Stephanie is a dear friend, whose insightful approach to the Bible challenges me and encourages me. Her writing is almost poetic, too, so any chance I get to read what she shares is a little treat. 🙂 When we recently led a Bible study together on Exodus, I looked forward each week to hearing her thoughts, how she connected with other passages of scripture, and how she applied what she was learning. I asked her if she would share some thoughts on how to study the Bible – because we can always use growth in this area. Her thoughts on reading the Bible as literature are such a useful tool for your spiritual toolkit! No matter where you are in your journey, grab a cup of tea and a notebook and enjoy the treat with me!
From Stephanie:
When it comes to reading your Bible, knowing where to start can feel a little bit like eeny-meeny-miney-mo. You might have a few well-worn passages that feel safe and approachable, but the rest is a little unrelatable. Often the story gapes with missing information or has a tedious number of details that is exhausting. Picking a spot to start reading feels like a roll of the dice, and landing somewhere that results in encouragement and comprehension seems like either dumb luck or a rare divine appointment.
If any of that describes your relationship to the Bible, you are not alone. That was me for two decades. While I can’t offer you an instant comprehension upgrade that you can plug in to your brain, I can equip you with a helpful framework for reading the Bible that will enable you to organize and make sense of the information you take in. When our understanding of the Bible evolves from a random compilation of archaic stories to an intelligently crafted record of God’s faithfulness in human history, the best and worst of human responses, and the long-term goal of our existence, we will begin hearing the story as God intended it to be heard.
Interpreting the User Manual: What’s At Stake?
Say someone gifted you with a complex device that promised to drastically improve the outcome of your life, but the manual to help you operate the device was in Russian instead of English. What would you do? You would find the resources to translate it! You would pull up Google translator or you would ask that friend of a friend who speaks Russian to read it for you. Why? So the transformation could begin! It is almost the same with the Bible, except, thank God, He has provided it in our modern English language. But there is still a great deal of “translating work” to do if we are to rightly understand this Manual for life! This is imperative. When we rightly understand the Bible, we can begin to apply its wisdom to our lives, and that is when we experience transformation, life, and eternal hope.
Listening with New Ears
Israel was the nation God called as His set apart, treasured possession (Exodus 19:5). The historians and writers of ancient Israel were inspired by the Holy Spirit to record God’s special involvement in their lives and communicate it to future generations. This mission had multiple purposes: To learn from past mistakes, to remember God’s work and faithfulness, to call future generations to adhere to the laws God had given them, and to fuel anticipation of a promised One who would perfectly accomplish everything they had failed at. While the Spirit inspired these men to write for a specific purpose in their time, that same Spirit also gave them inspiration that was timeless— their message is for us too!
So the Bible wasn’t written to us, but it was written for us. Although we are not the original recipients, the Holy Spirit (who is outside of time) intentionally inspired a message layered with meaning and application for generations far beyond the writers’ original audiences! Isn’t God amazing?
To rightly hear the message intended for us, we need to perceive the message intended for the first recipients. Think of it as “eavesdropping”.
So the Bible wasn’t written to us, but it was written for us. To rightly hear the message intended for us, we need to perceive the message intended for the first recipients. Think of it as “eavesdropping”. Share on XReading with a Wide Lens
Our eye can take in more of our physical world than a camera lens. Sometimes when a photographer wants to capture more of what is happening, they switch to a wide lens because it pulls in the peripheral. You could also think of it like using the panorama mode on your phone camera. This is what we need to use when we read the Bible.
We’ve been conditioned since childhood to read the Bible with binoculars. Imagine how silly that is for a moment. When you look at something already close to you with binoculars, it becomes ridiculously too close. This is the way many of us read our Bibles— we zero in so closely on the individual stories that we are missing the context provided us by a wide lens!
If we are going to read our Bibles well, we need to defamiliarize ourselves from the Sunday school Bible stories we viewed with binoculars, and switch to our wide lens. Each Biblical author wrote and compiled the texts we have today with a particular goal in mind. If we aren’t taking in the relevant wider context, we are going to miss the true intended purpose of the smaller stories. Each small part fits together to emphasize and support a larger whole.
