 Okay, welcome back to BC 106 interpreting scripture. It's our second lecture for today. I hope all of you are following and understanding. Let's go back to where we paused. I'm going to share the PDF. Right, so we're looking at the translation philosophy. In other words, how did the translators go about their translation? So first, we said there's one group of translators who would do formal equalism. They do word for word translation. They are trying to be as close to the original text as possible. Then there is functional equivalence, which is thought for thought. What was the person thinking? That's what I want to say here in the translation, thought for thought. So there's a little bit of interpretive process which the translators are doing for us, and hopefully they are right. Then there is the optimal equivalence. That is, I'm going to try to keep it word for word, but at the same time, I'm going to try to bring out the thought for the benefit of the reader. So that's optimal equivalence. So the Hallman Christian Standard Bible, I think it's what it's, it's CSP would be word for thought and word for word and thought for thought and optimal equivalence approach. Then there's another approach, which is meaning for meaning or equivalent meaning. So that means, what was the meaning of what the person was saying or writing? Let me convey that meaning in today's language. The goal is, so the passion translation comes as part of an equivalent translation, essential equivalence meaning for meaning. So here again, the translators are doing their part in interpreting the text and trying to keep trying to communicate the meaning of what was written for the reader. So they're doing that bit of interpretation. And finally, or another translation is a paraphrase. So in the paraphrase, the goal, you know, they're not looking at, you know, word for word or thought for thought or meaning for meaning. They're more like, let me say this in a very simple story form for somebody who likes to read it that way. So there is, they're not looking at accuracy, but they are looking at, let me capture it in a very interesting way for somebody to read. So, you know, so there are all these different translations of the Bible. And so when you look at it here, if you put a look at it as a chart, and you'll be seeing this chart once again in your second year, we'll go through it again. If this end, the left side, as I am looking at it, is accuracy. That means it is close to the original text. And if this end, if it is on the right side, end is relevance. That means it's close to the reader's understanding or making it easy for the reader to read. But it is further away from my inaccuracy. Then this is how the various translations of the Bible would be laid out. The one that is closest to the original text is the interlinear Greek, the interlinear Bible, which would have the Hebrew and the Greek words. That means it is literally translated. Then you see the New American Standard Bible, the amplified English Standard, revised King James, New King James. And then you have thought for thought, you know, of some of the common translations, the NIV here. And then you have the paraphrase, that means they're quite further away from, you know, being close to the structure of the text. But they are trying to be more relevant to the reader. You have the living Bible, and you have the message Bible and contemporary English version and so on. So the passion translation would probably be somewhere here, where it's meaning for meaning. So it's still away from thought to thought, word for word, thought for thought. They are here somewhere. They're doing of essential equivalence, meaning for meaning, but they're not doing word for word or thought for thought. Now, all of these different Bible translations, they have their benefit, you know, because there may be some people who just want to read something very, you know, read the text in a very, in a very light way. They just want it easy to understand. Then we could tell them, yeah, you read the message Bible or you read the living Bible or contemporary English version. It's in modern English. It's easy to understand, you know, the Good News Bible. So it's very easy. So it makes it easy for those people. So it doesn't keep them away from reading the Bible. At least they will read these translations and they will understand and learn certain things. And then you have people who, well, let me get a little closer. I really want, you know, something that's closer to the text, but yet I want it in my modern language. Then, you know, we can give them the passion translation. We can give them the NIV, those kinds of, they'll feel comfortable with that. But then there are those who say, well, I really want to be as close to the text. I want to study my Bible. I want to study, you know, do a lot of intense focused study on things. Then that's where we tell them, you know, we would recommend when you're doing serious Bible study to be as close to the original text as possible. You're going to look up the original words, the meanings, then you're putting in a lot of effort. So then we say, okay, then why don't you use, you know, the New King James or the King James or the New American Standard Bible. These are, you know, very close to the original text and good for some, those of us who want to do serious Bible study. Okay. So there's nothing wrong with, you know, I personally