But is it practical? (Part 2)
Now that people are finding out about The Books of The Bible, I've been hearing them say things like, "This would be great for personal devotional reading, but I don't think it would really work well in groups." I've wondered exactly what they meant by this.
To be fair, let's assume that everybody in the group has a copy of The Books of The Bible. If they're studying a particular biblical book together, this will allow each of them to read all the way through it first, enjoyably and meaningfully, as the foundation for the group's discussions. How is that a problem?
I've had several other people say to me, in fact, "This is great, now I won't have to print out my own copies of the text without chapters and verses." Apparently there were all of these bootleg versions of the Bible being created out there to get around the problems of the customary presentation. Now you can all come in from the cold.
But what about when the group begins taking up individual passages within a book? You're in 1 Corinthians, for example, and talking about lawsuits between believers. Everybody opens to page 1523 and Paul's teaching is right there. In fact, it's now clearly set off from his next topic, Christians going to prostitutes. If you were taking a chapter-by-chapter approach, these two items would be thrown together instead. The night you tried to talk about them both, you'd probably have a pretty high-energy discussion, but it wouldn't be very coherent. In The Books of The Bible, on the other hand, you see clearly that you'll be taking about one subject this week and the other the next week. How is that a problem?
Perhaps what people actually mean when they say "I don't think it would work well in groups" is something like this. In devotional reading, you just pick up where you left off the last time. All you need is a bookmark. But in a group discussion, an idea may occur to you spontaneously that makes you want to direct the others to another place in the Bible that you think relates to the topic at hand. How do you get them there quickly, so that the discussion doesn't bog down? (And so that you don't lose your own train of thought!) Isn't it easier to say, "Turn to Matthew 5:39" than to have to say, "I think something else that relates to this is on page 1631. It's in the first paragraph. No, not that indented paragraph, the one right above it . . . ."
In other words, the real objection to using The Books of The Bible in groups seems to be that it doesn't allow us to cite passages spontaneously without regard to their context. With chapter and verse numbers eliminated, the only way to do that is to describe their position on the page. And that can be clumsy, even comical.
So we want to keep using the chapter-and-verse format in groups because it allows us cite passages without regard to their context? Now that really is a problem.
Wouldn't everyone in the group benefit much more if we said something like, "In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus was contrasting the ways of the kingdom with religious tradition, he said something that I think relates to the lawsuits we've been talking about tonight. This is on page 1631. When Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, he also said, 'If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.' What do you think he meant by that?" By the time that last question has been asked, the others in the group will probably already have located the statement and will be considering it in its context.
Do you see what's going on here? Mo betta Bible reading. In groups.
Chris Smith
Chris Smith is the pastor of University Baptist Church in East Lansing, MI and author of "The Beauty Behind the Mask: Rediscovering the Books of the Bible" from Clements Publishing.
To be fair, let's assume that everybody in the group has a copy of The Books of The Bible. If they're studying a particular biblical book together, this will allow each of them to read all the way through it first, enjoyably and meaningfully, as the foundation for the group's discussions. How is that a problem?
I've had several other people say to me, in fact, "This is great, now I won't have to print out my own copies of the text without chapters and verses." Apparently there were all of these bootleg versions of the Bible being created out there to get around the problems of the customary presentation. Now you can all come in from the cold.
But what about when the group begins taking up individual passages within a book? You're in 1 Corinthians, for example, and talking about lawsuits between believers. Everybody opens to page 1523 and Paul's teaching is right there. In fact, it's now clearly set off from his next topic, Christians going to prostitutes. If you were taking a chapter-by-chapter approach, these two items would be thrown together instead. The night you tried to talk about them both, you'd probably have a pretty high-energy discussion, but it wouldn't be very coherent. In The Books of The Bible, on the other hand, you see clearly that you'll be taking about one subject this week and the other the next week. How is that a problem?
Perhaps what people actually mean when they say "I don't think it would work well in groups" is something like this. In devotional reading, you just pick up where you left off the last time. All you need is a bookmark. But in a group discussion, an idea may occur to you spontaneously that makes you want to direct the others to another place in the Bible that you think relates to the topic at hand. How do you get them there quickly, so that the discussion doesn't bog down? (And so that you don't lose your own train of thought!) Isn't it easier to say, "Turn to Matthew 5:39" than to have to say, "I think something else that relates to this is on page 1631. It's in the first paragraph. No, not that indented paragraph, the one right above it . . . ."
In other words, the real objection to using The Books of The Bible in groups seems to be that it doesn't allow us to cite passages spontaneously without regard to their context. With chapter and verse numbers eliminated, the only way to do that is to describe their position on the page. And that can be clumsy, even comical.
So we want to keep using the chapter-and-verse format in groups because it allows us cite passages without regard to their context? Now that really is a problem.
Wouldn't everyone in the group benefit much more if we said something like, "In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus was contrasting the ways of the kingdom with religious tradition, he said something that I think relates to the lawsuits we've been talking about tonight. This is on page 1631. When Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, he also said, 'If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.' What do you think he meant by that?" By the time that last question has been asked, the others in the group will probably already have located the statement and will be considering it in its context.
