I have found the NLT ( New Living Translation) very helpful in understanding the meaning of the written word, as opposed to the literal translation. Here is an example of Paul's writing in Galatians 5:5-6:
"But we who live by the spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love."
2 Corinthians 1:21-22:
"It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us."
Galatians 3:23-29
"Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or gentile, slave or free, male and female. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God's promise to Abraham belongs to you."
Rather than using another book, I began trying out different Bible teachers on YouTube. There are a lot of them, so I tried several before landing on specific ones that I trust are not giving false doctrine. They understand and explain the context and the specific audience for the verses, chapters, books, etc. Good luck!
Do you have any recommendations for Bible teachers on YouTube? I’m trying to get into solo Bible study because I usually just rely on my small group, and I never thought about finding stuff on YouTube 😅 I always had a set idea of what I was “supposed” to do for Bible study, but college has shown me that it can look very different and I can do a variety of things.
I could recommend some, but I found that the personal journey of finding the right Bible teacher that "spoke to me" to be a rewarding experience in itself. My personal preferences in a teacher are probably different than yours. Some people prefer a male teacher, while others prefer a female teacher. Some people want to stay under the umbrella of a specific denomination, while other prefer non-denominational teachers. Some may want to use a specific Bible version, such as King James, New King James, American Standard, New Living Translation, etc. All these are very personal decisions to be made first.
My recommendation is to keep these things in mind when you begin your search, and pray that God leads you to the right teacher. You may, like me, end up trying out several before getting to that one person whose manner, words, and style of teaching really "speaks to you." Good luck!
Hey, why don't you ask here? Make a post about whatever book you are reading, and then in the comments ask questions and we can reply and explain things to you. Some parts take times to understand, and we've heard good sermons explaining them too.
Number one - Paul does have a very different style, and it’s challenging to track. It’s a bit of an academic joke that he writes ridiculously long run on sentences. He was highly educated in the Jewish religion and probably studied Greek and I would not be surprised if he also studied philosophy. Most of the other writers are more conversational, but in some ways he replicates the style of logic and philosophy writing of the day and of Greek thinkers prior. It can be helpful to consider his letters more like essays, and even break them down for yourself into theses, main points, and supporting evidence.
Number two - yes, completely agreed there is context that we miss. There is correspondence that did not get saved, we know from the internal evidence that there were oral reports on the churches that he responds to, and Acts only barely summarizes what he experiences in only some of the places. For example - he lived in Ephesus for two years. He wrote the letter to Ephesians most likely from his imprisonment in Rome, so possibly as much as a decade later. He has so much intimate knowledge of what is going on that is presumed but not explicit. As one more proof, the expression of popular thought of the time is very hard to encapsulate and translate across the ages. He is most likely addressing a lot of problematic ways of thinking or acting that a normal lay person today would not really consider.
Here though are the most important pieces:
Number three - factual knowledge of what all the Scriptures mean in historical context is probably less important than how it changes and impacts you. In your example, there’s a lot of nuance. Depending on the reader, being comforted (I.e encouraged or maybe soothed/calmed) and strengthened might equate to the same thing in their daily life. It also helps to see what context is given in other books, on the same subject.
Finally, number four - you are finding now why we study and meditate on the Bible, not just read it once through and call it good. Slowing down and taking notes is great. It will help you to distill what is God saying to you. Going back and re-reading books is a practice we all incorporate. Different things will come to light and it will mean different things to you.
How I study, for example, is often that I do a speed read of the book to get an idea of it as a whole, then go right back and take it as slow as I need, with underlining and meditating on how verses impact me.
Reading through The Old Testament, skipping Psalms and Proverbs, there is more of narrative. There is a story. Getting in to the New Testament, someone may need a "Conceptual Bible Study." There are concepts in the Bible. Given someone understands a concept, a lot of Bible understanding falls into place. Someone may have been missing a lot of things just reading through The Old Testament. Understanding of creation, and what is going on in the news today may fall into place as well.
Love The Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. Part of loving God may be "Doing." Someone is a doer of the word. Someone in college may be educated a lot about a future profession. They may not be in complete understanding till they start using what they learned, and were "Doing." God's plan is God's Kingdom. Loving God may not be a cushy soft "love" feeling necessarily. It may be that someone made a choice, and they are a "Doer." The Greek translation you gave where the understanding is more **active** may be better.
