"It was rare for average folks in the early church to have an individual copy of the Scriptures.... What they had instead was a community—in this case the synagogue—which had a collection of writings we know as the Old Testament." - TGC
"Integral to these findings is that people who engage the Bible one to three days a week indicate basically the same effect on their personal lives as those who do not engage at all. The deceptive reality is that they can feel good about their activities without any sustainable results." - LifeWay
"If a person doesn’t realize that their understanding of the Bible lacks appropriate context and depth, they end up navigating the stormy cultural waters in whatever way happens to make sense to them based on what they think the Bible says. Ironically, without an accurate biblical anchor, their Christian views get completely watered down by the cultural waves" - Natasha Crain
"Neither Bible study nor the Christian life are centered on our feelings; they are centered on being mastered by the Word of God, that we may be anchored in God’s truth whether in good times or bad." - Ref21
"In Alive to the Purpose: The Readerly Reading of Scripture (Greenville, SC: JourneyForth, 2020), the late literary scholar and Bob Jones University professor Ronald A. Horton seeks to correct unbalanced Bible study. There are multiple legitimate ways to study, but neither special study nor perfunctory reading should keep us from seeing Scripture for what it is. Horton proposes that Christians read the Bible as story." - P&D
by Randy Leedy
Let’s make sure at the outset that I’m clear about what I mean by “sentence diagramming.” Of the variety of forms of mapping out sentences visually, by “sentence diagramming,” I mean a method that at least roughly approximates the one developed by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg and published in the 1870s, hence known as the Reed-Kellogg method. Here is an example, from Matthew 1:21. The running text reads, τέξεται δὲ υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν· αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν (And she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins).
Reposted from DBTS blog.
Have you ever read one of the Gospels in one sitting? I believe many Christians have not. Have you ever read Romans in one sitting? How would such a reading change your perspective on the book?
I require my students to read the Bible in large portions. For instance, in the Gospels class, I require students to read an entire Gospel in one sitting. While most choose Mark (it’s the shortest!), I usually encourage them to read John or Matthew.
Why would I require such an onerous task? Well, actually, students generally do not find it onerous. In fact, I have had students indicate their appreciation for the assignment (by the way, that’s pretty rare!). Let me mention a few reasons people should read large portions of Scripture.
First, it is the way the books of the Bible were originally written to be read. Imagine being in Rome when the book of Romans was first delivered. Now imagine the reader only reading for three minutes (corresponding to the end of chapter one) and saying, “Well, that is enough for today, we will read some more tomorrow.” The crowd would be outraged and would demand the man continue reading. In the same way, sometimes we need to be reminded that this is a wholistic book, which is only artificially separated.