Do you see what's going on here? Mo betta Bible reading. In groups.
Chris Smith
Chris Smith is the pastor of University Baptist Church in East Lansing, MI and author of "The Beauty Behind the Mask: Rediscovering the Books of the Bible" from Clements Publishing.
6 Comments:
I purchased a copy of The Books of The Bible. I love it, and I'm sympathetic to what you're saying. But you're assuming that everyone in a particular study will have a copy of TBoTB. How realistic is that? And if other publishers follow your example with other translations, everyone could have a Bible with this type of format, but have completely different book orders and page numbers.
I'm not necessarily opposed to using this format for group study, but you seem to be simply dismissing this concern without adequately interacting with it. And the suggestion that people are interested in referring to chapter and verse so that they don't have to concern themselves with the context is very unhelpful. This kind of dig is beneath the quality of this excellent version of Scripture.
How would you recommend using TBoTB for group study in a real-world setting with multiple translations and editions? Are we supposed to just have everyone turn to the place toward the beginning of John where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus?
Like it or not, the chapter/verse numbers do sometimes serve a purpose. If we're going to use this new (to us) format in a diversity of settings, we'll have to see how that can be . . . um, practical. :)
Thanks,
Curt
Curt,
I think the point Chris is trying to make is chapter and verse numbers make it very easy to ignore the context. He is not saying everyone who uses chapter and verse numbers deliberately ignore the context. But I totally agree with your concern and don't have a good solution to it.
Lin
Perhaps my experience is different from others, but how many people in a Bible study "spontaneously" think of other other Bible passages to refer to?
More commonly, such jumping around seems to occur in the following situations:
a) A group is studying I Corinthians. Someone pipes in saying, "My Bible has a note that refers to Mark 85:15 which says..." Everyone flips to that verse, reads it, and is then baffled as to how that clarifies the original passage in question, thus bringing discussion to a halt.
b) The study guide that the group is using, instead of focusing on the book in question has people jumping all over looking at other randomly selected verses. Suspicious types conclude that the whole exercise is a way for the author of the study guide to push his or her own agenda. Others conclude that making sense of the Bible is impossible without such helps that tell you which random passages should be strung together (since the order they are actually in is apparently not helpful).
In other words, it seems to me that BOTB makes activities that waste a group's time less practical. That's what I call progress!
Lin:
Thanks for your post. I definitely agree with the problem as you state it, but I think Chris' statement was actually a little stronger:
"So we want to keep using the chapter-and-verse format in groups because it allows us [to] cite passages without regard to their context? Now that really is a problem."
Maybe I'm over-interpreting this, but it seems to imply a motivation for those who want to keep using a chapter/verse format. If so, this is painting with an extremely large brush.
Mark:
I think you're right about spontaneous references during a study of a specific book. If we're studying 1 Corinthians, we'll probably be staying within a certain passage.
We'll still need to all begin with the same passage, and this will be easier for some than others. In a smaller Bible study, we can help those who are inexperienced find the correct passage, but it may be a little time consuming. In a large group setting, this may be impractical.
(I try to encourage people to bring their own Bibles on Sundays. IMO, there are too many benefits to this to have them rely each week on a pew Bible, even if it is a copy of TBoTB.)
Also, if we were studying a broader subject, such as biblical church leadership, divorce/remarriage, the rapture of the church, etc., we would again have a difficulty. Is there a practical, workable way to deal with this? That's what I'm interested in.
Blessings,
Curt
I got this note from Chris late last week:
If you're now using The Books of The Bible in a group study in which people are using various other editions, you should still be able to follow them as they refer to other parts of the Bible: you can use the chapter-and-verse range on the bottom of the page.
On the other hand, if you want to introduce supporting passages to the group from your edition, it probably won't be helpful to say to them, "This is in Matthew, somewhere between 13:56 and 14:28." You've reached the point that Curt wrote about, in which we'll "have to see how" the Scriptures in a format such as The Books of The Bible can be referenced in such settings. If other translations do appear in a similar format (as I hope they will), we may have people showing up at Bible studies with a number of different editions that have muted or eliminated chapters and verses. They'll all be in it together, "seeing how" to use the new format in groups. This should be a creative and exciting project.
My personal feeling is that referencing by context will ultimately come to replace referencing by chapters and verses in group settings. I think we'll be amazed at how quickly we learn the basic outlines of the different books of the Bible and become able to refer to passages within these outlines.
We should read the Bible both contextually and canonically, hence references to other parts of the Bible that support and elucidate a given passage under discussion are always helpful. But we should be careful to read contextually first, and only then introduce considerations from the broader canonical context. A study that sends people roaming rapidly all over the Bible may not be giving sufficient attention to the context of the primary passage. And so, as Mark suggested, if The Books of The Bible makes us move around more thoughtfully and deliberately, then maybe that is a good thing.
Chris Smith
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