Bible Study Tools: Wait… what?!

Lizzy and Jane sat sharing confidences, as they often had throughout their sisterhood. Tonight, Lizzy had a particular piece of news to share: she had agreed to marry Mr Darcy. Jane was astounded.

“You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot be! Engaged to Mr Darcy! No, no, you shall not deceive me; I know it to be impossible. … I know how much you dislike him.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Jane’s astonishment was matched by that of all her family as, over the next couple of days, they too were entrusted with this truth.

Yet as readers of Pride and Prejudice, we are not surprised at all. We are simply relieved that she has finally come to her senses and accepted his love.

You see, we are in the privileged position of having read the intervening forty or fifty chapters. We have watched Lizzy and Darcy’s relationship unfolding, and fully accept the truth of their feelings for each other. Jane, having only dipped in at a few points, is left utterly confused.

The Jane method of Bible reading

Many of us experience a similar confusion in our Bible reading.

The trouble is, we dip in and out of the Bible as Jane has dipped in and out of Lizzy’s story.

But like her, it is not really our fault. If you grew up in a Christian family, you were likely introduced to some of the Bible’s big stories from an early age – Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Jonah and the Whale, Joseph and his Coat of Many Colours, Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand, Easter, Christmas, Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath…

And you were probably introduced to them in some kind of random order, like that.

How confident are you that you could put them in the correct order? What about if we added, Abraham and Isaac, the Battle of Jericho, Elijah and the Prophets of Baal, Samson and Delilah… The Good Samaritan, the Woman at the Well, Jairus’s daughter…?

I could do the Old Testament ones with a degree of confidence, now, though I could only place Jonah correctly because of our current studying in the minor prophets. And though I could manage Christmas, the Feeding of 5,000 and Easter, I haven’t a clue which order the other New Testament examples come in.

It wasn’t so very long ago that I had to think quite hard to work out whether Moses came before or after Abraham. And from the Haggai days I teach, where we fill in a Bible timeline together, I know many others have similar difficulties.

This means that when we sit down to study a text, we often experience it like Jane did Lizzy’s revelation – it seems to have popped out of the blue.

Be like Jane

Yet if we’re honest, most of us don’t react anything like Jane did. We are not surprised at what we read.

Sometimes that is due to familiarity – we know the section so well that nothing in it strikes us as odd.

Other times it is due to our expectations of the Bible – we sort of expect it to be a bit weird. Virgins and elderly women have miracle babies; water turns to wine or stands aside to let people pass; the whole universe comes into being at a word. The Bible is a book about strange things happening to strange people – that’s how it is; we mentally shrug and read on.

It’s the equivalent of saying, on hearing Lizzy’s news, “Women are like that – erratic and irrational. Utterly unpredictable. Now, what’s for tea?”

What if we approached Bible study more like Jane, noticing the unexpected and asking, “Wait… what?!”?

Switching on our curiosity helps us grow in understanding of the Bible’s rich narrative. Slowly, over time, passages stop being random newsflashes and begin to make more sense in themselves and within the big picture. We start to see ever more clearly how everything fits together.

I’m only just beginning with this. I still too often read something out of context and take it at its own face value. I need to grow better at switching on my curiosity. (Trying to think of a picture for the top of this post, I remembered the blue tit that used to visit our garden. He was intrigued and perplexed by the mirror we’ve got on the back wall. He would fly up to it every few minutes throughout the day, for a couple of weeks – he’d hop around, he’d peck at the glass, he’d fly back to the bird feeder then back to the mirror… Meanwhile his little friend flew in, ate some food, and flew away again. Utterly un-curious!)

Make a start

So how can you get started with this? We’ve already done it a bit in previous posts, noticing the unusual name of God used in Haggai, or looking out for things in a passage that remind us of other parts of the Bible, or thinking about how people hearing Jesus teach might have reacted.

Another good tool is looking at a passage in context – what do the surrounding verses and chapters say? Where are we in the Bible timeline? What happened before this passage/chapter/book?

Today’s download is an example I created a couple of years ago for a group studying Joshua. His book opens like this:

“After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.” – Joshua 1:1-2

If you haven’t just worked through the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible), this ought to strike you as rather surprising – Joshua was Moses’ assistant? What does that mean? And why would God make the secretary/servant/whatever the next leader, after the great Moses? Did he just pop out of nowhere?

What good questions, let’s have a look and see!

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This post is part of a series of ideas for how to get started with studying the Bible either for yourself or as a small group leader. Follow this link to find the other posts in the series.

PS All these resources are absolutely free, but if you find them useful, consider making a small donation through my Ko-fi page. Thank you!