Bible Discussion Thread

Further insights on studying Scripture tied in with daily devotionals

The strict adherance to reading one passage at a time in a given book of the Bible is that we ignore cross references. My Dake's Bible has over 100,000 references which is quite exhaustive. Of course some connections don't make sense to me. The fact is though that all of scripture is interconnected. It behooves us for witnessing at least to have multiple references particularly with the Gospel accounts to bring home the validity of the text. If we don't have a New Testament connection almost always there is one with the Old Testament; frequently direct quotes from Psalms in particular found in the four Gospels but also elsewhere in scripture.

Proper understanding means context; context context. Isolating a passage is of course myopic for interpretation almost always.

We can put together chapters even multiple ones (again often passages are fairly continuous from one to another and some Psalms basically are a continuation of the same from one chapter to another). Of course having an undestanding of the culture and history is helpful; which we can find out on our own with concordances and such resources as Foxe's "Book of the Martyrs". This is readily available from public resources online with many recent updates. As Protestants; of course we have "Calvin's Institutes" and other writings from the Reformation. Putting things into context with confessional statements are also helpful; and are emphasized frequently in these congregations.

Making scripture relateable to our lives in the 21st Century of course in some degree is necessary; but we must take care not to do undo violence to the clear meanings of scripture; nor ignore the events of the culture at the time of Christ that can be studied to expound upon such meanings (case in point the camel through the eye of the needle). This apparently was a passage with that name rather than a literal camel go through a needle.