Some Advice: Studying Scripture

Michel Keck Romans 12.2 (2021)

General advice about studying Scripture:

Those who submit to Scripture to be transformed by the Holy Spirit will gradually come to clearly understand every passage of scripture without recourse to commentaries, which at best tend to state the obvious while ignoring thorny details and at worst lead people astray. Some obscure passages of Scripture may require painstaking background investigation to unravel, but the explanation will usually only underscore what that person has already come to understand. The additional insight is nevertheless valuable as a non-falsifiable confirmation and may even fine tune one's perspective.

By contrast, those who seek to master Scripture will never understand what it teaches because God will not be mastered by anyone. Such people will not only miss the big picture but will also stumble over obscure passages that tempt them down fruitless paths of inquiry. As a counter-intuitive corollary to this point, one should avoid trying to read orthodox doctrine into scripture because a different (also orthodox) doctrine may be the actual subtext of the passage under consideration and because no doctrine should be considered orthodox that can only be defended by force.

The main focus should be to follow the argument developed in a given passage of Scripture on its own terms with no preconditions. For example, the opening chapters of Genesis should be read (however much suspension of disbelief is required) as literally as possible. Otherwise, the logic of events will be impossible to follow. One will need to develop a habit of profound trust in God that things somehow work themselves out, but that does not mean that things happened exactly as described because: (a) all of Scripture is a kind of genealogy, and (b) Semitic genealogies are notorious for "placeholders" of an invariably ideological nature.

Study Scripture for what it will yield for you in the long run (10-20 years) rather than for something with an expiration date of a few days. One approach undergirds spiritual maturity and the other guarantees life-long spiritual immaturity. One corollary to this point is that pastors should concentrate of studying Scripture for its own sake (i.e. for their own sake) independently of sermon preparation, and sermon preparation should rely on understandings of Scripture that are already part of the pastor's life. Otherwise, well... 

Bonus advice about studying Scripture:

Consult monographs or articles by scholars in the relevant fields of language, anthropology, or history before relying on any second-hand information from Bible scholars. "Abba" does not mean "Daddy;" it is the Aramaic word for "Father" and is used as an honorary greeting denoting closeness and respect for benefactors. Hebrew vocabulary is not more nuanced than English; it simply has fewer words, which of necessity accommodate multiple related but distinct meanings. The Corinth of Paul's day was a Roman colony built on the ruins of the Greek city razed by Rome in 146 BCE, and the social and political nature of this city (capitol of the Roman province of Achaia) was entirely unlike that of the original city: homosexuality was punishable by death and adultery by exile. Many such examples of widely accepted but flawed understandings abound.