{"id":12105,"date":"2020-04-30T18:42:36","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T18:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=12105"},"modified":"2020-04-30T18:42:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T18:42:36","slug":"more-how-to-study-the-bible-proia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=12105","title":{"rendered":"[more] How to study the Bible \u2013 PROIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

7 years ago, I wrote a post<\/a> on studying<\/a> the Bible<\/a> (itself a follow-up to another previous post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Today, as part of an ongoing series of sessions several of the life group leaders (including myself) have been having with one of pastors on improving\/learning how to not only study<\/em> the Bible, but lead<\/a> others<\/a> in study<\/a><\/em>, we did an inductive<\/a> bible study walk-through of part of Matthew 19<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I propose a simple acronym for this process:<\/p>\n

P – Pray<\/h3>\n

Start every study with prayer<\/a> for God’s blessing on the time you spend in His word.<\/p>\n

R – Read<\/h3>\n

Read the passage (with enough context (may even be extra historical information outside scripture<\/em> which can be brought to mind) to grasp the scene): any “text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext<\/a>“. You may<\/em> be able to break it up into chunks (paragraphs, thoughts, etc), but be sure each chunk you read is complete-enough to move to the next steps. <\/p>\n

If you don’t read the whole<\/em> passage, you’ll be iterating through some of these steps \"?\"<\/p>\n

O – Observe<\/h3>\n

This comes in the form of the “Journalist’s Questions”: “Who?” “What?” “Where?” “When?” “How?”<\/p>\n

Who is in the passage?<\/p>\n

What happened \/ did they say?<\/p>\n

Where did it happen?<\/p>\n

When did it happen? (context, context, context!) This includes not only the historical<\/em> period\/timing; not only the chronological<\/em> timing (events before & after); but also “time words” in the passage itself – words like, “then”, “now”, “after”, “before”.<\/p>\n

How did it happen? What were the external, situational circumstances of the passage?<\/p>\n

It can be helpful to use color highlighting and\/or different fonts to highlight these features of the text as you’re constructing your study.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example with when<\/strong> in bold, who<\/em> italicized, and what<\/span> in underline:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Do you see anything I missed annotating?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I – Interpret<\/h3>\n

This is mostly the final Journalist Question – “why?”<\/p>\n

Interpretation<\/a> “requires a more in-depth examination than the first step. At this step, we want to be careful to find the meaning of the verse in its context”<\/p>\n

Be sure to not ask, “what does this mean to me<\/em>?” <\/p>\n

Personalization is the path to heresy. Personalization leads to eisegesis. Eisegesis leads to heterodoxy. Heterodoxy leads to heresy. (Thanks, Yoda<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

Ask instead, “what does this mean?”<\/p>\n

This will often as not necessitate exploring not only the immediate context<\/em> (verses before and after), but also greater context<\/em>. For example, if you are doing an inductive study through the book of Hebrews<\/a>, you’re going to need to read most of Exodus<\/a> & Leviticus<\/a> to fully grasp the allusions and references made.<\/p>\n

Be very aware of the dangers of turning the “Interpret” step into a prooftext<\/a>!<\/p>\n

A – Apply<\/h3>\n

In other words, “what about what this passage says needs to take effect in my life now?”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

from Veritas Aequitas https:\/\/warrenmyers.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/more-how-to-study-the-bible-proia\/
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7 years ago, I wrote a post on studying the Bible (itself a follow-up to another previous post). Today, as part of an ongoing series of sessions several of the life group leaders (including myself) have been having with one of pastors on improving\/learning how to not only study the Bible, but lead others in …
Continue reading [more] How to study the Bible \u2013 PROIA<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[990],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-12105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blih","tag-veritas-aequitas"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12106,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12105\/revisions\/12106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12105"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=12105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}