Task 2: Read the Passage Repeatedly, Noting Observations
Essence of the Task
With this assignment one really begins to soak in the portion being studied. The purpose is to get a clear (but revisable) basic idea of the passage as a whole, to know what themes it touches on, what arguments it addresses, and what contribution it makes to the whole. The fruit of this repeated reading will serve you well for several of the other tasks in Monday’s contextual work.
Detailed Description
There will always be a certain temptation to dive into the details of a biblical passage too soon. After all, since we’ve set out to study, let’s get on with it!
However, two reflections may help us better understand the real value of beginning with a somewhat less detailed study.
- First, as we’ve mentioned before, many of the books of the Bible were written with the knowledge that most people would hear them. In other words, in many cases, the message was originally heard at a reading speed.
- Second, detailed study will be more meaningful and, therefore, more valuable and accurate if you have a prior and coherent grasp of the passage as a whole.
Gordon Fee, when speaking of reading a passage repeatedly emphasizes how important it is to try to become familiar enough with the passage to be able to keep the essence of the passage in your mind as you go through the next steps of your exegetical work (New Testament Exegesis, 120).
In fact, according to an observation from the field of language study, a person cannot understand a complete sentence unless he or she is able to grasp all the components of that sentence together in less than ten seconds. In other words, part of the difficulty in learning a new language is that before you have finished deciphering (and translating!) each word one by one you have already forgotten how the sentence started, requiring you to go back to see if you can retrieve it and keep it in your memory along with the last part of the sentence. Fluency with a new language is achieved only when a person can keep all the words in his active memory long enough to understand the whole idea (Daniel Streett, «Are Aural-Oral Methods Worthwhile for Teaching Greek?» SBL – Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages Section – 11/20/2010).
Fee’s point is similar. In upcoming assignments, you will be working on a lot of small units: words, phrases, sentences, and verses. To interpret the whole correctly, you need to get a basic idea of the whole passage that sticks in your working memory and can accompany you as you work on the details. This is vital to giving you a coherent conceptual framework and to narrowing down possible meanings.
To Do
For this task, try to savor the passage as a unit. It is the portion, as a portion, that you want to relish. Read it several times. If it helps, read it in different ways.
- Try reading it fast and slow.
- Try reading it aloud, perhaps just as you would for the congregation on Sunday. Does the nuancing change at all if you emphasize one word or another?
- Try reading it in different versions (especially those used by members of your congregation). Note where different versions use different words. It may be helpful to jot down some of these differences – especially if they point to a different understanding of a phrase.
- If you are fluent in more than one language, read it in those other languages.
- Listen to someone else read it. If you have access to one or more recordings, it might be interesting to loop the text and listen to the portion over and over again. Or listen to it over and over again along with the portion that precedes and follows it. All in all, since you’re listening to a recording, it shouldn’t be too much work to come up with a slightly larger portion. Besides, you’ll never offend the Lord by getting too much context!
To Keep in Mind
Don’t forget to gather the fruit of your reading. You don’t need to be too meticulous. Just jotting down some of your most basic observations will suffice.
- A short list of initial observations…
- A list of important concepts…
- A (revisable) summary in your own words of the main ideas that the author wants his listener/reader to understand.
The basic idea is to get a good, overall grasp of the passage as a whole. Don’t be obsessed with tying up all the loose ends at this point. These are preliminary ideas. As you continue to study the passage your understanding of it will deepen.
Do not ignore digital options for your reading. For example, among possible options:
- Software «Repeater» type A-B. There are several programs of this type that make it very easy. It might be worth your while to investigate some of these options so that you can easily make use of them each week.
- Bible software like Logos allows you to view different versions side-by-side and even indicates differences that may exist between versions.