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February 9, 2011

Approaching the Bible as Literature

Have you ever read the Bible as a piece of literature? Can it be considered a masterpiece of storytelling as well as the inspired Word of God?

In high school, one of my public school English teachers assigned the book of Job as a class reading assignment. Up until that point, I’d never done a purposeful study of the structure and literary qualities of any book of the Bible, let alone the dense and poetic book of Job. My passing understanding of Job had been gleaned from occasional sermons and Sunday school classes. But that knowledge had always come in short, sporadic bursts—we’d usually focus on the gripping, theologically critical closing dialogue between God and Job, not the confusing bits where his “friends” are accusing him.

We had to chart out the different sections of the story and copy lists of metaphors and subject it to the same literary analysis we carried out on our other assigned readings. The experience proved to be fascinating. I finally found a context for all the bits and pieces I’d learned about Job throughout years of Sunday school and youth group.

Admittedly, it felt bizarre that this was happening in a public high school class where the world’s major religions were all represented in the seats. In youth group there was a basic assumption of shared experience when discussing the Bible, but having the same discussion when the girl in the next row was wearing a hijab was a much different task.

This experience came to mind as I read about The Bible Literacy Project, an organization that produces resources and textbooks for schools who want to teach the Bible as literature. From an academic standpoint, it’s a fantastic idea. People, Christians included, don’t read the Bible as much anymore, which is a shame because no other book has influenced Western literature and history more than the Bible. Even for someone who doesn’t treat it as the inspired Word of God, it’s a worthwhile text to read.

But there’s a double-edged sword here: when we study the Bible as literature, it’s easy to talk circles around the actual content of the stories and histories that it presents. Maintaining a safe, academic distance makes it easier to question the veracity of the Scriptures. But I’ve found that learning more about the context of the books only serves to deepen my love of the Bible.

As a shameless plug, perhaps one of the things we’re most proud of here at Bible Gateway is our commitment to global access of the Bible. Whether or not a Bible Gateway visitor calls themselves a Christian, we invite them to simply read the Bible. Because of this commitment, millions of people worldwide (about a quarter of our visitors are outside of the US, where we’re based) can simply and easily approach God’s word wherever they may be.

(HT: Unsettled Christianity)

February 8, 2011

The Bible in 1 Sentence, 240 Words and 6 Minutes

Could you summarize the Bible in six minutes? What about in 240 words? What about in one sentence?

Tony Reinke has posted D. A. Carson’s short summaries of the Bible, including a 6-minute summary and a 240-word summary. Here’s his six-minute summary:

And here’s his 240-word summary of the Bible:

God is the sovereign, transcendent and personal God who has made the universe, including us, his image-bearers. Our misery lies in our rebellion, our alienation from God, which, despite his forbearance, attracts his implacable wrath.

But God, precisely because love is of the very essence of his character, takes the initiative and prepared for the coming of his own Son by raising up a people who, by covenental stipulations, temple worship, systems of sacrifice and of priesthood, by kings and by prophets, are taught something of what God is planning and what he expects.

In the fullness of time his Son comes and takes on human nature. He comes not, in the first instance, to judge but to save: he dies the death of his people, rises from the grave and, in returning to his heavenly Father, bequeaths the Holy Spirit as the down payment and guarantee of the ultimate gift he has secured for them—an eternity of bliss in the presence of God himself, in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

The only alternative is to be shut out from the presence of this God forever, in the torments of hell. What men and women must do, before it is too late, is repent and trust Christ; the alternative is to disobey the gospel (Romans 10:16; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17).

Reinke also points out a post by Dane Ortlund in which theologians and pastors give a one sentence overview of the Bible. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Apprenticing with Jesus to become human again. (Zack Eswine)
  • The movement in history from creation to new creation through the redemptive work of Father, Son, and Spirit who saves and changes corrupted people and places for his glory and their good. (Paul House)
  • Verbum caro factum est. (Mark Seifrid)

These aren’t substitutes for reading the entire Bible, of course. But narrative distillations like this can bring the sprawling, sometimes daunting scope of the Bible into particular focus.