don't see anything wrong with having so many versions or translations because there are different leaders who will benefit from all of these. But keep in mind that sometimes when the scripture text is paraphrased or is you're away from proximity to the original text, the meaning can also change. You know, there are some verses which you read, if you read from the Message Bible or the Living Bible, it could just mean totally different from what, you know, you would, when you're reading the New King James or the New American Standard Bible. And that becomes a little challenge, you know, because what you read in the Message Bible, they have put it in such language that it's so different from, you know, the actual text. It's okay for somebody who wants something easy to understand but then to teach from it or to, you know, to establish doctrine or something that would be very difficult. So that's why for Bible study, we'd say get as close to the original text as possible. Okay. Any questions before we, here's just a list of all these common versions. Before we get into methods of Bible study, any questions or anything you want to discuss in terms of translations, you know, and of course, I've only spoken about English translations. I don't know about other language translations, but I'm suspecting they would be doing something similar, but I don't know. Any questions on these English translations and, you know, why there are different translations of the English Bible and so on. Everything is clear. So, all right. Thanks, Joy. Good to have you back after some time. So, if, you know, some people ask, which is the best Bible to use if you're going to study the Bible? So you'd say, I mean, I would say, you know, go as close to the original text, you know. So maybe take the New American Standard Bible or King James or New King James. And the King James may be a little difficult to read because it's old English. So take the New King James. So I would say go close to, if you want to study. Okay. If you want to study. Now, here's what I do. And I will be explaining this to you when we talk about the tools for Bible study. What I do is I like to read the verse, especially when I'm studying the Bible, not in my morning reading. In morning reading, I just use New King James. But when I'm studying the scriptures, when I'm, you know, looking into a topic, what I like to do is I like to read the same words from different English translations because then, you know, you can see, okay, in the bringing out, this is what is the main thought or the meaning that they're bringing out. And it also helps us communicate in contemporary English to people. Or we could say the same thing in different ways. You know, that helps people. Sometimes you say something with certain words they may not understand. You say the same thing with another set of words they may not understand. You say the same thing with a different set of words they will understand. You know, but you've said the same thing is just that you're using a different set of words and they get it. So that comes, so that's why I like to read different English translations because they're using different words, English words to communicate that same idea. So it gives us you know, the ability so I can say the same thing like this, you know, so it's a learning for all of us as well, especially when we are speaking to, you know, today's younger generation. It's good to use more contemporary English that they can understand other than, you know, the New King James even, right? So I will share that a little later how we can do it. So from a Bible study perspective, it's good to use a Bible that is close to the original text, you know, pick something like that. From a communication perspective, if you want to speak to an audience then use something like, you know, just read something like the passion translation, the meaning for meaning, you know, sometimes I also look at the message Bible, the living Bible, they make it easy how to say it in an easy way in the audience. So it's useful. Okay, now let's move forward to talk about different ways to study the Bible. Now I wish we had time to, you know, just demonstrate each one of these ways because each one of these are very important. But, you know, let's see, maybe it was the end of the course, but I'm just going to explain different ways to study the Bible. Then we want to talk about the tools we can use. And then from next week, we start talking about all the rules, you know, these are the rules you must follow when you're interpreting scripture. So how do you study the Bible? I'm going to share with us some of these ways, very interesting ways to study the Bible. The first set of ways we refer to as more of a devotional or studying short passages. That means, you know, when you're doing your devotion, you might read one or a passage or you might read a chapter, you know, or you might read a few chapters in your devotion. So for me, I might usually read one chapter, right, or sometimes even half a chapter. So I'm just reading a passage. But then in that, it's part of my devotion, but I don't just read it, but you also want to study it. So we will get into that. What should we do, you know, the devotional method, verse powers. So we will get into the details of each of this, this just overview. Then another way to study the Bible is, of course, to study a character or to do a biographical