Bible Study - House Church Discussion List

Some Helps for group bible studies:

The Importance of Group Study

We like to think of the Bible as having stability and accuracy. We can point to the thousands of ancient witnesses to its integrity and depend on it “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). This wonderful book began its life as a collection of ancient oral and written text that came together during the Second Temple period (c. 500 BC – 70 AD) when the temple built by Solomon stood in Jerusalem. Josephus found evidence that the list of Old Testament books was finalized by 100 BC, but since virtually none of the New Testament writers knew the Hebrew language, they depended on the Greek or Aramaic versions, the languages of the marketplace. In fact, some of the Old Testament in the “Hebrew” bible (The Tenakh) remain in Aramaic even today.

The New Testament books didn’t achieve consensus until the 2nd or even the 4th century AD. Add to this fluid situation the problems of hand-copying and one can only conclude that the Bible as we know it didn’t start to settle down until Jerome translated it into Latin in 405 AD, effectively keeping the Bible away from those outside the clergy. But as the 16th century came to an end, the political world could not stand up to the pressure of the populace wanting to get their hands on an accurate English Bible. This finally resulted in the King James Bible of 161I which remains popular today mainly because it’s “early modern English” still appeals to our ears.

While all this was going on, the language itself was changing. Some words gained new meanings while others Became obsolete. Over the centuries, even the King James Version gave way to the New King James Version in 1975, too early to anticipate the next wave of language change that insisted on gender inclusive language. Yet even today, discoveries from even older texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, have forced changes in the Bible. Annotated bibles, not content with letting the bible speak for itself, started printing commentary at the bottom of each page–some pressing a particular point of view, such as the Scofield Bible. Cults began printing their own versions of the bible with occasional miss-translations to support their views.

The Bible calls itself the “inspired” (sometimes translated “God-breathed”) word of God. That word has an impact on everything mentioned above. The Bible is God’s book, and God has not left it completely up to humans to maintain it. One part of faith is and understanding that God will work through providence to put guard rails around the bible to ensure that human caretakers of God’s word will be quickly corrected in future editions should they make a misstep.

So the word “Bible” somehow became an abstraction. As one studies its text, there is always a little mystery that remains. There is a notion that there might be a “perfect” bible, but it is always just out of reach.

Those who love its pages have a choice among a plethora of editions. A professor once told me that the best bible is one that simply says “Holy Bible” on its outside and is completely devoid of any commentary on the inside. He based that opinion on the unfortunate fact that many Christians read those editorial insertions and commentaries as if they were part of inspired scripture itself.

When you purchase a bible, you are accepting the biases of its translators and editors, and it is there that one finds significant differences between Bible editions. Bible editors also need to make critical choices on which ancient witnesses they should include, which should be ignored, and which should have footnotes giving alternate readings so the reader can make some of those decisions himself. For example, the much-loved story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery is now being omitted from some modern bibles because it only appears in some of the least favored ancient texts.

Access to the best bible translations may not be enough to understand some passages that depend on the cultural or historical situations in which they are set, so bible commentaries and reference books can often help in those situations.

While reading the bible individually is an essential part of living one’s faith, group bible study often helps to bring out many of these issues where they can be discussed, especially when each have different bible editions. And it is in the group that the Holy Spirit can best illuminate what God wants the group to learn from the bible, so it is important to approach a bible study prayerfully.¹

To help some group studies deal with these issues, some links to articles are presented on this page.

See the Doctrine of Revelation. ↩︎