How would you summarize the Bible in just a few words or sentences, if you were challenged to do so? If you want to give the one-sentence exercise a try, we’ve posted an open thread over on Facebook. Stop by and share your ideas!

Andy Rau
February 4, 2011

Tour of the Bible, part 1: the Books of Moses

This is the first installment of our Tour of the Bible—a series of posts examining each section of the Bible in turn. Here’s a complete list of what we’ve covered so far:

If you’ve ever visited Bible Gateway’s keyword search page, you may have noticed this drop-down menu, which you can use to restrict your search to a specific part of the Bible:

Each item on that list represents a particular group of books in the Bible. This is a common way to separate the 66 Bible books—which vary widely in style, literary genre, and authorship—into distinct sections.

But for those of you who don’t instinctively know what books constitute, say, the Epistles, we’d like to help. Over the next few months, we’ll walk through each of these categories, one at a time. Today we’ll begin with the Books of Moses, which happen to be the first books in the Bible.

The Books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch (“five volumes”), are the first five books in the Christian Bible. They’re also known collectively in Judaism as the Torah (“law, instruction”). They’re foundational to the rest of the Bible, telling the story of God’s relationship with humanity, the nature of human sin, and the promise of a Savior. That makes them important both historically and theologically.

The Pentateuch consists of these five books:

  • Genesis: Covers the creation of the world, God’s covenant with the great patriarch Abraham, and the cultivation of God’s people through a motley crew of sinners and saints.
  • Exodus: Tells the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery, their journey through the desert toward the Promised Land, and the establishment of God’s law.
  • Leviticus: A compilation of the laws by which God expects His people to live. These rules, regulations, and holidays—all focused on the theme of holiness—provide a moral core upon which much Christian theology is built.
  • Numbers: Israelite society is ordered in preparation for their arrival in the Promised Land, with God’s patience on display many times in the face of Isarel’s disobedience.
  • Deuteronomy: God renews His covenant with Israel, further establishing His law and expectations. Deuteronomy ends with the death of Moses and the commissioning of Joshua as leader.

The Bible doesn’t provide an exact date for the writing of these five books, nor do we know for certain who wrote them. However, the Bible elsewhere suggests that Moses wrote most of the Pentateuch (excepting specific passages obviously written by somebody else, such as the account of Moses’ death). If we assume they were written during Israel’s travels through the desert, a date sometime in the 1400s BC seems plausible. Many alternate theories about the authorship and date of the Pentateuch have been advanced, but this traditional view remains commonly accepted.

The Books of Moses have always presented a serious challenge to readers of the Bible—in fact, it’s not uncommon to hear of well-intentioned Bible readers losing their momentum partway through the Pentateuch. There are many reasons these aren’t easy books to read: they’re written in many places as ancient legal documents, which don’t always make for thrilling reading; they’re very focused on details of holiness that don’t seem relevant to modern culture; and the people and events populating the Books of Moses are marked as much by sin, violence, and disobedience as they are by faithfulness and godliness. And perhaps most of all, these books of ancient history and law feel very distant from the familiar stories of Jesus and his ministry.

But to set aside or skip over these first five books of the Bible would be a mistake. There’s a reason the New Testament contains so many quotes from and references to the Pentateuch: without the Books of Moses, we would have no context for our faith in Jesus. Without God’s law against which to measure our lives, we would not recognize our need for a Savior. We would not understand Jesus’ death and resurrection as the fulfillment of God’s earliest promises. It might not be obvious from a cursory read, but nearly everything else in the Bible builds upon or responds to the events of these first five books.

Note: comments are temporarily disabled here for technical reasons, but we welcome your ideas and feedback on this post at our page on Facebook.

February 2, 2011

How long have you been attending your current church?

Last month, we asked our Facebook fans the following question: How long have you been attending your current church?