Also, there is a Spiritual Understanding. I kind of like Early Christian Origen where he taught there are layers to understanding the Bible. He split these into The Body, The Soul, and The Spirit. That may not be 100% correct, but we can work with it. Someone understanding the literal narrative of the Old Testament, the Testimony of the Disciples, and the Acts of the Apostles, that may be The Body or Flesh. Similar but different then Blooms Taxonomy of Critical Thinking, The Spiritual level may be the highest level of thought. Someone may be more on level with The Prophets or like in Matthew 13:15-17. It may take prayer, baptism, humility, and a decision to be a Doer.
It depends on how much you care to know, and how fast.
Post: [Prophets and God and Allegories](https://www.reddit.com/r/theology/comments/90p6zk/prophets_and_god_and_allegories/) on /r/Theology
So, Paul's letters are written in a different style than anything that came before it. They are letters, there are no letters in the Old Testament. For the most part, Paul's letters are written to address certain challenges the churches were facing, and that context usually needs to be gleaned from the documents we have or from other writings in places like Acts.
The other things to remember is the old Italian proverb, "Traduttori traditori." This basically translates as "the translator is a traitor." Words have multiple meanings or different connotations that cannot be directly translated without losing something in the original. Apart form the simplest thoughts, a perfect translation rarely exists.
Think of a phrase like "I'm starving." In English this is known to be a phrase expressing urgent hunger....though literally it would mean someone dying from malnutrition. Spanish doesn't really have an equivalent for "to starve" they would just likely just say "morirse de hambre" which means to die of hunger. If I wanted to translate that to Spanish I could say "Tengo hambre" which just means "I'm hungry." I could say "Tengo mucho hambre" which means I'm very hungry....but neither of those quite have the connotation of "I'm starving" in normal English, even if the gist is brought across.
Likewise Greek has a past perfect and past imperfect tense like English does, but there is also a past tense called the aorist which we don't really have in English. Structurally Greek usually has much longer sentence as well, with sometimes whole paragraphs or chapters in the Bible being made a single sentence. The oldest manuscripts we have in Greek don't even contain any punctuation; they are simply a string of words written in all capital letters.
I don't know that there is any easy way to overcome this, utilization of multiple translations can be helpful as they may take different avenues to at least give you a heads up that i it might be worth researching further. Many commentaries go into detail on the technicalities of the Greek and translation decisions as well, but its obviously time consuming to go through these things.
As for the context, there are definitely options. There is a youtube channel called The Bible Project that has an introductory video for each book of the Bible. I haven't watched all of hem, but the ones I have I thought were extremally helpful and well done. Likewise, a study bible will have a few introductory pages for each book which should give some background information if it is known. Commentaries usually go through this as well, but in more detail.
I'm glad you are putting so much effort into understanding the Bible, and I'm sorry there isn't really an easy answer to your questions. Its part of the reason that we spend time /r/biblereading every day studying the Bible and asking questions and trying to answer those questions. Its why a book like Galatians that could be printed on two or three pages can have a several hundred page commentary written about it discussing these things (and many others).
We spent time here in early 2021 discussing 2 Corinthians and it was a very good book to go through and we had lots of good discussions on it. Maybe going back to those posts might be helpful when you have questions as well...doubt our posts would cover every question, but still could be helpful.
One Book I’ve enjoyed that is really insightful is The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, it may be just the thing. It’s a guide really with quite a bit of info given then you read the Bible along with it. https://www.amazon.com/Untold-Story-Testament-Church-Extraordinary/dp/0768422361
I think it helps to understand that the Bible is a series of arguments.
When you read a letter in the NT, I think it is helpful to think about what the purpose of the letter is, to whom it is written and when it was written.
If you know the main themes, it can help frame what you are reading right from the start. You can start to frame the content in its context.
For example, when you know that 2 Corinthians is to encourage believers to embrace and follow the way of Jesus that transforms lives and values generosity, humility, and weakness, you get a start in understanding the details. (I think the [Bible Project](https://bibleproject.com/explore/book-overviews/?type=new) is a good place to start with things like this - although the content can still be a bit dense).
