How To:
The ideas we have in mind for manuscript study include the following:
- Print the page(s) you have selected. Note the text is only a half page wide so you can write notes in the right hand margin as you study.
- Unless you’re reading a whole book of the Bible you will want to check the context of the passages we choose. That can be done by looking at your own Bible and reading to get a sense of what is going on literarily before and after the passage. If you’re doing a whole book, chapter study or even a passage study, it’s a good idea to use references to understand the provenance of the text (e.g. who wrote the book, when it was written, to whom was it addressed, etc.), and the genre of the text (e.g. gospel, apocalyptic, epistolary, etc.). That information can help you understand the uniqueness of the piece and allow you do a better job of interpreting what it has to say.
- Use your pen (or colorized tools) to mark up the manuscript text. Analytic: Begin with observing what the text has to say. Look for repeated verbs, nouns and the like; see if you can discern the big idea of the passage or even book. Study the grammar to see what can be learned about the passage--remember if you’re doing the study in English translation that your reading the translator best attempt to get at the Greek grammar from which she is translating. Synthetic: Read the text at least two or three times (depending on length) so you can get a synthetic sense of what the text is saying to join with your analytical work. The idea is to get both the big picture and the details of the passage you’re studying.
- After you complete your observations from the text, try to understand what it is saying. Use your observations both analytic and synthetic to say what you think the author is communicating in the context of the book, NT, or whole Bible. It won’t hurt if AFTER you come to your conclusions to compare them to what others scholars have said about the text in question. It’s always good to consult more than one such commentator and it’s more important to follow their arguments, which you should evaluate if they give them, than to merely take their conclusions as sound. Arguments from authority alone don’t help much.
- After that phase you want to think through and list from what you have interpreted what kind of things to apply personally--be sure that these are translated properly from the first century context to contemporary times in a way that does justice to the text and is relevantly applicable to our contemporary situation. We are primarily interested to do personal applications--asking what do I need to do?, but after that, it’s not improper to think about what sorts of applications are appropriate for our community and the church.
- If done in a group setting the leader should take the group through each phase independently recording in some public manner the information gleaned from the group.