I'm reading Gary Friesen's Decision Making and the Will of God at the moment (great book, highly recommended) and he talks in one part about different ways to get into and remember the Word. The one that I've been using the past couple of weeks I've found quite good and so I thought I'd share it.
He recommends making a list of chapter titles for the Bible. This way you can learn one sentence per chapter (easier than remembering the whole chapter...) and when you are looking for something specific you have a mental table of contents to help you. For example, my chapter title for Romans 1 is "The unrighteous deeds of ungodly people" because this is the chapter where Paul details many of the acts that the ungodly perform.
I've found this to be really helpful, not just as a memory tool, but also as a way of studying. Because I'm inventing the chapter title myself, I find that I really need to understand the chapter, and sometimes I read it 2 or 3 times before I get the main theme. Also, by reviewing my list of chapter titles, I'm starting to see the flow of the authors thoughts. For example, my title for chapter 2 is "The judgement of God on Jew and Gentile alike" and chapter 3 "The judgement of God defended". When you look at the whole book you start to see the overall themes emerging and its helped me to understand the whole book, not just remember. Give it a go - it works really well!
4 comments:
Really good advice! Thanks Davey-boy!
Let's not forget to read the letters whole though - they are letters to actual people or groups of people in specific places and for specific purposes, so lets not break them apart too much. You don't pick up a letter from your sister and just read the last paragraph, nor should we do the same with scripture. So taking Friesen's idea and working it into a shorter version of a letter by making those chapter (or I would say subjects*) summary sentences actually string together to make a readable paragraph may be very helpful.
The New Testament wasn't written in chapters and verses, but broken up for reference about 500 or so. I don't remember the exact date off my head. Doesn't matter. But we use those verses out context a lot since it has been done, so following this line of thought is really helpful in deed.
C.S. Lewis said that if you couldn't rephrase something in your own words (fairly concisely) and make it understandable to a seven year old, you didn't really understand it yourself.
So, fire away!
Great post Dave! Thanks
'course... then again, I've never been concise...
hmmmmm, telling?
It was actually much more recent than 500AD when the Bible was divided into what we have today. Apparently it was the 1240s when the Bible was divided into chapters, and the OT was divided into verses 1448 by a Hewish teacher named Mordecai Nathan. It seems the NT was divided into verses in about 1550. These dates seem a little less than concrete, but they are about right. See http://www.biblestudy.org/question/when-was-bible-divided-into-chapters-verses.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapters_and_verses_of_the_Bible for a more detailed description.
wow. i remembered the 1448 one, but i thought some of the books had been kinda divided up by the time Jerome got his hands on them. either way, it kinda messes up our way of reading it.
i think this is a great way to try to remember it. i wouldn't break it up into chapters though myself.
thanks for the dates!
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