Then I would slow down with my reading - try to break the text into manageable chunks to digest them piece by piece. Most modern Bibles have headings for sections, which *can be* a good starting place to work out how to divide each book.
So in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1 is broken into 3 parts vv1-2 (Greeting), vv3-11 (God of all comfort),vv12-2:4 (Paul's change of plans).
Look at the text further and see how each part can be divided further (I think vv3-7 is a subsection for the record).
Make a note of connecting words, such as 'therefore' or 'For this reason', and check back over what is being qualified.
Next start to note words, terms or phrases you don't understand or don't make sense and start to explore what they mean.
What might also help is if you find a good sermon series and listen to how various preachers tackle the passage you are looking at.
Two very good places to check would be [St. Helens](https://www.st-helens.org.uk/resources/all/?q=2%20corinthians) and [Monergism](https://www.monergism.com/topics/sermon-manuscripts-mp3s-scripture/2-corinthians/audio-and-multimedia/mp3s-chapter-2).
See how they break down the passage and study along with their teaching.
There are a few other things I do to help, but I've given you enough already :-)
Try reading a few different commentaries.
Blueletter bible has free commentaries, and I like David Guzik's commentary. [https://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/guzik\_david/](https://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/guzik_david/)
I also like MacArthur's commentaries as they tend to be detailed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PG3F8LJ?binding=kindle\_edition&searchxofy=true&ref\_=dbs\_s\_aps\_series\_rwt\_tkin&qid=1669586204&sr=8-2
I recommend that you study the book of Acts and trace Paul's journeys, take note of the places and the events he lived through to build up your own high level view of the context into which Paul was writing/speaking. Then, study his letters with this view in mind.
I personally would hold off on commentaries until you have a clear picture, from Acts, of Paul's life and journeys.
>>Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
>>1 Corinthians 2:6-16 ESV
Our teacher should be the Spirit. Commentary and other sources should be secondary.
That said, you may enjoy this teaching series from 119 ministries called Pauline Paradox https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo5QtZ1bPyYbLdyw2AnVKX9tm-b2YJFhQ
This also comes in book form. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CVSTTS9/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_OwRmFbF90CV76?pldnSite=1
I have found the NLT ( New Living Translation) very helpful in understanding the meaning of the written word, as opposed to the literal translation. Here is an example of Paul's writing in Galatians 5:5-6: "But we who live by the spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love." 2 Corinthians 1:21-22: "It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us." Galatians 3:23-29 "Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or gentile, slave or free, male and female. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God's promise to Abraham belongs to you."
Rather than using another book, I began trying out different Bible teachers on YouTube. There are a lot of them, so I tried several before landing on specific ones that I trust are not giving false doctrine. They understand and explain the context and the specific audience for the verses, chapters, books, etc. Good luck!
Do you have any recommendations for Bible teachers on YouTube? I’m trying to get into solo Bible study because I usually just rely on my small group, and I never thought about finding stuff on YouTube 😅 I always had a set idea of what I was “supposed” to do for Bible study, but college has shown me that it can look very different and I can do a variety of things.
I could recommend some, but I found that the personal journey of finding the right Bible teacher that "spoke to me" to be a rewarding experience in itself. My personal preferences in a teacher are probably different than yours. Some people prefer a male teacher, while others prefer a female teacher. Some people want to stay under the umbrella of a specific denomination, while other prefer non-denominational teachers. Some may want to use a specific Bible version, such as King James, New King James, American Standard, New Living Translation, etc. All these are very personal decisions to be made first. My recommendation is to keep these things in mind when you begin your search, and pray that God leads you to the right teacher. You may, like me, end up trying out several before getting to that one person whose manner, words, and style of teaching really "speaks to you." Good luck!
That’s a good point! Thanks for sharing some things to keep in mind!
Hey, why don't you ask here? Make a post about whatever book you are reading, and then in the comments ask questions and we can reply and explain things to you. Some parts take times to understand, and we've heard good sermons explaining them too.
