Bible study comes in various forms and they are supposed to all end with glorious edification, but leave it to me to affirm that they also end with catastrophic confusion, regret,  and at least a good feeling. 

A scholarly Bible study 🎯

A Bible study attended by scholars is bound to be a furious rollercoaster ride with no apologies.  The theologians’ Bible study will have that Columbo effect; always “one more thing”.  This means that conclusions are likely to be multilayered, appear unnecessarily complex, and will be off the beaten path.  While the proverbial forest waits for discovery the scholars are paying attention to every little tree.  One last thing; the study is not guaranteed to end with the dart to bullseye.

A speculative inspection Bible study

A group of friends enter a wooded area, and the sound of birdsong immediately fills their ears. The blind one points over to the left, saying “House Finch”, and one lady raises her binoculars and says “There he is”, and everyone in the group turns to see a splash of red. The person who had never seen a House Finch had learned what sounds one makes. Bird watching, or more precisely, birding, can be satisfying without eyes. Bible study without eyes, or ears or lips intersecting with the Sacred Text is just not happening.

Reading repeatedly

Reading the Bible is a priority we should never overlook, as some do, opting to elevate commentaries and unhinged visions.  We should be especially wary of narratives of  Yeshua’s life coming from people who have no respect for the integrity of the four Gospels and who have no idea that plain sayings in the Bible cannot be better explained by anything beside the Bible, even when one reads over and over again.

People in New Testament times were sure of what they were reading or hearing quoted from the Bible.  The  Bible was in their language!  Explanations serve to bring the Messiah into the picture, not to clarify what the authors intended their readers.  The only way to thoroughly understand the Bible is to read it, but please do not keep making  the mistake of imposing English, French, or Spanish grammar on its sentences. When they repeated the reading it was for the purpose of emphasizing something that stood out, and in Hebrew and greek, every word stands out.

The authority of Scripture is locked up in the Scripture in languages that are foreign to most.    The impressions that come when the reader seeks understanding should never be mistaken for interpretation, because interpretation is going to be confirmed by what is written.  A person can foam at the mouth, fall down in a trance, become stuff as a plank and say God showed them x, y, and z but the proof that such manifestations are unreliable is extent in the embarrassing doctrines and practices that distinguish many faith groups of the twenty-first century.  The discovery of genuine Messianic doctrine will continue to elude us as long as people  try to pass each other off as teachers.

as also [Paul]  in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16, NASB)

The doctrine of Christ will always stand in stark contrast to the distortions of law and Levitical processes, because Christ and Moses (and the prophets) are not gospel partners.  The contrast could not be clearer.