study. So when you're studying a character, that means, you know, example, you look at Genesis 39, Joseph, in part of ourselves, and you study, okay, what happened in that situation? Daniel, you study Daniel chapter six, or what happened to Daniel when just, you know, he was thrown in the lion's den. This is that we bring out from the character that, you know, bring out, okay, these are the things that we can follow. Whereas in a biographical study, you study his whole life from birth to death. So if you're looking at Joseph again, from the time he was born, all the things that happened in his life, all the way till he died. So you're studying his full life. That's a biographical study. Whereas a character study is, okay, you're looking at a certain time frame of the person's life and you're learning. So we can learn from both, right? Both are very interesting. So that's character or biographical study. And some of the, you know, well-known Bible characters, of course, you know, people do study in Abraham or Jacob or David or, you know, so some important characters like Daniel and so on. So those are very useful, very important characters. So you come to New Testament, you study life of Paul and so on. Then there's another way to study the Bible, which is thematic or topical or we call it word study. You know, people use different, different things. They say thematic, topical or word study. That means you study a certain topic in the Bible. So example, Holy Spirit. So you go from Genesis to Revelation to Trinon. See, what does the Bible say about Holy Spirit or healing? So you study from Genesis to Revelation. On that particular theme of divine healing or subject on faith or finances or family, marriage, so many topics, you study from cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation on that topic. Now, this is, again, I feel very important. This is where I actually spent maybe, or I would say I spent most of my time doing this kind of study, because then it makes you very clear as far as that topic is concerned. Your mind is very clear. This is why, because you've studied from Genesis to Revelation, you've gone through it. You're very clear on that, you know, because you've seen from Genesis Revelation on that subject, you're very clear. You can speak the authority because you have studied, you know, on that topic. So I like to do this, encourage you to do this, and we will talk about how to do it on certain things. The other thing is, if somebody says, can you, it's, you know, can you speak on this topic? Sure, you can easily speak on it because you've studied it from Genesis to Revelation, you know, in each book of the Bible, this is what it says on this topic. And then you can weave it all together, depending on how much time you have, or you can break it into subheadings and present it. But it's very useful if you want to master certain topics. Another approach is chapter, chapter study. So that means take a chapter and get into the details. So a lot of expository preaching, expository preaching usually happens out of your chapter study or your book study. So the chapter studies, you take one chapter and you look into the details of the chapter, you break the chapter down very nicely. Now, usually when people preach from the book of Psalms, of course, you can do this to any chapter in the Bible, but usually when people preach, okay, today I'm going to preach from Psalm 40. Wonderful. So what have they done? They've done a chapter study. They've gone into Psalm 40, broken it down, understood it, and then bring out the key points, the key elements in that Psalm. You know, so like that you can do it to any chapter. And within that, there are two ways you can do it. You can do a summary method or you can do an analysis method and we will talk about both. Okay. And then lastly, there is the book study. Book study means you're studying all the chapters in the book. You're studying the entire book. You would also look at the background. You would also look at the culture that, you know, a lot of things you look at the historical, the cultural, the setting, the people to whom it was written, etc. So you would do a lot of study around the book, then get into the book chapter by chapter. Book study also is very good, especially when you, especially for us, you know, I think all of us should at least study the New Testament and some of the main books from the Old Testament. Of course, Old Testament is very big, but at least New Testament we should do book study so that we can really, you know, get an understanding of each of the, especially the episodes and other gospels are easy for us to read. They're a recording of all the Jesus said and taught and we are familiar with it. But book study of the episodes, I think, is very, very important, especially for us in as we preach and teach. For that matter, any book, but especially I would say, you know, the New Testament. So in studying the book, sometimes people can do focus on the background. Some people can focus on do a survey, meaning this is the essence. They're bringing out the essence of the book. And sometimes you can go a little deeper. You can go into a reference synthesis method. And you're combining both background survey and in-depth study of the book, right? That means you're going worse by worse. What is the same? Everything. So you can do it at different levels. You know, some people may just do a background, they