How to read the Bible? The Bible is like a vast underground network of passageways. These passageways contain spacious cathedral like caverns. They also contain claustrophobic caves smaller than a closet, as well as ugly craters and beautiful canyons.
☀Within these ancient passages, sometimes illuminated by sparkling sunlight from on high, and sometimes hidden in damp and dusty darkness deep below, are treasures for the soul. 👑Treasures used by the Holy Spirit over the centuries to guide, strengthen, and transform lives. The lives of individuals, communities, and the world.
Whenever you open the pages of the Bible you are engaging in a bit of holy adventure, a bit of spiritual spelunking or prayerful potholing.
[In preparing for writing this article, I took a Bible and traveled to a local cave. After entering the cave and attempting to read the Bible, I learned three important lessons. First, it is difficult to read the Bible in the dark.
Second, it is difficult to read the Bible after hitting your head against the stone ceiling of a cave. Third, bats do not appreciate unexpected religious visitors anymore than humans do.] 🦇🦇🦇
Part of the reason Bible reading is a bit of a cave crawl is that the Bible is a library. Christians look for the consistent themes and threads that weave their way throughout this library. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that the Bible is a collection of books. 📕📔📕📔
Books of different kinds. Books with different literary genres. Such as history, poetry, law, and Gospel. The Bible’s pages reflect over forty human authors, written over a period of centuries. The teachings of most Christian denominations hold that the Holy Spirit inspired this collection in a special and authoritative way.
For what purpose? For the purpose of communicating God’s truth and God’s will to the world. Reading this library faithfully and prayerfully requires careful attention to the cultural and historical setting of a given passage.
How to Read the Bible: Five Tips
#1 Use A Proper Map 🗺
Yes, you can read the Bible without a map. God is gracious and over the centuries has spoken to people through Scripture, even when readers and listeners come to Bible ill-equipped and ill-prepared. Ordinarily, you will gain more insight and value by reading Scripture with a “map.”
By a map, I mean a study Bible. These Bibles, available in a variety of translations, provide helpful notes with introductions to each book of the Bible, commentary on difficult passages, and explanations of cultural practices unfamiliar to most people today.
There are dozens of these types of Bibles to choose from online or at your local bookstore. Choose a readable translation, ideally a translation used by your local congregation.
Just as a map will make the journey easier and more interesting through a cavern, so will solid study-notes make journeying through the Bible easier and more interesting as well.
#2 Start with the Easier Passages 🚶🏼♂️
Whether exploring caves or the pages of the Bible it is wiser to start with the easier passages. Exploring the easier passages now builds your capacity to traverse the more difficult ones in the future.
For Christians, a good way to start with Scripture is by reading about the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There are four New Testament books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which tell us about Jesus’ earthly ministry. I often suggest Mark to perspective readers because it is the shortest and simplest of the four accounts.
Another place to begin is the book of Psalms, a collection of prayers. Strive to read the Bible on occasion, then work toward reading a small amount each day. In terms of harder passages for experienced Bible readers, try Job, Romans, and Revelation (there is no s!).
#3 Use the Right Tools 🔨
Spelunking a cave is made easier, more enjoyable, and safer by using the right tools. The same is true of reading Holy Scripture. With the Bible many of these tools are interpretative principals or “rules of thumb” to use often but especially when confronted with a difficult passage.
One such tool is the “Law of Love.” St. Augustine, the fifth century scholar saint, described the law of love in this way:
“Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”
–On Christian Doctrine, 1.36.40
When a passage befuddles us, besides consulting our map, we should apply the law of love. As followers of Jesus we read Scripture through the filter of love.
[I confess the bats I encountered in the cave were not impressed with my suggestion that I had awakened them in the middle of day out of love.]
#4 Read with Explorers Past and Present 🤼
While you and I should read the Bible individually, it is best understood and explored in community. Whether we are benefiting from the wisdom of past explorers like Saint Augustine or the insights of people like and unlike us in our local church, our understanding of the Bible will be greatly enriched and sometimes corrected by reading it with others.
There are probably passages of Scripture you love, passages you struggle with, and passages you just do not understand. Reading Scripture with explorers past and present will show you that your questions are questions that have been wrestled with for centuries, that passages that inspire and comfort you have inspired and comforted others for centuries, too.
The ancient cavern system that is the Bible is better ventured with fellow explorers, past and present.
