response was that I often didn't know there WAS a textual problem until I read the commentaries, and she did agree with that.

The main thing I do in personal Bible study/reading is to go slow. Read it over & over (as several others have already said). After having read the Scriptures many many times through, we can easily just skim over the familiar passages. That's where reading in a different language, even if (and to some extent because) we have to struggle a bit to understand it, can help us to listen to the text in a deeper way. No two languages will express the same idea in exactly the same way, that is, the common assumption of monolingual people is that there is a high degree of one-to-one correspondence between different languages. I have not found that to be true.

[An example of a textual issue that a translator must deal with: In Acts 11, where Peter receives the men sent from Cornelius, in one of the places where the Western texts have 'three' (and some later texts omit the number all together), the oldest texts have 'two'. There is no devotional benefit in trying to determine what the original text said, but the translator must choose. We know from the earlier part of the account that Cornelius sent two servants and one God-fearing soldier. In textual criticism, and in translation work, we ask "What is the most logical original reading? That is, a textual change will not likely change from an easily understood one to a more difficult one, so the most likely reading is that it said 'two', and scribes later either omitted the number or changed it to 'three' to eliminate what they saw as a conflict or error. (Even the NIV renders it as 'three', but personally I think it should be 'two', because I think that the two servants are the ones being referred to, and personally suspect that they were Jewish servants.)]
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Bootstrap
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by Bootstrap »

Adam wrote:As strange as it may sound, translation work is different from in-depth Bible study.
Very much so. I recently attended my first Bible translation conference, but I have very little background in Bible translation.

A few more things to clear up: the approach that I outlined is a fundamentally inductive approach. It is not about "the linguistics and semantics of translations", it is about studying the text and not translating it. I did not advocate the historical-critical method, I don't think I use it.

Obviously personal and practical application of Scripture is the goal, but in-depth Bible study helps us understand the text so that we are applying what it actually says. Not everyone does in-depth Bible study, not everyone needs to, but it's helpful for the body to have some people who do.
Adam wrote:In fact, one of the temptations that translators face it trying to get their translation to also be an interpreter and Bible teacher. I think there is a lot of danger in that because it becomes very easy to slip your own thoughts and interpretations into the text. I wrote a blog post on this topic that you can read at the following link (http://pngboyd.blogspot.com/2017/09/tra ... style.html). I believe that our go-to translations should be in the ESV, NASB, NKJV camp. For languages like Enga, an ESV-style translation is virtually impossible. The best we can hope for is more of an NIV or NLT. (I find that to be quite frustrating by the way.) Translations like NLT, CEV, MESSAGE, etc. can be helpful to bring out some of the flavor of the source text, but they are only useful because we already have very good literal English translations that we can turn to to find out "what the text actual says". Of course, no translation can tell us exactly what the source text actually says, but translations like ESV, NASB, NKJV come pretty close.
I"d be interested in your feelings on HCSB, I find it does a pretty good job of being readable while still being accurate.

But for in-depth Bible study, I think the takeaway is that there are different kinds of translations for different purposes, and we should be aware of that when we study the Bible. I find the ESV, NASB, and NKJV to be very similar, making the same translation decisions when a passage can be legitimately understood more than one way, so I generally recommend that people use one translation from this group together with two translations outside this group - perhaps HCSB, NLT, etc.
Adam wrote:IWhen I come upon difficult verses, I am more of a mental processor and I spend time thinking deeply about the text. (I know that sounds a bit loosey-goosey, but it is honestly what I do and it is helpful.) I will also consult commentaries, cross-references, lexicons, various translations, etc. I am a bit leery of commentaries and don't find them particularly helpful with difficult translation decisions. Reading the Greek is usually quite helpful. But I would like to pursue some more concrete methods to help me interact with the text. That is why I am asking what others do because I think I will benefit from more hands-on interaction.
What these more concrete methods have in common is that they get you to interact with and see what is there, seeing the details in an individual sentence or clause or phrase, seeing how what is said in one sentence relates to the next, seeing the bigger picture for an entire passage ... and really, anything that helps you do that is good. As human beings, anything that makes us do something active is helpful - writing notes in the margins, drawing with colored pencils, reading the text out loud, annotating the text with tools like hypothes.is. Some of this is at a fine level of detail - perhaps noticing the relationship between two verbs. Some of this ties the larger patterns together - writing headings in the margins, drawing lines between parts of the text that are related.