may just do a survey, meaning high level. This is the essence of the book. Or some people will go right, deep into the book, worse by worse. So there are many different approaches in book study as well. Okay, so at a high level, there are many different ways to study the Bible, the devotional or studying a single passage. That means even a few verses. You can do character. You can do topical. You can do chapter. And you can do book. Right? So let's get into these a little bit more detail on these. And I would encourage you, you know, to try work on these things. Of course, it'll take time, but it's very useful. So let's talk about the first one. In your devotional or passage study. That means you're taking a small passage, maybe three, four verses, five verses. Maybe it could sometimes be a full chapter. But in the devotional study, your goal is to, it's like an immediate thing. Like, how do I apply it in my life? So in devotional study, the approach very universal, I mean, globally, people refer to it as the inductive study method. Like we mentioned earlier today, it's a very simple way to study the Bible, very simple, which we, I think all of us are already, you may would already use in the way we read the Bible. So you read your passage. So you select a short passage. You read it very carefully. That means you meditate on it. You visualize the scene. I mean, you try to imagine in your mind, okay, what is happening? You know, what is being said? What is happening there? Now, what do I see? What do I feel? You know, how does it apply to me? So to do that, you ask three simple questions. What is the text saying? What is the meaning? And how do I apply? Simple. What's being said? What does it mean? How do I apply? So that's part, that's called as inductive Bible study, which we use in our devotional method. And sometimes, you know, you could actually practice this. That is, you can write it out. Okay, today I learned this, you know. So when I read today, first on three and four, of course, I try to tie it back right from chapter one. I am seeing, I'm following the train of thought. So what is John saying? So even though I made a chapter three and four today, I'm trying to connect it back to how he started because it's a full train of thought. But I see, okay, he's talking about love. Chapter four is all about God's love for us and our love for people. Okay, so that's what he's saying. But I remember, I can see, hey, he spoke about it in chapter two itself. He spoke about it in chapter three, and he's saying again the same in chapter four, he's talking about the importance of loving people. And he's all connecting it back to fellowship with God, because chapter one, he says, if you want to fellowship with God, you have to walk in the light. In chapter two, he says, if you hate your brother, you're in darkness. Chapter three, he says, if you hate your brother, you're a murderer. Chapter four, he's saying, how can you say you love God if you don't love somebody? I mean, how can you say you love God whom you don't see if you can't love somebody whom you see? Right? So it's all connected back to fellowship with God. So I cannot, and that's what he says, you know, if you walk in love, you're in God, God's in you. If not, fellowship with God is not possible. So you're just thinking through and you're thinking about how it applies to yourself. How does this help me become more like Jesus? Okay, God, help me to love people. Make sure that there is no hatred, nothing wrong in my heart. So what you're doing is, you're taking that passage, applying it to yourself. The same thing you can do to the same passage, you can look at it worse by worse. So in that passage of it, there are six verses, each verse, you can do the same thing to each verse. You know, what do I see? Sometimes every verse is, you know, has that you can do the observation, meaning an application to every verse. So you can do worse by worse for that. And you can write down the personal application of each verse. So here you might write down, you know, suppose you read six verses, you're looking at the whole passage and you're writing like a summary of the passage and application, or if you're looking six verses, you can write down six applications. Each was what it means. Okay, but you're doing the same thing. You are observation, interpretation, application. You can do it to the whole passage, or you can do it to the individual verses. Okay, so this is one way of studying the Bible. Now, as you keep doing this, you know, eventually you're going to, you know, if you will learn so much, we will learn so much as we do this inductive approach. Okay, character study, like we said, you are going to look at a small section of time in the person's life, or you can look at their whole life. Right, so example, example Daniel, you could read just Daniel chapter six. And if we look at just that chapter and we study Daniel only in chapter six, we are doing character study. And we're saying, okay, what can I learn about Daniel? Well, you know, it starts off by saying that Daniel was very good in his work. He was a man of an excellent spirit. He was excellent in his work, and under King Darius. And so, you know, and then he was, you know, doing his work well. And so Darius thought of, you know, promoting him. And then you see how there was people who didn't like that. There were people who didn't like that. They wanted to