It generated quite a few responses (over 700 at the time of this writing), so we decided to compile the responses into a more visual format:

Click on the image to see the full-size version:

A few notes about the data:

  • This is an informal survey of Facebook users, not a scientific study.
  • Due to the varied nature of the responses, we had to occasionally round off or make a best guess at a timespan.
  • Facebook is growing in use, but for the most part it’s still a younger person’s haven—something to keep in mind as you review the chart.

What do you think? Stop by our page on Facebook to share your thoughts!

Andy Rau
February 1, 2011

Making the Bible even harder to read

If you find the Bible difficult to read, that might be a good thing! Or so suggests a recent study that found that making something hard to read makes it more likely to be remembered. In the study, participants were given one of two sets of the same information, one set written in an easy-to-read Arial font and the other set written in difficult fonts and colors. Those participants who suffered through the latter remembered what they read better than their Arial-reading counterparts.

These findings might seem at first glance to contradict common sense, but on reflection it’s not so difficult to grasp: when we have to work harder to understand a piece of writing, what we read is more likely to stick with us.

John 3:16, Papyrus style

Easier to read... or your worst nightmare come to life?

Now, Bible Gateway isn’t going to start displaying all its Scripture in an unholy smorgasbord of Comic Sans, Papyrus and Helvetica, but here’s a challenge for you: play around with some of the text color and font settings in your web browser next time you’re at Bible Gateway and see if you can make the text a bit tougher to scan. Does it help you retain what you read, or is it just annoying?

Perhaps a more productive question to ask is whether there are other, more practical ways to increase your reading comprehension and memory while you read Scripture. One way to do that is to simply slow your reading down, forcing yourself to spend a bit of extra time processing each verse before you move on to the next. I like blogger Henry Neufeld’s ideas for making the Bible a bit harder to read:

[One way to read Scripture] can involve simply sitting back, closing your eyes, and trying to remember key points of the material you just read. I often ask myself what the key points of each chapter were after reading scripture from one of the reading plans.

Another technique I use is to read in one or another foreign language. I’m not talking about the original languages, which I also like to read, but I can slow my reading down progressively by moving from English to Spanish to French and finally to German. I’m slowest at the last. It’s hardest for me to read German, but having struggled through the text I’ll remember the key points of the chapter(s).

Reading the Bible in a different language would certainly add to the challenge! But if you’re not quite up for that, you might get a similar result by occasionally reading from a different Bible version than you’re used to—say, periodically reading from the KJV if your preferred Bible is the ESV. Different English Bible versions are written for different “grade levels,” so simply trying out a higher grade level Bible might be useful.

I’m sure some of you have developed some useful tricks for reading the Bible effectively. What are your ideas?

Note: comments are temporarily disabled here for technical reasons, but we welcome your ideas and feedback on this post at our page on Facebook.

Andy Rau
January 31, 2011

The Bible Gateway blog has a new look

With a new Bible Gateway under development, we decided it was time to give the blog a much-needed overhaul. We think the new design makes the blog easier to read and navigate—and it also lets us to introduce some fun new features (the first of which kicks off tomorrow!) that didn’t work with the old design.

So have a look around and let us know what you think. And as always, thanks for reading—we hope you’ll enjoy the great content we have planned for the next few weeks and beyond!

January 28, 2011

Become an Expert on Amos and Martha

At last count, between our Verse of the Day, devotional and reading plans email newsletters, we’re up to 11 different email lists. That’s a flurry of edifying and thought-provoking words flying past every day that few of us can keep up with. We thought we’d give you a few excerpts from the Men of the Bible and Women of the Bible newsletters to ponder over this weekend.

If you’re interested in signing up for our devotional or verse of the day newsletters, head over to the Newsletters Page. Go over here for our Reading Plans.