But the hands-on part is only part of a bigger picture. Long prayerful walks, talking things out with other people, journaling, etc. are also really important to me for really understanding a text.

Manuscript Bible study is a very hands-on approach to inductive Bible study. I like the first two books mentioned on this page:

https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/ ... /resources

I have not looked at the other things it mentions. InterVarsity has really good resources for manuscript Bible study.
Adam wrote:I have also started reading a book called Deep Exegesis by Peter Leithart. It looks quite interesting, and I really like the Christocentric approach to exegesis.
Tell me about it, I don't know this book.
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MaxPC
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

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Neto wrote:In respect to what Adam has already said regarding the differences between translation & personal devotional Bible study, I will echo that. I find at times that the approach to the Scriptures necessary for translation can interfere with personal Bible study. What I mean is that my thoughts wander from "How should the text influence my life?" to "How would I translate this for the Banawa people?" It is different because as much as I have 'become Banawa' in my thinking, I am still from a different unique culture, and culture influences not only how we look at Scripture, but also what we need to hear from Scripture.

Let's be honest, and admit that there are assumptions we make before we approach this sort of task - that is, we accept a particular attitude toward the text. The decision (whether conscious or not) regarding how the "best reading" of the Greek text comes to us will influence our preference for one English text over another. If we follow the textual theory that the oldest Eastern texts, often fewer in number, should be given comparatively more weight than the more numerous later Western texts, then we will favor English translations like the NASB & NIV over KJV & NKJV, or even the ESV.

In translation work I avoided commentaries until I had formed a basic understanding of the text myself, based on study of the Greek text, and several translations in different languages. For Banawa translation, I also studied the text in Jamamadi, a closely related language, so close in fact that I can often easily read it with understanding. I don't speak a wide range of languages, so in addition to English translations, I read the Portuguese in several versions, the NVI (similar in approach as the NIV), Almeida (an old translation in Brazilian Portuguese with the same the textual presuppositions as of the KJV), Linguagem de Hoje (basically the Good News for Modern Man. This version is the most widely read & understood by the back-woods Brazilians, who speak a significantly different version of Portuguese than do city Brazilians), and one translation in Iberian Portuguese. If I spoke German, or if I understood PA German significantly better than I do, I would read those translations as well. Looking at the commentaries was the last step, and I seldom looked at what I call 'devotional commentaries' at all (for translation work). There are not a great number of exegetical commentaries available, and they would be pretty dry for devotional Bible study, but they are the ones I found most useful for translation work. One of our translation consultants once told me "You don't need to read everything in the commentaries - just for the passages where there are textual problems or questions." (Her underlying meaning was that I was taking more time than necessary in study before translating.) My response was that I often didn't know there WAS a textual problem until I read the commentaries, and she did agree with that.

The main thing I do in personal Bible study/reading is to go slow. Read it over & over (as several others have already said). After having read the Scriptures many many times through, we can easily just skim over the familiar passages. That's where reading in a different language, even if (and to some extent because) we have to struggle a bit to understand it, can help us to listen to the text in a deeper way. No two languages will express the same idea in exactly the same way, that is, the common assumption of monolingual people is that there is a high degree of one-to-one correspondence between different languages. I have not found that to be true.

[An example of a textual issue that a translator must deal with: In Acts 11, where Peter receives the men sent from Cornelius, in one of the places where the Western texts have 'three' (and some later texts omit the number all together), the oldest texts have 'two'. There is no devotional benefit in trying to determine what the original text said, but the translator must choose. We know from the earlier part of the account that Cornelius sent two servants and one God-fearing soldier. In textual criticism, and in translation work, we ask "What is the most logical original reading? That is, a textual change will not likely change from an easily understood one to a more difficult one, so the most likely reading is that it said 'two', and scribes later either omitted the number or changed it to 'three' to eliminate what they saw as a conflict or error. (Even the NIV renders it as 'three', but personally I think it should be 'two', because I think that the two servants are the ones being referred to, and personally suspect that they were Jewish servants.)]
:up: :clap:
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Max (Plain Catholic)
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Bootstrap
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by Bootstrap »