put him down. They came up with a plan to put him down and trap him. And this had to do with his prayer life. But then you see, you know, how Daniel had a discipline from an early age, he would go three times and he would pray towards Jerusalem. And then even though the law was passed, nobody should pray to any other God. Daniel went and still prayed. And even though King Darius really liked Daniel and really honored Daniel, he had to, you know, have him thrown the lines then and God protected him and so on. And then you can talk about, you know, various aspects of Daniel's character. And then you can summarize it, you know, Daniel's dedication, Daniel's excellence, Daniel's courage, and Daniel's faith, and Daniel's vindication, you know, so you could break that hole down into, you know, four or five points and you can bring out, you know, so many lessons that you can see in Daniel's life. But you're looking at a certain timeframe in Daniel's life and we are learning from, oh, I must also be like Daniel. And it encourages other hearts to follow that example. So that's character study, right? So you're zeroing in and you're putting the spotlight on a certain time in that person's life and you're looking at it very carefully. Now, sometimes you might notice some mistakes the person made, their weaknesses, their failures, and then we learn from that, okay, we shouldn't make those same mistakes. You know, what, how would I do? How would I react if I was in that situation? You know, so you're putting your, put yourself in that person's life and you learn. So this is character study and God can, you know, speak to us even through that. Now, if you extend that, like we said, to the entire life of the person as given as revealed in scripture, then we are doing a biographical study. So if we go from Daniel chapter one all the way through end of chapter six, because the rest of book of Daniel is all prophecy, you may pick up a few other things in the other chapters, but basically it is the biographians with chapter six. And you look at, you know, this is what we can learn about his full life as seen in scripture, how he comes as a, how he was taken into exile as a Jewish boy and he learned the language of the people and yet how he was faithful and all of that. So you do his whole entire study. That's a biographical sketch. And again, you do the same thing. What can we learn from Daniel's entire life and how does, how God works with somebody over time? So that's again, another way to look at, to do character study. Right. Now when we're doing thematic or topical study, here we are deducing things from, so that what we're doing is we're going to try to look at all the scriptures that are speaking on that team or topic. And then you deduce, that means you draw out, arrive at insights, conclusions, very important, you arrive at doctrine. That means this is what the Bible says about this. I mean, you are, you know, you are actually establishing doctrine through this type of study, because now you're going to save the authority. This is what the Bible says on the subject. Why? Because, you know, you looked at the entire subject, looked at the entire Bible on this theme. So doctrine is often established through this kind of study. You have to look at the whole Bible on that theme. A lot of, the other studies will give us a lot of inspiration and a lot of instruction. But doctrine is normally established through this kind of study of a complete word study or a thematic or topical study you establish doctrine. So in this, basically what you're doing is, okay, topical, you take up a topic and you go through the whole Bible through all the verses that you can find that speak to that topic. Now, for this, for doing this, of course, we can use tools, but we also need to know the Bible in order to do this. You need to know that, okay, in all of these books of the Bible, this subject is addressed in some way. So we can use tools. We can use cross-referencing and I will show you, you know, the tools we have available to us to do this very quickly. But basically what you're going to do is you're going to find out all the verses that you can get on this topic, on this subject. And then you're going to answer specific questions. So, for example, suppose you say, I want to study what the Bible says on healing. So what do you do? Well, you have to get all the scriptures from Genesis Revelation that speak on healing. And then you can put down your questions, you know, does God heal? What are the ways in which he heals? How do I receive healing? Why don't people, why don't, why doesn't everybody get healed? What are the different methods through which God heals? You know, so you ask these questions and then as you read all the scriptures on healing, you categorize them, you place them as answers to your questions. So basically, you're organizing your conclusions into a structured outline or into a structured set of conclusions, you're putting them together. Right. So then you can communicate that. Right. And so this is, you know, it is, it is challenging, but it's also most rewarding way to study the Bible because you understand very clearly on the subject. So some of the books that we have written APC books now, the book on faith, we haven't printed it yet, but the book on healing and deliverance or gifts to the Holy Spirit are all topical studies. That means we try to bring together everything the