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Written in another world, for us

How to Read the Bible

The Bible was written in another culture, for people of that culture. This class teaches you to hear it as they did, and to hold two guardrails at once: its distance from us is never a reason to say it asks nothing of us, and we must not read our own world into it.

  • 7 parts
  • 31 units
  • About 34 hours
  • 23 units open now
  • Self-paced
  • Works from the text, for readers of any tradition
This class is in review. Where it gives an author's argument, that account was written from reviews and publishers' descriptions and is still being checked against the books themselves.
Part 1 · 5 units · about 4 h 20 min

Mind the gap

What the Bible is, who it was first for, why that leaves gaps, and the first two tools of a careful reader: context and kind of writing.

Read the book Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

Open
  1. Unit 1.1 · about 30 min

    A library, not a single book

    Sixty-six books, many writers, many centuries and many kinds of writing, bound together as one unfolding story.

    By the end you can: Say what kind of collection the Bible is, and why that changes how each part should be read.

    Interactive: The library shelf
  2. Unit 1.2 · about 1 h 15 min

    For us, not to us

    Every book was first spoken or written to someone else, in another land and another age. Scripture also says it was written for those who came later. Both are true, and holding both is where careful reading starts.

    By the end you can: Name the first audience of a passage, show from Scripture why it still speaks to later readers, and state the two guardrails this class runs on.

    1. Every book has an address

      Interactive: Jeremiah's letter

    2. Written for our instruction

    3. One road, two guardrails

      Interactive: The road with two guardrails
  3. Unit 1.3 · about 50 min

    What goes without being said

    Writers leave out what their audience already knows, and readers fill the gaps from their own world without noticing. An experiment with one famous parable shows it happening.

    By the end you can: Catch your own culture at work in your reading, and ask of any passage what its first hearers did not need to be told.

    1. The experiment

      Interactive: What did you hear?

    2. The iceberg

      Interactive: The iceberg
  4. Unit 1.4 · about 30 min

    Circles of context

    A verse means what it means in its place. Learn to widen the circle: the sentence, the passage, the book, the whole story.

    By the end you can: Take a familiar verse and show how its surroundings sharpen what it means.

    Interactive: Circles of context
  5. Unit 1.5 · about 1 h 15 min

    Reading by kind

    Story, poetry, proverb, prophecy, law, letter, vision. Each kind of writing sets its own rules for the reader, and the Bible's kinds are ancient ones.

    By the end you can: Name the kind of writing a passage belongs to and read it by that kind's rules.

    1. Story and Gospel

      Interactive: One event, two kinds

    2. Poetry, wisdom and prophecy

    3. Law, letter and vision

Part 2 · 5 units · about 5 h 40 min

A world of hearers

Scripture was spoken and heard long before most people could read it. This part follows D. Brent Sandy's book closely.

Read the book D. Brent Sandy, Hear Ye the Word of the Lord: What We Miss If We Only Read the Bible

Open
  1. Unit 2.1 · about 50 min

    A world without readers

    Few people could read, books were rare, and God's word reached almost everyone through the ear, in company. Meet the world Brent Sandy calls lost to modern readers.

    By the end you can: Describe how Scripture reached its first audiences, and say what silent, private reading leaves out.

    1. Who could read?

      Interactive: One scroll, one voice

    2. The gathered hearers

      Interactive: Daybreak to noon
  2. Unit 2.2 · about 1 h 15 min

    Spoken before it was written

    God speaks, messengers proclaim, communities remember and retell, and then it is written to be read aloud again. Follow the word from voice to page.

    By the end you can: Trace a passage's path from speech to scroll, and say why both the speaking and the writing matter.

    1. God and the prophets

      Interactive: Jeremiah's scroll

    2. Jesus and those who remembered him

      Interactive: From voice to page

    3. From voice to scroll

      Interactive: Two tellings
  3. Unit 2.3 · about 1 h 15 min

    Built for the ear

    A listener cannot look back up the page. Learn the repetition, refrains, brackets and build-ups that carried meaning for people who heard.

    By the end you can: Find what a passage stresses by the patterns it was given for listeners.

    1. Refrains and brackets

      Interactive: Refrain view

    2. Patterns that carry memory

    3. Build and turn

      Interactive: The closing circle
  4. Unit 2.4 · about 1 h 5 min

    Hearing a whole book

    Listen to a letter the way its first church did: whole, aloud, in one sitting. Then see what chapter and verse numbers hide.

    By the end you can: Follow the flow of a whole letter, and show what is lost when a verse is lifted out alone.