Women of the Bible: Martha

Of the history of Martha, the Bible tells us nothing save that she was the sister of Mary and Lazarus, and lived with them at Bethany. Some early writers have made Martha, the daughter, wife, or widow of Simon the Leper, and that on his death the house became hers, hence the reference to the house when the resurrection of Lazarus was celebrated (Matthew 26:6; Mark 14:3 ). Others think that Martha may have been a near relative of Simon for whom she acted as hostess. But the narrative seems to suggest the home belonged to Martha and being older than Mary and Lazarus, she carried the responsibility of all connected with household affairs in a home where “Jesus found the curse of the sojourner lifted from Him, and, in reversal of His own description of His loneliness and penury, found where to lay His head.” What strikes us forcibly is that after Jesus left His natural home at the age of thirty to enter upon His public ministry we do not read of Him returning to it for rest and relaxation. It was to the warm, hospitable home at Bethany to which He retired, for He loved the three who lived in it, Martha, Mary and Lazarus-in this order-which is something we do not read concerning His own brothers and sisters according to the flesh.

Martha and Mary seem to belong together in God’s portrait gallery, just as Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau do. Expositors also bracket the two sisters together, comparing and contrasting their respective traits. Martha, busy with household chores-Mary, preferring to sit before Jesus for spiritual instruction. Martha, ever active and impulsive-Mary, meditative and reticent. Truly drawn are the characters of these two sisters, Martha usually busy supervising the hospitality of the home, Mary somewhat indifferent to house work, anxious only to seek that which was spiritual. But we have no Scriptural warrant for affirming that the difference between the quiet, pious Mary and her industrious sister is that of the opposite of light to darkness. In the church there are vessels of gold and others of silver, but we are not justified in saying that the character of Mary is worked in gold and that of Martha in silver. These two sisters in that Bethany family had their respective, appropriate talents, and each of them served the Master accordingly…

Men of the Bible: Amos

Amos – burden-bearer or one with a burden.

This prophet of “judgment,”; which is the key word of the book he wrote, was a citizen of Tekoa, west of the Dead Sea (Amos 1:1; Amos 7:8-16; Amos 8:2). …

Although he was one of the oldest of the prophets, we know little about Amos save what he himself tells us. He does not appear to have belonged to any rank or influence. The opposite is the case, seeing he styles himself a herdsman (Amos 7:14). He was no “professional prophet, speaking for a living.” Amos did not belong to the order of the prophets, nor had he been educated in the school of the prophets. The prophetic office was thrust upon him (Amos 7:14, 15). When the call came he exchanged the life of a shepherd and cultivator of sycamore trees for that of a prophet.

The desert life of Amos exercised great formative influences upon him. With time to think and pray, he was qualified to form clear judgments. The art of the seer is not cultivated in crowds.

Contemporary with Hosea, Amos prophesied in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah and in the time of Jeroboam. Most of the prophets confined their message in the main to Israel, but to Amos, Israel was only one of the nations. He took in a whole range of various nationalities and indicted them for their sins and proclaimed the judgment of God alike upon nations and individuals.

Amos pronounced judgment upon the oppression of the poor, commercial dishonesty, selfish indulgence and idolatrous worship, and was the first prophet to predict the captivity of Israel, and to announce God’s rejection of His chosen people. The great lessons of the Book of Amos are:

I. Sin is sin in all its blackness, against the bright background of God’s grace.

II. Mere ritual is not pleasing to God. The very worship of Israel was sin (Amos 4:4-5; Amos 5:21-24). Israel thought of God as a vain monarch, pleased with gifts and empty phrases. Amos had nothing but utter contempt for forms of religion that did not disturb one’s conscience or change one’s life.

III. The greatest perils, both of nations and men, lie not in poverty, but in prosperity.

IV. God’s dealings with men are for their discipline, not their doom. Discipline, however, if unheeded, only hastens doom and determines destiny. Thus Amos is rightly called “the prophet of divine law.”

January 25, 2011

Plastic Meaning: How changes in language over time affect Bible translations

How will your favorite Bible version read in 50 years? 100 years? 400? Language changes over time, a fact that has long frustrated Bible translators and spawned many new Bible translations.