Bible says on that subject. And so, for example, in ministering and writing that book, ministering and healing deliverance, I said, okay, you know, let's bring together everything that you can possibly find on this subject. So you don't even have to look anywhere else because here in one place, you have brought together in a very organized way everything the Bible says on the subject, you know, so we try to cover that. And similarly on the gifts of the Spirit or other topical books, you know, they're the outcome of such a study. So you basically get all the verses, all the passages that speak on that subject. Then you make your questions or your categories of things that you want to have answered, then you organize what you find into those conclusions. And sometimes new categories may come up as you're looking at the scriptures. And then you arrive at, you know, a full view on the subject, a complete view. Okay. I wish I could show you practically how it's done, but let's see, maybe just the end. Similarly, you may want to do a topic or you may want to do a theme, you know, you could pick a theme like who we are in Christ or redemption, you know, the overlapping can't differentiate between topic and theme. They're almost similar. And so you get all the verses on who we are in Christ or our redemption. And you put it in a way, you organize it in a way that is very easy to understand and communicate. And similarly, do four words. So you pick a word like faith, or you pick a word. And then you look at all the scriptures that have that word, you know, wisdom or righteousness or, yeah, just in any word. And you go through all the scriptures and then you put it all together in a very structured format, right? So whether you do a topic or a theme or a word study, the approach is very similar. Okay. Let's just do a little bit more and I'll pause. I know we have about 10 minutes. So how do you study a chapter? Chapter study approach. There are different ways. One is you can do a summary of the chapter. Or maybe let me start this next week. I think it'd be over too much here. Let's pick up here. Let's pause for any questions. Is everybody's okay with your following so far? Any questions on these things? So next week, we will look at the other study by the study methods. And then I will also share with you the tools that we could use. And I use this tool. I use Esword a lot. So this is the tool that I use. I've been using it from the time it was first released, I think back in 2001. So this is how I study the tool that I use to study the Bible. I will explain this to you next class next week. You see like in one place you can have many, many, many versions. So if I just select, you know, you can select one verse and you can say compare. And that same verse you can read in many different translations, including Hindi. And, you know, you can read it. So it's really interesting study. Then, of course, New King James is the default that I use. And then there is the certain commentaries I will mention. There are lots of commentaries, but don't read too many. You'll get confused. So I will mention a few that are useful to have. And then there are dictionaries. Again, there are many dictionaries, but I'll tell you the ones that I normally use so that they can give you the words. And of course, this tool helps you look up the Greek word, the meaning of the Greek words and Hebrew words as well. So very useful. And then you can do searches. So if you want to search for the word faith, where does the word faith appear in the Bible? So it tells you, in the King James Version, the word faith appears in 231 verses and 247 matches. So here are all the places where the word faith is found. So this is very useful when you are doing a topical study or a thematic study, right? So we'll go over this tool next week. And I'd encourage you to do this. There are other tools as well, which I will mention, but this is the one. Eastward is what I use. I've been using it for a long time, and I really like it, right? So I'd encourage you to make use of that and study the word. Okay, we're going to close now. Thank you all for being on the class. I hope these things are useful to all of us. And I just want to invite somebody to pray, and we will pause for today. We'll pick up from doing the chapter study. We'll pick it up from next week. Okay, could somebody pray and then dismiss us, please? Thank you. All right, somebody can pray? I can go. Go ahead, Zoe. So, Lord, thank you so much for this for today, for every teaching. Thank you because you are opening tools and your ways to know your Lord and because all the things that you are setting up in our hearts, we ask you for this day, and we ask you that you're still putting hunger in our hearts to read the Bible in many different ways so we can learn more about you so we can understand everything you can say and everything you have to say for us and to the world. And we ask you, so you protect us today and that everything that we're about to do, it's on your hands, Lord, and everything that we're about to say. It's on your mouth either and that we can be light wherever we go. In the name of Jesus, amen. Amen, amen. All right, thank you everyone. God bless you. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon or rest of your day. See you again next week. God bless. Bye now. Thank you, Pastor. Bye. God, God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.