I was just listening to a talk by Greg Boyd where he was saying, “A text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext” . I don’t know if it is orignal to Boyd, but it was a punchy and well placed statement within what are usually really encouraging sermons by Boyd. He was talking about the importance of exegeting the scriptures within their original and occasional contexts. Greg was talking about how so many verses and sentences from the bible are often quoted with total disregard for the meaning and context from which they come from. It really is a good message. Listen to it over at Woodland Hills’ website.
It reminded me of the great blog post I was reading this week over at Jesus Creed. Scot Mcknight was registering his disappointment along with Ed Stetzer about the mismanaged journalism concerning a recent interview of Rick Warren . It reminds me of what happened on the blogosphere when Rob’s Love Wins hadn’t been released yet. It turns out it was a simply “a text without a context” that became “a pretext for a prooftext”.
How to READ the BIBLE BOOK by BOOK
Have you ever just got finished readying something in the Bible and left feeling like you had no idea where that came from, why it is in the bible, and how it matters to you? Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart did an excellent job in their book, “How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour
“. In it they give a guided tour to each and every book of the bible.
I learned to study the bible using the Inductive bible study Method, as we called it, in YWAM Kona’s School of Biblical Studies. Many of the same methods I learned through S.B.S. are consistent with the overall pursuit of this book. They treat each book of the bible individually presenting an overall context, some background information and simple structural outline. This is followed up with a very short summary of the different sections of each book attempting to point out to the student the overall continuity of the Author’s message. I highly recommend this book as a bible reading aid to anybody wanting to understand the whole bible in its whole context.
If you want to learn more about the Inductive Bible Study Method, check out another book by the same authors, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
“. Of course if you have 9 months available, I strongly recommend just going through an S.B.S.