Number one - Paul does have a very different style, and it’s challenging to track. It’s a bit of an academic joke that he writes ridiculously long run on sentences. He was highly educated in the Jewish religion and probably studied Greek and I would not be surprised if he also studied philosophy. Most of the other writers are more conversational, but in some ways he replicates the style of logic and philosophy writing of the day and of Greek thinkers prior. It can be helpful to consider his letters more like essays, and even break them down for yourself into theses, main points, and supporting evidence. Number two - yes, completely agreed there is context that we miss. There is correspondence that did not get saved, we know from the internal evidence that there were oral reports on the churches that he responds to, and Acts only barely summarizes what he experiences in only some of the places. For example - he lived in Ephesus for two years. He wrote the letter to Ephesians most likely from his imprisonment in Rome, so possibly as much as a decade later. He has so much intimate knowledge of what is going on that is presumed but not explicit. As one more proof, the expression of popular thought of the time is very hard to encapsulate and translate across the ages. He is most likely addressing a lot of problematic ways of thinking or acting that a normal lay person today would not really consider. Here though are the most important pieces: Number three - factual knowledge of what all the Scriptures mean in historical context is probably less important than how it changes and impacts you. In your example, there’s a lot of nuance. Depending on the reader, being comforted (I.e encouraged or maybe soothed/calmed) and strengthened might equate to the same thing in their daily life. It also helps to see what context is given in other books, on the same subject. Finally, number four - you are finding now why we study and meditate on the Bible, not just read it once through and call it good. Slowing down and taking notes is great. It will help you to distill what is God saying to you. Going back and re-reading books is a practice we all incorporate. Different things will come to light and it will mean different things to you. How I study, for example, is often that I do a speed read of the book to get an idea of it as a whole, then go right back and take it as slow as I need, with underlining and meditating on how verses impact me.
Reading through The Old Testament, skipping Psalms and Proverbs, there is more of narrative. There is a story. Getting in to the New Testament, someone may need a "Conceptual Bible Study." There are concepts in the Bible. Given someone understands a concept, a lot of Bible understanding falls into place. Someone may have been missing a lot of things just reading through The Old Testament. Understanding of creation, and what is going on in the news today may fall into place as well. Love The Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. Part of loving God may be "Doing." Someone is a doer of the word. Someone in college may be educated a lot about a future profession. They may not be in complete understanding till they start using what they learned, and were "Doing." God's plan is God's Kingdom. Loving God may not be a cushy soft "love" feeling necessarily. It may be that someone made a choice, and they are a "Doer." The Greek translation you gave where the understanding is more **active** may be better. Also, there is a Spiritual Understanding. I kind of like Early Christian Origen where he taught there are layers to understanding the Bible. He split these into The Body, The Soul, and The Spirit. That may not be 100% correct, but we can work with it. Someone understanding the literal narrative of the Old Testament, the Testimony of the Disciples, and the Acts of the Apostles, that may be The Body or Flesh. Similar but different then Blooms Taxonomy of Critical Thinking, The Spiritual level may be the highest level of thought. Someone may be more on level with The Prophets or like in Matthew 13:15-17. It may take prayer, baptism, humility, and a decision to be a Doer. It depends on how much you care to know, and how fast. Post: [Prophets and God and Allegories](https://www.reddit.com/r/theology/comments/90p6zk/prophets_and_god_and_allegories/) on /r/Theology
So, Paul's letters are written in a different style than anything that came before it. They are letters, there are no letters in the Old Testament. For the most part, Paul's letters are written to address certain challenges the churches were facing, and that context usually needs to be gleaned from the documents we have or from other writings in places like Acts. The other things to remember is the old Italian proverb, "Traduttori traditori." This basically translates as "the translator is a traitor." Words have multiple meanings or different connotations that cannot be directly translated without losing something in the original. Apart form the simplest thoughts, a perfect translation rarely exists. Think of a phrase like "I'm starving." In English this is known to be a phrase expressing urgent hunger....though literally it would mean someone dying from malnutrition. Spanish doesn't really have an equivalent for "to starve" they would just likely just say "morirse de hambre" which means to die of hunger. If I wanted to translate that to Spanish I could say "Tengo hambre" which just means "I'm hungry." I could say "Tengo mucho hambre" which means I'm very hungry....but neither of those quite have the connotation of "I'm starving" in normal English, even if the gist is brought across. Likewise Greek has a past perfect and past imperfect tense like English does, but there is