For a vivid example of this, we need look no further than the popular King James Version, which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year. The Grateful to the Dead blog has assembled a list of words from the KJV that have very different meanings today than they did when the KJV was first published. For example (KJV words are in bold, followed by the modern equivalent):

amazement terror, 1 Pet 3:6. A much stronger and more negative meaning. We’ve sort of domesticated this word, haven’t we?

bowels (1) heart(s) (metaphorically, as the seat of emotion), Gen 43:30; 1 Kgs 3:26; Ps 109:18; Isa 16:11; 63:15; Jer 31:20; Lam 1:20; 2:11; Phlm 7, 12, 20. (2) compassion, Isa 63:15; Phil 1:8; 2:1; Col 3:12. (3) affections, 2 Cor 6:12. (4) anguish, Jer 4:19. (5) innermost self, Song 5:4. A difficult image for us to appreciate today; seems to derive from an ancient Hebrew understanding of the “guts” as the seat of compassionate emotion. The closest we have now is in phrases like “go with your gut” and “gut check,” which refers more to intuition than love.

by and by immediately, Matt 13:21; Mark 6:25; Luke 17:7; 21:9. Today, “by and by” seems to have the opposite meaning—something that will happen eventually.

careful anxious, Luke 10:41; Phil 4:6. So, in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be careful for nothing” means, “don’t let anything make you full of care,” that is, “make you anxious.”

conversation (1) way of life, 2 Cor 1:12; Gal 1:13; Eph 2:3; 4:22; Phil 1:27; 1 Tim 4:12; Heb 13:5, 7; Jas 3:13; 1 Pet 1:8; 2:12; 3:1, 2, 16; 2 Pet 2:7; 3:11. (2) life, 1 Pet 1:15. (3) in the way, Ps 37:14; 50:23. (4) citizenship, Phil 3:20. This is another 17th-century word whose modern meaning has taken, in the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, a significant “left turn at Albuquerque.”

It can be confusing to come across a word that has simply fallen out of use (like “flagon,” Song 2:5); but it can create theological uncertainty when we encounter words whose meanings have changed drastically over time (like “by and by,” Mark 6:25). This doesn’t mean that the KJV is wrong or inferior; but just as we should be mindful of the culture in which the Bible was originally written, we should be mindful of the culture in which a Bible translation was completed.

Every translation will experience this phenomenon over time; give the original NIV 400 years and we’ll have a list just as long. While translators do their best to mitigate this problem, it’s largely out of their hands. Try as they might, no one can predict how language will shift, and this is doubly true today given how rapidly the internet disseminates linguistic fads and memes.

All one needs to do is look at the overuse (and neutering) of the word “awesome” over the past few decades to see how quickly our language changes. “Awesome” has been used in my presence to describe everything from a sandwich to football. Somehow calling God awesome these days doesn’t carry the weight that it once did.

Credit goes to our colleague Rich Tatum for posting the link to Grateful to the Dead on his twitter feed.

Guest Post
January 24, 2011

The Top 10 Most-Searched Bible Verses: What’s Missing?

After watching many National Football League games growing up, I finally grew curious enough to walk into my parents’ office and pick up the family Bible. It seemed every football broadcast included shots of someone standing in the end zone, behind and between the goal posts, holding up a simple sign: JOHN 3:16. I knew enough about the Bible to locate the Book of John in the New Testament.

When I read John 3:16, I wasn’t impressed. Turns out the verse was familiar, thanks to Sunday school. I guess I expected to read some sort of decoded message that would unlock a valuable secret. In some sense that’s exactly what I read, but I didn’t yet have the eyes of faith to behold the beauty of what God has done in Jesus Christ.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that John 3:16 is the most-searched Bible verse, according to Bible Gateway’s statistical analysis. We reviewed the behavior of some of the 8 million visitors who stop by the site each month, many of them chasing results provided by Google. I was intrigued to review the top 10 results, which I’ve listed in reverse order.