    1. Listen to Philippians

      Interactive: How long to hear itInteractive: The whole letter

    2. What the numbers hide

      Interactive: Take the numbers out
  5. Unit 2.5 · about 1 h 15 min

    Hearing is more than reading

    Try interpreting by ear on real passages, and weigh the caution Sandy's critics raise: hearing adds to careful reading and never replaces the written words.

    By the end you can: Prepare a passage to be heard, and say what your choices of stress and tone claim about its meaning.

    1. An experiment: the vine and the branches

      Interactive: Remain

    2. Your turn: prepare a passage

      Interactive: Mark the script

    3. The limits

Part 3 · 4 units · about 4 h 35 min

Our own blinders

Nine ways Western readers misread, in three layers, and how to test any claim about the Bible's culture before trusting it.

Read the book E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes

Open
  1. Unit 3.1 · about 1 h 15 min

    Above the surface: customs, peoples, words

    What a culture counts as proper, how it divides peoples, and how its language cuts up the world: three visible differences that still trip Western readers.

    By the end you can: Spot a custom, a line between peoples, or a word that does not cross cleanly into English, and say what it changes.

    1. What counts as proper

      Interactive: Hot, cold, lukewarm

    2. Peoples and prejudice

    3. Words that do not cross

      Interactive: One word, three places
  2. Unit 3.2 · about 1 h 15 min

    Just below: “I” and “we”, honour and shame, time

    The single self beside the shared self, guilt within beside shame before others, the clock beside the right moment. The Bible speaks to both sides of each.

    By the end you can: Tell when a passage addresses a people and when a person, and avoid forcing it into either box.

    1. “I” and “we”

      Interactive: You, or all of you?Interactive: One and many

    2. Guilt and shame

    3. Time and order

  3. Unit 3.3 · about 1 h 15 min

    Deep below: rules, virtues, and “it is about me”

    The deepest assumptions are the hardest to see: that rules stand apart from relationships, that our list of virtues is the Bible's, and that the Bible is chiefly about me.

    By the end you can: Name one assumption of your own that a passage has exposed.

    1. Rules inside relationships

    2. Whose virtues?

      Interactive: The weight of words

    3. “It is about me”

      Interactive: What is the good?
  4. Unit 3.4 · about 50 min

    Weighing a background claim

    “In their culture…” is a claim, and claims need evidence. Learn four tests, so that background lights up the text and never replaces it.

    By the end you can: Test a claim about the Bible's culture before trusting it, and say how firm it is.

    1. Four tests

    2. Claims on trial

      Interactive: Weigh the claim
Part 4 · 6 units · about 7 h 5 min

The social world of the Bible

Honour and shame, family, patrons and gifts, purity, and the customs of the village: what the first hearers never needed explained.

Read the book David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity; Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes

Open
  1. Unit 4.1 · about 1 h 15 min

    Honour and shame

    Honour was a person's worth in the eyes of their group, and it could be won, challenged and lost in public. See it at work in the Gospels, and see whose opinion Jesus says counts.

    By the end you can: Recognise a contest for honour in a biblical scene and say how the passage redirects it.

    1. What honour is

      Interactive: The banquet

    2. Challenge and reply

      Interactive: Challenge and reply

    3. Whose opinion counts?

  2. Unit 4.2 · about 50 min

    The shame of the cross

    Crucifixion was designed as public disgrace. Follow how the New Testament says God overturned that verdict.

    By the end you can: Explain why the first hearers found a crucified Lord shameful, and how the texts answer that.

    1. Designed to shame

      Interactive: The mockery, line by line

    2. The verdict reversed

      Interactive: Down and up
  3. Unit 4.3 · about 1 h 15 min

    Kinship and the family of God

    The household gave a person their name, their living and their protection. That is the weight behind Jesus calling his followers a family.

    By the end you can: Say what “brother” and “sister” would have asked of the first Christians, and what that asks now.

    1. The house you belong to

      Interactive: What Abram left

    2. A new family

    3. What brothers and sisters owe each other

  4. Unit 4.4 · about 1 h 15 min

    Patrons, brokers and the language of grace

    Gifts bound people together in a web of favour, loyalty and thanks. The New Testament borrows that language for grace and faith, and breaks it.

    By the end you can: Explain what “grace” and “faith” carried in their world, and where God's gift is unlike any other.

    1. Gifts that bind

      Interactive: The gift circle

    2. Grace and faith

    3. Philippians 4 again

  5. Unit 4.5 · about 1 h 15 min

    Clean and unclean

    Purity was a map of what may come near a holy God, and it is neither a list of sins nor health advice. Read the Gospel scenes of touch and table against that map.