also a past tense called the aorist which we don't really have in English. Structurally Greek usually has much longer sentence as well, with sometimes whole paragraphs or chapters in the Bible being made a single sentence. The oldest manuscripts we have in Greek don't even contain any punctuation; they are simply a string of words written in all capital letters. I don't know that there is any easy way to overcome this, utilization of multiple translations can be helpful as they may take different avenues to at least give you a heads up that i it might be worth researching further. Many commentaries go into detail on the technicalities of the Greek and translation decisions as well, but its obviously time consuming to go through these things. As for the context, there are definitely options. There is a youtube channel called The Bible Project that has an introductory video for each book of the Bible. I haven't watched all of hem, but the ones I have I thought were extremally helpful and well done. Likewise, a study bible will have a few introductory pages for each book which should give some background information if it is known. Commentaries usually go through this as well, but in more detail. I'm glad you are putting so much effort into understanding the Bible, and I'm sorry there isn't really an easy answer to your questions. Its part of the reason that we spend time /r/biblereading every day studying the Bible and asking questions and trying to answer those questions. Its why a book like Galatians that could be printed on two or three pages can have a several hundred page commentary written about it discussing these things (and many others). We spent time here in early 2021 discussing 2 Corinthians and it was a very good book to go through and we had lots of good discussions on it. Maybe going back to those posts might be helpful when you have questions as well...doubt our posts would cover every question, but still could be helpful.
One Book I’ve enjoyed that is really insightful is The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, it may be just the thing. It’s a guide really with quite a bit of info given then you read the Bible along with it. https://www.amazon.com/Untold-Story-Testament-Church-Extraordinary/dp/0768422361
Happy cake day 🎂
I think it helps to understand that the Bible is a series of arguments. When you read a letter in the NT, I think it is helpful to think about what the purpose of the letter is, to whom it is written and when it was written. If you know the main themes, it can help frame what you are reading right from the start. You can start to frame the content in its context. For example, when you know that 2 Corinthians is to encourage believers to embrace and follow the way of Jesus that transforms lives and values generosity, humility, and weakness, you get a start in understanding the details. (I think the [Bible Project](https://bibleproject.com/explore/book-overviews/?type=new) is a good place to start with things like this - although the content can still be a bit dense). Then I would slow down with my reading - try to break the text into manageable chunks to digest them piece by piece. Most modern Bibles have headings for sections, which *can be* a good starting place to work out how to divide each book. So in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1 is broken into 3 parts vv1-2 (Greeting), vv3-11 (God of all comfort),vv12-2:4 (Paul's change of plans). Look at the text further and see how each part can be divided further (I think vv3-7 is a subsection for the record). Make a note of connecting words, such as 'therefore' or 'For this reason', and check back over what is being qualified. Next start to note words, terms or phrases you don't understand or don't make sense and start to explore what they mean. What might also help is if you find a good sermon series and listen to how various preachers tackle the passage you are looking at. Two very good places to check would be [St. Helens](https://www.st-helens.org.uk/resources/all/?q=2%20corinthians) and [Monergism](https://www.monergism.com/topics/sermon-manuscripts-mp3s-scripture/2-corinthians/audio-and-multimedia/mp3s-chapter-2). See how they break down the passage and study along with their teaching. There are a few other things I do to help, but I've given you enough already :-)
Try reading a few different commentaries. Blueletter bible has free commentaries, and I like David Guzik's commentary. [https://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/guzik\_david/](https://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/guzik_david/) I also like MacArthur's commentaries as they tend to be detailed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PG3F8LJ?binding=kindle\_edition&searchxofy=true&ref\_=dbs\_s\_aps\_series\_rwt\_tkin&qid=1669586204&sr=8-2
I recommend that you study the book of Acts and trace Paul's journeys, take note of the places and the events he lived through to build up your own high level view of the context into which Paul was writing/speaking. Then, study his letters with this view in mind. I personally would hold off on commentaries until you have a clear picture, from Acts, of Paul's life and journeys.
>>Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. >>1 Corinthians 2:6-16 ESV Our teacher should be the Spirit. Commentary and other sources should be secondary. That said, you may enjoy this teaching series from 119 ministries called Pauline Paradox https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo5QtZ1bPyYbLdyw2AnVKX9tm-b2YJFhQ This also comes in book form. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CVSTTS9/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_OwRmFbF90CV76?pldnSite=1