Hints and Bits About Bible Study/ How to Study the Bible

When we have an idea and want to convey it to others, we use words to illustrate what is in our mind in hopes that the same idea may form in our listeners' minds. Thus the Bible. It is a collection of books of illustration. Our effort is to get the SAME ideas (values and effects) formed in our minds which were in the minds of the books' authors.

The authors conveyed their ideas through symbols, codes, types, similes, examples, and allegories, all related to psychological realities, principles, and character. Whole fields of code are lost in translation (think gematria, the Hebrew language as numbers), and much meaning is perverted by bad and incomplete translation (think King James Version). So why do I use the King James, specifically Bullinger's Companion Bible? It is because of deeper studies long researched. We know just about all of the King James' faults, which are myriad. Bullinger points many of them out. We read with a running autocorrect in our minds: it says this; it means that. The Companion Bible is a veritable encyclopedia. Not that I agree with Bullinger's dispensationalism. There have been deeper studies long researched after Bullinger, too.

I have graduated to using Victor Alexander's translations from the ancient Aramaic, which are ideomatic. He still gives many literal translations and explanations in his footnotes. He also opens the ancient Eastern church's perspective to us, another whole field lost to the Western reader. The Western church was prejudiced to their existing religions, philosophies, and perspectives. The BASIS of the Jewish religion was completely foreign to them. The fine print of understanding from a distance looked like a blank slate to them.

Most versions of the Bible are available online. Just enter the book, chapter, or verse(s) you would like to read in the url or search box, and numerous sites will become available. The Companion Bible is also available online. Charles Haywood gives us heavendwellers' pdf's. Very helpful when you want to have text on one tab and Bullinger's appendixes on another. If you will click on heavendwellers' link, and then the Genesis pdf link, you will be able to scroll down to Genesis chapter one. Please note the little circles in front of the words First, Book, and Moses. You can find those words explained in the first four lines of the right-hand column. We are also directed to three different appendixes in the back of the Bible which discuss the meanings and uses of these words in greater detail. Like I said, The Companion Bible is more like an encyclopedia/ seminary course, and we haven't even gotten to the first verse yet!

If you scroll down to the middle of the pdf page, to the fourth line below the left-hand column, you will find the word was from the second verse in bold, and its literal meaning, became. I still use my paperback "compact" Strong's Exhaustive Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries (make sure yours has these dictionaries!!) - I've given my big hardcover Strong's away - but the concordance and dictionaries are available online. A quick search brought up https://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html, which looks really great. I typed 'was' in the first box, found the Strong's dictionary number attached to that word in Genesis 1:2, and then put that number (1961) in the second box for the Hebrew dictionary. Then it is as simple as reading the results for 1961 (hayah): to be, to become, to come to pass, etc.

Note the sense of transition inherent in the word hayah. We call it time. God calls it creation. Maybe you'd call it the present between the future and the past. It is what is going on. I loved discovering Alexander's translation of Genesis 1, verses 1 and 2, "As the Beginning, the Son of God creates the heavens and the earth. And the earth was for Him and by Him, and the darkness was over the face of infinite space, and the Spirit of God was over the layers of the water" (emphases mine). Creation by the Son of God is ongoing, constant. !!! From the darkness (ignorance) over the face of the infinite space universe there is CONSTANT TRANSITION by the Spirit of God over the layers of the water, the psychological. The Bible is this transition's story to the end of Revelation.