Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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What ‘Inductive’ and ‘Deductive’ Really Mean

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I’ve written before about why I never use the term “Inductive Bible Study” for what we do on this blog. My problem is not with what inductive Bible study is; my problem is with what it’s called. The conventional definition—that induction means starting with particulars and moving to generalities—is not accurate. So we simply use the label “OIA Bible study” for our method.

In addition to what I’ve cited elsewhere, I now provide further evidence from the apologist William Lane Craig.

Deduction and induction are not about movements between particulars and generalities, but about certainty vs. probability. We use both kinds of reasoning in OIA Bible study.

Check it out!

Hebrews: A Sermon on Psalm 110

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Dennis Johnson explains something I’ve been considering for many years: Could the book of Hebrews be a transcribed sermon based on Psalm 110?

Many scholars have pointed out the fact that Hebrews is more sermon than letter (the author self-identifies his work as a “word of exhortation” – Heb 13:22, Acts 13:15). The funny thing is that references to Psalm 110 come up over and over again. Could it be that the sermon to the Hebrews was expositing the implications of that psalm for the new covenant community?

Check it out!

Become a Better Bible Interpreter

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Derek Brown has 10 tips for you:

  1. Pursue holiness and humility by faith in Christ.
  2. Pray diligently that God would enable you to understand and believe his Word.
  3. Be willing to bring your thinking, feeling, and practice into compliance with the Word of God.
  4. Discipline yourself to read through the entire Bible on a regular basis.
  5. Work hard! Spend a lot of time with the biblical text before you visit commentaries and other resources.
  6. Learn from other excellent Bible interpreters (like in their commentaries and other resources).
  7. Write for the sake of your own clarity and learning.
  8. Regularly read good books on theology, Christian living, church history, and Christian biography.

I’ll stop there and encourage you to click over to see the last two, along with explanations of each tip.

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After 5 Years, You’ll Be Unrecognizable

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Back at the New Year, Ben Hicks offered some encouragement for regular Bible reading. Now that the year is almost half-over, perhaps some encouragement is in order. Keep on keeping on. It’s worth it!

Writing about the student who is tempted to quit his Bible reading because he hasn’t been perfectly consistent with it:

No, he doesn’t quit. You don’t expect to see a drastic change overnight. But he continues to work at it. Some days he misses. Occasionally he makes sinful choices that really set him back. But he stumbles along, developing the skill of Bible reading and getting better and better at it. After a week nothing looks that different. After a month, you can kind of tell. After a semester, there’s noticeable change. After 5 years, he’s unrecognizable.

Have you been struggling? Are you tempted to give up? Don’t do it. Get back and try it again. Little by little, “you are turning the central part of you…into something a little different from what it was before” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

Hicks might provide the encouragement you need. Check it out!

And then get back into the Scriptures.

Can You Trust Your New Testament as a Legitimate Text?

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John Samson has a wonderful article walking through, in non-technical language, the history of how we got the New Testament text we have today. In so doing, he addresses the foolish and cartoonish claim that reading the Bible is like a cosmic “telephone game” through history.

Samson explains:

The telephone game is fun exactly because it was designed to distort the message. It is one slim chain, one whisper at a time, and you cannot check the whisper you heard against anything else, not even the whisper before the one you heard. By the end of the line, you have no way to test anything that occurred along the way. Distortion is basically guaranteed.

The New Testament is the exact opposite to this.

Samson goes on to admit that we don’t have the original manuscripts, and there are many variants, but none of that is reason for concern.

If you’d like to know the truth behind how the text of your Bible landed in your hands, and why we have such an embarrassment of riches as evidence for its legitimacy, Samson’s article will not let you down.

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What it Means to “Apply” the Bible

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Chen Xie has a fascinating article about what it means to “apply” the Bible. He explores not only how to apply the Bible but also why it works the way it does. He explores different models for application that various biblical scholars have proposed. In so doing, Xie shows how they don’t contradict but fit together, tending to highlight one aspect or another of a larger framework.

In the end, Xie suggests that we can identify “right” application according to three criteria:

  1. Faithful use: We apply (use) the text as a norm in a way that is faithful to the canonical text and to the history of its orthodox reception in Christian tradition.
  2. Fitting relevance: We apply (relate) it to our present situations and make judgments that are fitting to new cultural contexts.
  3. Fervent devotion: We apply (devote) ourselves fervently to participate in the text’s world—God’s kingdom—and let it transform our whole person.

Xie also supports the robustness of the head/heart/hands model we promote on this blog. If you’re interested in understanding why we do what we do in application, Xie’s article is well worth your time.