#5 Find the Timeless Treasure 💎💎💎
Scripture can be studied from the perspective of ancient documents rooted in a particular historical and cultural situation. Scripture can be studied from the perspective of what others have said about it and done because of it in the past.
These are necessary approaches to the study of the Bible. While your study can and should include these approaches, never stop there, but always build on these approaches to find the timeless treasures of Scripture.
Finding this treasure requires the combination of prayer and page, of human seeking and God revealing. The treasure of a word from God. The treasure of confronting who you are in all your goodness and all your sin.
The golden treasure of realizing your one little life is part of the much greater story of all life. The treasure of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit (John 5:39).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor executed for his opposition to Hitler, gave sound counsel for seeking the Bible’s treasures.
“The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of someone you love. And just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart…until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.”
– Life Together
The next time you open a Bible (and make sure it is soon), remind yourself you are entering a vast maze of underground passages, tunnels, and caverns.
Caverns that contain treasures, some in plain sight and some hidden in the depths. Get your gear, if you seek, you will find. 🔍
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Three years ago, I undertook to read the Bible in one year. I used a resource called: https://bibleinoneyear.org/
I received a daily email that had 3 bible passages to read and and a short message written by Nicky Gumbel to link the passages. For the first month, things went really well. I took notes and learned a lot. Then I became a grandmother (God has been gracious and good!) I spent three weeks with my new granddaughter and my bible reading went by the wayside for the next two months…which meant I missed the Gospel of Mark and Luke!
I kept going and did get through the rest of the year.
I started again the following year to pick up what I had missed. I had also started a lay diploma in theological studies. Again, the daily readings went by the wayside. To make a long story short, it took three years to complete the Bible in One Year! Along the way, I took side trips into the Old and New Testaments (which I studied online with a group of students) and the Book of Revelation (which I studied with my Parish priest and fellow parishioners.)
I can honestly say, that even with all of the time I have spent in the last four years, reading and studying, I still feel that I have only seen the tip of the iceberg. I decided that for this year, I would still use the Bible in One Year app but focus only on the Psalms and give myself a bit of a break. I love studying in community and find that the insights that come from other people have been not only helpful but uplifting and joyful as well. When I study alone, I really have to focus on self-discipline and concentration. I also try to study the weekly readings so that when our worship services are livestreamed, I can feel more a part of the service.
Hi Dawn, thanks for sharing about your own adventures with striving to read the Bible in one year. I think many people can relate to your experience of starting and starting again and then starting again! I want to highlight what you said about, “I still feel that I have only seen the tip of the iceberg.” That’s the wonderful thing about studying the Scriptures, there is always more to discover. This is true if you are new to the faith and picking up the Bible for the first time or whether you have been a Christian for many years and have studied the Bible formally at a theological college or seminary.
Also, you say, “I love studying in community and find that the insights that come from other people have been not only helpful but uplifting and joyful as well.” To that I can only say AMEN, and encourage everyone to find ways to study the Holy Scriptures in community with others.
Almost as some divertimento, George F Handel of Messiah fame, wrote a gazillion oratorios with librettos taken from the Old Testament. The passages were selected by Charles Jennens. These do provide some beautiful animation to readings in the Old Testament, interspersed for diversion. There are many movies made up of Bible stories but Handel gave musical justice to our readings. I am lucky to have had guided reading of the Bible all my life ( except I had to read Revelation by myself).
I remember penciling comments around all my favorite psalms, then listing them. Job is still my go to. I think it is important then when reading the New Testament , there are many references to the Old Testament, well they were Jews and they did read their Scriptures and refer to them, so I think knowing and being familiar with the Old Testament is important while reading the New Testament and just for arguments sake, the Jewish Talmud commentaries on the Old Testament is worth cruising through also. Then stuff all begins to make sense, but studying and discovering something new is always fun and a surprise.
Ellen, an extremely important point for explorers of the Bible, “when reading the New Testament, there are many references to the Old Testament.” The New Testament assumes a knowledge of the Old Testament. The New Testament is built upon the foundations of the Old Testament. While new Bible readers can benefit from reading the New Testament alone, sooner rather than later, they should begin to get familiar with the major themes, stories, and persons of the Old Testament.
Thanks also for sharing connections between Scripture and some of the great classical music of Western culture. I love your phrase, “Handel gave musical justice to our readings.”
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