Color Me Meaningful: A fresh approach to studying the Bible

Bob Powell, HIS February 1986

"Imagine yourself on a cold day outside a large window. The heat of the room within has steamed up the window, and as you come close, you realize that someone has written with his finger on the inside of the window. You stand there reading what has been printed. Your eyes are focused on the writing. But suddenly you become aware that you can see through the writing to the room beyond, and a person, presumable the writer, is standing immediately behind the window. Your sudden change of attitude is something like what happens as God confronts us with his living presence when we thought we were just looking at the words of Scripture."

When I first read the above paragraph in Donald Mostrom's "The Dynamics of Intimacy with God"(Tyndale), I got depressed. Mostrom made studying the Bible sound poetic. But for me it was boring.

Do you find studying the Bible a drag? I leave always had a hard time getting motivated to study that book-one-thousand-plus pages of unpronounceable names and mind-bending concepts that I'm supposed to tackle first thing in the morning!

But my attitude toward the Bible changed after my friend Martha told me about manuscript study.

When I first heard the phrase "manuscript study," I imagined six old men hunched over brown, torn scrolls in dimly lit rooms. But Martha wasn't old, nor male, and her Ephesians manuscript was marked with a jumble of yellow, blue, orange and fluorescent-green highlights. Even more unusual -- Martha was enthusiastic about Bible study. She had actually enjoyed doing a manuscript Bible study at a camp she had attended.

Double-minded

Too often we approach Scripture as a dry textbook we dread studying -- mainly because the way we study the Bible isn't very productive or thrilling. We usually cram a chapter or so at a time, hoping the major ideas will somehow stick with us.

Most of us have understood the place of Scripture in the Christian faith without understanding its place in our day-to-day lives. We need to experience God speaking to us through his living, powerful and active Word. In John I we find that the Word is God (v. 1) and that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (v. 14 RSV). Hebrews 4:12 affirms "the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword ... it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." And Isaiah 55: 10-11 says that as rain and snow bring water and bear fruit, "so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire."

For many of us, however, the Bible has lost this vitality. In his book The Pursuit of God (Revell), A. W. Tozer describes this malaise: "[Christians] may admit that they should accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the words there on the page are actually for them. A man may say, 'These words are addressed to me,' and yet in his heart not feel and know that they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology."

For me, manuscript study was a fresh, creative approach that made Scripture come to life. Manuscript Bible study has helped me and others shed preconceived notions -- and often be gripped by the big picture behind specific passages for the first time.

The A-Team

Manuscript study can be done on your own, but for best results (and more fun) do it with another person or in a group. You can do manuscript study on a weekly basis, at an all-day meeting or at a weekend retreat -- whenever you have lots of time to interact with the text.

After you find others who want to study the Bible, arrange a time to meet, pick the book or section of a book you want to study (say, all of Habakkuk, Philippians, Jonah or the first eight chapters of Mark), and decide how much you want to cover each time. Six to eight people, for example, could tackle Habakkuk in a six-hour session on a Saturday, or the first eight chapters of Mark weekly during a quarter.

The Right Stuff

After getting your team together, equip them with:

• Wide-margin, double-spaced, typed manuscripts of the biblical book or section without chapter and verse markings, paragraphs, special headings or footnotes. I recommend the Revised Standard Version because it's a fairly literal translation of the original text. (If you don't want to type in all yourself, You can get prepared copies for a minimal fee by writing IVCF Manuscript Service, P.O. Box 40250, Pasadena, CA 91104-7250 or calling (818) 797-3118.
• Colored pencils and markers. Each person should have at least seven different colors.
• Dictionary.
• Bible dictionary. (Recommended: The New Bible Dictionary Eerdmans])
• Analytical Concordance. (Recommended: Young's [Thomas Nelson])
• Old Testament.
• Do not use Bible commentaries.

Digging In

Your first meeting will be structured differently from your subsequent meetings. During your first time together you will look for the overall theme of the entire text, and then divide the text into sections for study. Your leader may have done this for the group already. If not, then:

• Get an overview of the entire text by reading straight through it.
• Skim the text and create sections based on changes in setting, story, ideas, etc. (Remember that these divisions are tentative. Further study might reveal other ways to divide the text.) If your sections are too long, simply divide them again.
• Title your sections.
• On the margins or on a separate piece of paper write down any broad questions that surface (e.g., "Why is Mark such an action-oriented Gospel?").
• Come to an agreement on what your sections are going to be and have someone record the different questions people have come up with.

In your following meetings, follow this basic structure: Focus on one preselected section each time. Spend thirty to forty-five minutes in individual study and the same amount in large group discussion. If you're at a retreat with more than ten people, break up into groups of four or five after individual study. That way everyone will have a chance to share observations, correct conclusions and focus attention on questions raised in the section before moving on to the large group discussion.

There are many variations on how to do what comes next, so don't feel bound to these word-for-word instructions. The steps described below are not in consecutive order; many will happen simultaneously.

During the individual study time:

1. Look at the big Picture

Apply the same steps outlined above to the smaller section you're working with. This time create and title paragraphs within the section. How does one paragraph or story within the section flow into another?

2. Focus on the details.

Look for and write down:

• repeated words and ideas
• repeated themes ("the power of God," "relationships among believers," "suffering," etc.)
• contrasts
• similes
• metaphors
• mood
• key words such as "therefore," "but," "if...then," "because"
• setting of writing or event
• time of day, month or year
• characters
• cause and effect
• who is speaking to whom
• figures of speech

When words, places, people's identities or customs are unclear, consult your Bible dictionary.

Next, assign a particular color to each theme or type of detail and highlight words and phrases accordingly as you go through the text one more time.

Strange Questions

So far so good. What next?

• Keep track of the questions each section raises. if something seems strange, jot it down. (In Mark 1:6, for example, you may read that John the Baptist wore "a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey" [RSV] and wonder why the author decided to tell those details and skip Jesus' first thirty years entirely.)
• Make connections. How does each section's message fit with the message of the overall text? Does one section answer questions raised in other sections? You'll feel your pulse quickening as things start to come together.
• Ask yourself what ties different stories together. In Mark 5 the story of Jairus's daughter is interrupted by the story of the hemorrhaging woman. Why? In this same chapter Mark tells the story of the demoniac possessed by Legion; in the chapter before he tells the story of the storm at sea. What links did the writer see between these stories? Feel free to draw arrows and lines between related items.
• Pull back. What emerges as the main message in the section you have just studied? How does this fit with the main theme of the whole manuscript you're studying? Here's where you work through tensions between the parts and the whole.
• Finally, how can you apply what you have learned to your daily life? (You might decide to show more compassion toward those around you, for example, or decide to learn how to pray for healing.)

Striking It Rich

Bring your multicolored marked-up manuscript to your group discussion and, with the help of a discussion leader, share your discoveries. The Scriptures yield their greatest treasures in the Christian community, who can stimulate and check the manuscript study process.

That about sums it up. Manuscript study is rewarding and exciting. But don't get sidetracked with the method. Manuscript Bible study only helps us understand Scripture and, more importantly, apply it to our lives. As Paul Byer, the mind behind manuscript Bible study, wrote, "Our understanding of Scripture will be opened, or blocked, more by our obedience than by our study methods. The goal then of every Bible Study is to act on what we hear."

Manuscript study can help you see behind the writing on the frosty window pane to the author -- the living God. To see him is to be changed forever.

BOB POWELL staffs the Vanderbilt and Tennessee Tech IV chapters when not playing war games on his MacIntosh computer.