The Bible is not simply a collection of individual verses, inspirational sayings, historical accounts, or theological ideas. It is a unified collection of sixty-six books written across different periods of history, through different human authors, to different audiences, and in different literary forms. Together, these writings reveal the unfolding purposes of God from Genesis to Revelation. Learning how to study the Bible involves learning how these different parts should be understood individually while also recognizing how they contribute to the larger message of Scripture. The purpose of this book is practical. It is designed to give readers a clear method for approaching Scripture and to provide the interpretive skills needed for different kinds of biblical passages. Rather than approaching every passage in exactly the same way, readers will learn to recognize what kind of literature they are studying and what questions should be asked of that particular text. A Psalm, for example, should not be approached exactly like one of Paul's letters, and a proverb should not be interpreted in precisely the same way as a historical narrative or a prophecy. Throughout the chapters that follow, special attention will be given to context. Readers will learn how words function within sentences, sentences within paragraphs, paragraphs within chapters, and chapters within entire books. They will also learn to consider the historical, geographical, cultural, grammatical, and literary setting of a passage. These different areas of study work together to help establish what a biblical writer was communicating to the original audience. The book will introduce the principles of biblical interpretation, commonly referred to as hermeneutics, and then demonstrate how those principles work in practice. Readers will learn how the Bible functions as both a human and divine book and why both dimensions are important for interpretation. Attention will also be given to progressive revelation and the unity of Scripture so that earlier portions of the Bible can be understood in relationship to what God reveals later. Because Scripture contains different literary forms, individual chapters will explain how to interpret the Epistles, the legal sections of the Old Testament, parables, Psalms, biblical prophecy, apocalyptic literature, wisdom literature, figures of speech, and biblical types. These chapters will demonstrate why literary form matters and how recognizing the characteristics of a passage can prevent unnecessary misunderstanding. Readers will also learn practical methods for studying different amounts of Scripture. Studying a single verse requires close attention to wording and immediate context, while studying a paragraph requires identifying the development of an author's thought. Studying a chapter requires following a larger movement of ideas, and studying an entire book requires attention to purpose, structure, audience, historical circumstances, major themes, and the relationship between its different sections. The book will demonstrate how these levels of study work together.