Rather than approach the Bible with preconceptions about the feel-good, coffee mug quote takeaway we think brings value to our day, we need to develop the attention span and study skills that make it possible to track a narrative over several chapters. When we make this the goal, we will actually unearth far richer lessons for our lives and infinitely fuller and more accurate testimonies to the depth and breadth of God’s character!
Rather than approach the Bible with preconceptions about the feel-good, coffee mug quote takeaway we think brings value to our day, we need to develop the attention span and study skills that make it possible to track a narrative over… Share on X
Reading the Bible as Literature: Two Tools for Your Toolbox
Identifying the genre and structural units within a book are two essential tools for deciphering what you read.
Knowing the genre of a book gives you an understanding of what expectations to come with. For example, you would read Dr. Seuss very differently than you would A.A. Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh) or E.B. White (author of Charlotte’s Web). Why? Because you know the genre of Dr. Seuss is poetry, which leads you to expect rhymes, imaginative language, and a colorful representation of life. You would not be looking in Dr. Seuss books for the kind of deep contemplations about life, innocence and change presented in Charlotte’s Web. Genre helps us filter the information we read with the right expectation.
This is equally true of the Bible. There are letters, songs, poetry, prophecy, and narrative (telling a story for the purpose of teaching), and each of these should be approached with a different set of expectations. Many times there are even genres within the genre (like an apostle writing in the genre of a letter, also quoting poetry or prophecy from the Old Testament).
Structural units are the natural breaks or pauses in the book, where the author finishes one thought or sequence of points and pivots to something else. Our modern Bible has broken up the text with chapter markings, but this is often unhelpful because they are not placed where the author intended the pause or shift to take place. Our chapter markings are there for easy referencing and digestibility, but unfortunately they often interrupt a thought or theme—this makes it more difficult to identify the purpose behind a story or series of details—but seeing these the way they were originally intended is not impossible.
This idea isn’t as foreign as you might think. One of my favorite authors, Charles Dickens, originally wrote and published for magazines that people subscribed to. His stories were written in “installments” that were delivered monthly. People would collect these installments so that they eventually possessed the entirety of a work such as David Copperfield. Much later, of course, when the book was printed and bound in completion, the chapter placement was adjusted for digestibility.
When we begin to look for the intended opening and closing of each section within a book, we will also see how the details and events within that section worked to communicate a particular point. The most interesting thing about this is that Biblical authors often use the very same details for different purposes! Think about how this might change the way you read the four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John: four very similar accounts each told in a slightly different order, with different details, because they each wanted to emphasize something unique for their readers!
No Ordinary Book
Many of the helpful tips on how to approach the Bible as literature can be learned in a college literature class (I would know, it was my major!). If you are interested in reading a few more tips, head over to my post 12 Habits to Cultivate a Meaningful Quiet Time.
Literary criticism and interpretation may exhaust the depths of Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf, but they will never exhaust the riches of God’s Word!
“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Heb 4:12
No other book in the world has the dynamic, eternal workings of the Holy Spirit woven through every page. He unveils its relevance, its application, its unchanging value. He graciously endears us to its teachability, its reproof, and its training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16). It is alive and active, and when we commit ourselves to understanding its meaning for our lives, we experience the transformative, joy-infusing, light-radiating truth of the Word that has been with God since the beginning.
Literary criticism and interpretation may exhaust the depths of Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf, but they will never exhaust the riches of God’s Word! Share on X
Other helpful resources:
- Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin is an incredible how-to for going about accurate, transformative Bible study
- Mama Bear Apologetics is not so much a Bible study, as a great introduction into how to discern truth from fallacy using biblical principles. NOT just for moms!
- This post about how to develop a daily Bible reading habit is so encouraging!
- Some of my favorite tools for Bible study
Stephanie Smith writes at Read Cook Devour. Read Cook Devour is where Stephanie encourages women to join her in digging into God’s Word and growing in their understanding of it— and occasionally she shares recipes. Stephanie has been a member of her church for 24 years, and currently serves in leadership of the women’s ministry. She lives on Florida’s west coast, married to her husband of 11 years, raising two children. You can usually find her reading when she has spare time, or looking through new recipes to try out in her kitchen. She is terribly inconsistent with housework, but vigilant about keeping her freezer stocked with ice cream.
What’s a tool you use or a struggle you have in your own personal study? Share in the comments. Praying now for your toolkit to be expanded, for the Word to be active and alive in your life!