MaxPC wrote:Here's a good article on how to use the inductive method and hopefully it helps.
How to use the inductive Bible study method.
This article, like many other articles on inductive Bible study, tells people to start by reading The Student, The Fish, and Agassiz. That was the first thing we read in InterVarsity's inductive Bible study workshop, and it's a good place to start.
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Bootstrap
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

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Neto wrote:Let's be honest, and admit that there are assumptions we make before we approach this sort of task - that is, we accept a particular attitude toward the text. The decision (whether conscious or not) regarding how the "best reading" of the Greek text comes to us will influence our preference for one English text over another. If we follow the textual theory that the oldest Eastern texts, often fewer in number, should be given comparatively more weight than the more numerous later Western texts, then we will favor English translations like the NASB & NIV over KJV & NKJV, or even the ESV.
For what it's worth, I basically assume none of us are real experts in textual criticism, so I am wary of arguments based on which Greek text is best. I still think that the Oxford Debates is one of the best overviews of the issues, even though 120 years have passed.

But I think it's helpful to see the differences in major readings. Many New Testaments show that in footnotes even in English editions.
Neto wrote:An example of a textual issue that a translator must deal with: In Acts 11, where Peter receives the men sent from Cornelius, in one of the places where the Western texts have 'three' (and some later texts omit the number all together), the oldest texts have 'two'. There is no devotional benefit in trying to determine what the original text said, but the translator must choose.
I don't much care which reading you give, but I would appreciate a footnote saying that some manuscripts give the other reading.
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Adam
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by Adam »

Bootstrap wrote:
Adam wrote:I have also started reading a book called Deep Exegesis by Peter Leithart. It looks quite interesting, and I really like the Christocentric approach to exegesis.
Tell me about it, I don't know this book.
The basic premise is that we shouldn't be trying to strip away the husk of Scripture to get to the kernel of truth but that the "husk" is just as important. Actually the idea of a husk and a kernel is probably not helpful. The author advocates for an apostolic method of exegesis and not just blind adherence to the historical-critical method. He says that he wants to learn how to read from Jesus and Paul. He points out the inconsistency of saying that the apostolic interpretations of the Old Testament are inspired and therefore valid but that we ourselves should not follow such a technique now. (In fact many biblical scholars today are horrified by the way the apostles exegeted the Old Testament.) Gives credence to typology as a valid from of exegesis and interpretation. I have only gotten through the first two chapters, so I can't comment in depth. There are some really informative reviews on Amazon.
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Adam
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

Post by Adam »

Bootstrap wrote:I don't much care which reading you give, but I would appreciate a footnote saying that some manuscripts give the other reading.
I agree. This is one of the reasons I have been considering reading the New King James more because it is the only translation that gives clarity and transparency on text critical issues. I am convinced that neither the Byzantine nor the Critical text represents the original autographs. I am more inclined to trust the Byzantine text, however, because it was compiled over time to those who had access to much better manuscripts than we do today, and most of the differences between the critical text and Byzantine text sprung up before AD 200 anyway. I like Maurice Robinson's work on this topic. I think he points out the big elephant in the room of the critical text camp. Nevertheless, we translate from the critical text because that is what most people are familiar with in PNG when using English or Tok Pisin Bibles. Not something worth making a big issue out of here. But knowing the various readings is helpful in exegesis as it lets you know what different people were thinking about the text and its rightful interpretation.
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Bootstrap
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Re: In-Depth Bible Study

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Adam wrote:He says that he wants to learn how to read from Jesus and Paul. He points out the inconsistency of saying that the apostolic interpretations of the Old Testament are inspired and therefore valid but that we ourselves should not follow such a technique now. (In fact many biblical scholars today are horrified by the way the apostles exegeted the Old Testament.) Gives credence to typology as a valid from of exegesis and interpretation.
Richard Hays has been saying that kind of thing in books like Reading Backwards, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, and Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. I think he's on to something, but I admit that I am still struggling with this because we went so wrong with figural interpretation in the Middle Ages. We used it as an excuse to write whatever we wanted into the Bible.
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