    By the end you can: Explain what “unclean” meant, and what is surprising when Jesus touches the unclean.

    1. The map

      Interactive: The map of holiness

    2. Jesus and the unclean

      Interactive: Which way does it flow?

    3. Tables and peoples

  6. Unit 4.6 · about 1 h 15 min

    The village: hospitality, meals and guests

    A host's duty, what a shared table declares, how a father was expected to behave. Read Luke's scenes with the customs their hearers assumed.

    By the end you can: Tell what a Gospel scene states from what custom is argued to add, and weigh the difference.

    1. The host's duty

    2. Who eats with whom

      Interactive: Who is at the table?

    3. A father runs; a guest room is full

      Interactive: The father's walkInteractive: The village house
Part 5 · 3 units · about 3 h 25 min

Two worlds behind the text

The ancient Near East behind the Old Testament, Rome and first-century Judaism behind the New, and how a letter was made and sent.

Read the book Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament

Open
  1. Unit 5.1 · about 1 h 15 min

    The Old Testament's world

    Great kings and treaties, temples and images, stories of gods and creation. See where Israel used the forms of its world, and where it said what its neighbours did not.

    By the end you can: Show how knowing Israel's neighbours sharpens an Old Testament passage, without letting likeness prove too much.

    1. Great kings and covenants

      Interactive: Treaty and covenant

    2. The LORD and the gods

      Interactive: Who sends the rain?

    3. Shared pictures, different message

  2. Unit 5.2 · about 1 h 15 min

    The New Testament's world

    Four centuries of empires, the groups in the Gospels, and Rome's claims about Caesar. Hear “gospel”, “Lord” and “peace” with their first edge.

    By the end you can: Say what the New Testament's first hearers would have heard in its public words.

    1. Between the Testaments

      Interactive: Between the Testaments

    2. Who is who

    3. Caesar's good news and God's

      Interactive: Two announcementsInteractive: The coin
  3. Unit 5.3 · about 55 min

    Reading someone else's mail

    A letter was dictated among co-workers, carried by a trusted friend, and read aloud to a gathered church about a real situation. Learn to rebuild that situation with care.

    By the end you can: Work out the situation behind a letter from its own clues, and mark what is stated and what is guessed.

    1. How a letter was made

      Interactive: The journey of a letterInteractive: One side of the call

    2. Philemon, heard whole

Part 6 · 3 units · about 2 h 55 min

Case study: Romans

One letter read with everything learned so far, following Brad Vaughn's study of honour and shame in Romans.

Read the book Brad Vaughn, Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes

In preparation

  1. Why Paul wrote Romans

    Romans opens and closes on a travel plan. Read it as a letter to a divided church whose help Paul needs, following Brad Vaughn.

    Lessons The frame · A divided church

    50 min

  2. Glory lost and restored: Romans 1 to 8

    Glory refused, God dishonoured, boasting shut out, a hope that does not shame. Follow honour and shame through Romans alongside the language of the law court.

    Lessons Glory exchanged · Boasting shut out · The hope of glory

    1 h 15 min

  3. One family at one table: Romans 9 to 16

    No one who trusts is put to shame, no one boasts over another, honour is given away and the weak are welcomed. The greeting list shows who was in the room.

    Lessons No shame, no boasting · Welcome one another

    50 min
Part 7 · 5 units · about 6 h 5 min

From their world to ours

The two guardrails turned into a method: place the passage in the story, cross the bridge, refuse the way out, refuse to read yourself in.

Read the book J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God's Word

In preparation

  1. One story

    From the garden to the city, the books trace a single storyline. Learn to place any passage on it.

    Lessons The story the Bible tells about itself · Where are we in it?

    50 min

  2. Crossing the bridge

    Five questions that carry you from what a passage meant to what it asks now, and the difference between a cultural form and the demand it carries.

    Lessons Five questions · Form and demand · How Scripture applies Scripture

    1 h 15 min

  3. Guardrail one: “That was just their culture”

    Understanding the culture usually makes a passage ask more of us, not less. Learn to tell a sound reason from an excuse, and to handle fairly the cases where Christians differ.

    Lessons The excuse · Telling form from demand · Hard cases, shown fairly

    1 h 15 min

  4. Guardrail two: “What this verse means to me”

    The individual, success, nation, comfort, hurry. Catch your own culture's assumptions in familiar verses and receive what the passages give.

    Lessons The lenses we wear · Six verses, re-read · Receiving what the passage gives

    1 h 15 min

  5. A passage from start to finish

    Choose one passage and carry it through the whole craft unaided: hear it, place it, weigh its background, and say what it asks now.

    1 h 30 min