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OT Quotes in NT: Excel Version Available

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Years back, I posted a spreadsheet listing every instance where the New Testament directly quotes the Old Testament. I included only direct quotes of OT texts, not allusions or echos of OT language, nor references to OT characters or events.

You can find my analysis of the information here, along with a series of posts highlighting the most quoted books, verses, etc.

This document has always lived as a Google Sheet, available to anyone who finds it on our Resources page. One such person, the keen and studious Matt Kauffenstein, wasn’t happy with Google Sheets. So he took matters into his own hands to convert it into an Excel spreadsheet, which you can now find here.

In addition, Matt improved the sheet with a search feature, so instead of scrolling or using Ctrl-F (Cmd-F on a Mac) to find a particular passage, you can now simply enter the text you want into the search box, and the sheet shows you all the matching results. You can search in this way for an OT text or a NT text.

You can find that improved document here. Both documents will settle down and build themselves a nice little cabin on our Resources page with all the other goodies there.

Thank you very much, Matt, for creating this for us and making it available to our readers!

Don’t Be Embarrassed by the Cursing Psalms

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Have you ever come across those poems of cursing in the book of Psalms? Scholars call them “imprecatory psalms,” which just means that they contain requests for judgment on evil. And not a general judgment on a vague sense of evil, but a concrete and specific sort.

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow! (Psalm 109:9)

Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked. (Psalm 3:7)

Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them! (Psalm 35:6)

It is quite common to find psalmists asking God to judge their enemies in such ways. Many have struggled with these psalms, such as C.S. Lewis, who believed them full of “vindictive hatred” (Reflections on the Psalms).

Here’s the question: Are such psalms opposed to Jesus’ instructions to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors? Do such prayers of cursing represent an older way of selfish thinking that has been reversed by the coming of the new covenant? And what should Bible teachers or Bible study leaders do when we come to such psalms in our study or teaching?

Daniel R. Hyde addresses these questions and more in this thorough piece on the imprecatory psalms. Hyde writes particularly to preachers, but his insights apply easily to any teacher or small group leader as well. According to Hyde:

Imprecations in the Psalms are not an embarrassment to be managed. They are part of the Scriptures that “bear witness” to “the things concerning” Jesus (John 5:39; Luke 24:27; 24:44). If these prayers make us uncomfortable, that discomfort is no reason to avoid or edit them—it’s a reason to learn how to preach them. As Elizabeth Achtemeier said, “If we have some problem with a passage in the Old Testament, it is not the Bible’s problem. It is ours.” The question is not whether Christians may pray for God’s justice, but how.

Hyde shows us that the imprecatory psalms enable us to hand justice over to God so we’re not tempted to execute it ourselves. He gives three reasons why God gave us the cursing psalms.

  1. They hand vengeance to God
  2. They teach the church to long for the kingdom
  3. They form the whole person before God

He goes on to explain to go about teaching these psalms in a Christian context. In the face of great evil, do not deprive yourself of the one weapon (prayer) God has given you to directly resist it. Hyde’s counsel is well worth your time.

Check it out!

How to Derail a Bible Study

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Bobby Miller III recognizes four easy ways to derail a small group Bible study. Maybe you’ll recognize one or more of them. I sure do.

  1. Sideline the Bible to talk about other sources.
  2. Focus on personal issues rather than Bible interpretation.
  3. Look for ways others should change rather than applying the text to ourselves.
  4. Over-comfort and adopt a fix-it attitude rather than trusting God’s Spirit to bring change.

Here’s a taste of his advice on the first danger:

If you want to use other Christian material, do so wisely by having your group read the Scripture passages the sources are based on as well. Don’t assume every group member is already familiar enough with the Bible passage you’re studying. Instead, take the time to revisit each section in its context. You may be surprised by how much you discover.

This is good, practical counsel. Check it out!

It’s Not Too Late to Seek the Lord

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According to Joel 1, the day of disaster may already be upon you, picturing the day of the Lord to come. May this drive you to a day of prayer and repentance in hope of finding mercy instead of judgment.

Paul House walks through the argument of Joel 1, modeling how to trace themes, follow the train of thought, and make concrete and specific applications.

How should we think about such events [natural disasters]? Should we simply consider them a bit of bad luck? Should we think they punish bad people? Should we think God is not in control of such events? Should we just put such terrible events out of our minds? How can we think Biblically about what seem to be freakish acts of nature? I do not have all the answers to these questions.

House’s sample Bible study is well worth your time. Check it out!