How to Study the Bible Contextually (Part 5)

• Picking up from part one on context (immediate, chapter, and book context), point four is studying a passage historically and culturally — the customs, geography, and daily life behind the text, such as head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11, Samaritan hostility in John 4, and Jewish betrothal customs around Mary and Joseph.
• Knowledge leads to understanding, which leads to wisdom, and many bad applications of scripture happen because people skipped understanding — the Laodicean "hot or cold, not lukewarm" passage makes far more sense once you know about the springs around Laodicea.
• Historical Jewish writings such as the Apocrypha (included in the back of the 1611 and treated as canon by the Roman Catholic Church) and Josephus can be informative without being canonized scripture, and hiding that information from people "for their own good" is the wrong instinct — set guardrails and study the Bible instead.
• Growing spiritually requires actually reading and consuming information, including books beyond the Bible; if reading is slow, use audiobooks or biblical podcasts, since Audible costs about the same as Netflix or Hulu and the question is really where the priority is.
• Point five is the literary context — recognizing the genre you are reading (history, poetry, prophecy, epistles, parables), which is not as cut and dried as one book per genre, since Job opens as historical narrative but sits with the poetic books and Psalms contains at least 15 different types of writing.
• Point six is comparing everything with the whole Bible, because apparent contradictions (Ephesians 2:8-9 next to James 2) resolve when scripture interprets scripture, and no fundamental doctrine — the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the Trinity, the inspiration of scripture — hangs on a single verse.
• They close by recommending accessible study resources and by treating literacy, multiple Bibles, and internet access as a privilege, with the encouragement that there is no bad way to start studying the Bible.

Take it further

1. When you read a passage, how often do you stop to ask what the original writer and readers would have understood by it, and what would it take for you to start doing that?
2. The hosts said many bad applications of scripture come from knowing a verse and applying it while skipping understanding. Where have you seen that happen, or done it yourself?
3. What do you make of their point that information like the Apocrypha or historical writings gets kept from people "for their own good"? Is it better to withhold it or to set guardrails and teach people to study?
4. They said it is on us individually, not just on our pastor or church, to know the scripture. What would it look like this month for you to stop leaning on someone else's study?
5. Pick a passage you know well. What genre is it — history, poetry, prophecy, epistle, or parable — and does reading it as that genre change anything for you?
6. Ephesians 2:8-9 and James 2 sound like they conflict until you read them against the whole Bible. What other passages have felt like contradictions to you, and how could comparing scripture with scripture help?