  1. Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
  2. Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
  3. Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
  4. Proverbs 3:6: “In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
  5. Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
  6. Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
  7. Philippians 4:13: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
  8. Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
  9. Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'”
  10. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Four verses come from the Old Testament. Two more come from the Gospels, and four may be found in the Pauline epistles. You’ve seen many of these verses on bumper stickers, bookmarks, plaques, and various other knickknacks you can buy in a Christian bookstore. Tim Tebow wrote some of them on his eye black, knowing cameras would zoom in on it during his days as Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at the University of Florida. In fact, when Tebow’s Gators won the national championship in 2009, John 3:16 topped Google’s list of hottest searches.

Overall the list represents a nice cross-section of Scripture and tells an uplifting story of God’s work in the world. He created it (Gen. 1:1); calls us to trust and submit to him, not conform to it (Prov. 3:5-6; Rom. 12:2); loves it enough to save it (John 3:16); and commissions us to traverse all of it making disciples (Matt. 28:19). From this list we learn that when most people turn to Scripture, they’re often looking for encouragement. They cling to these verses trusting that God is working for their good (Rom. 8:28), giving them strength (Phil. 4:13), planning their hopeful future (Jer. 29:11), and calming their anxieties by answering their requests (Phil. 4:6). If nothing else, these results help those of us who regularly preach and teach the Bible understand how many Christians and even non-Christians use the Bible.

Let me mention an omission. Maybe you caught it, too. Knowing the whole Bible and not just the most-searched passages, you realize that the absence is glaring. You won’t learn from this list why God needs to redeem the world he created. You won’t learn why his love is so significant. You won’t find any warning of what’s to come if you don’t believe. In short, you won’t read about our sin and God’s wrath. Actually, you need to follow the list all the way down to #19 and #20 to find sin. At #19, 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” And #20 reads, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

If we neglect sin and the Lord’s righteous wrath, then we haven’t understood even the basics of Scripture and God’s true character. D. A. Carson writes in The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism:

The point that cannot be escaped is that God’s wrath is not some minor and easily dismissed peripheral element to the Bible’s plot-line. Theologically, God’s wrath is not inseparable from what it means to be God. Rather, his wrath is a function of his holiness as he confronts sin. But insofar as holiness is an attribute of God, and sin is the endemic condition of this world, this side of the Fall divine wrath cannot be ignored or evaded. It is not going too far to say that the Bible would not have a plot-line at all if there were no wrath.

The danger of popping into Scripture from Google is that we miss the story for the verses. Each one of these top 10 most-searched Bible verses is a beautiful, moving testament to God’s loving faithfulness. We should memorize them, sing them, copy them, and remind one another of them. But without knowing the whole story, we don’t know why we should care that God loved the world enough to give his one and only Son. Unless we know about our sin, we will surely perish in it.

Collin Hansen is the Editorial Director at The Gospel Coalition and the editor of the Perspectives in Translation forum at Bible Gateway.

Andy Rau
January 21, 2011

NLT Verse of the Day email now available!

Our Verse of the Day email is now available in the New Living Translation (NLT)!

You can sign up for the NLT Verse of the Day at our Newsletters page. You can also learn more about the NLT or see for yourself how it reads.

Since we launched our Verse of the Day email last year, we’ve received many requests for different Bible versions. Over the last few months we’ve made it available in the NIV, KJV, and the Spanish Nueva Versión Internacional. The new NLT Verse of the Day email newsletter adds another popular and highly readable Bible version to the mix.

Note: If you currently subscribe to one of our other Verse of the Day emails and want to switch to the NLT version, you can do so by clicking “Manage Subscriptions” at the bottom of any one of our email newsletters; then just check or un-check the newsletters as you wish.

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    The Bible Gateway Blog features the latest news, announcements, and reflections from Bible Gateway. We hope what you find here will add to your understanding of and appreciation for the Bible.