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Effective Study

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Effective Study

Postby Joe » Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:02 am

I spend 1-2 hours a day studying the Bible. On the sabbath, like today, I spent about 5 hours reading the Bible.

In that time I read 2 chapters (in different translations on esword), commentaries and checked all the cross-references of each verse. I need to be more focused on the verses that are more meaningful, but I end-up reading everything. Last night it took me about 3 hours to read 2 chapters. I didn't get time this week to read a WTL or listen to a podcast.
How do you guys study? Do you read a book a day, a verse, a chapter. Listen to every podcast when it is released. Have you read most of Clifton's letters? (I want to read them all)...

I estimate it will take me years to read the Bible. I enjoy the prophets ...but this doesn't seem right. I know people who say they have read the Bible, cover to cover, multiple times (yet they will post funny comments at DS). How long has it taken some of you to finish the Bible? I feel I am more focused on just understanding it and enjoying what I am reading ...but still...
-Can you please list tools you use, or have used, that you feel have aided you the most. Though I am getting better at reading it, some tools can expand your understanding greatly and increase your effectiveness.

And some of you are reading it in Greek. Lol, what is wrong with me.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Fenwick » Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:27 pm

Joe wrote:How long has it taken some of you to finish the Bible? I feel I am more focused on just understanding it and enjoying what I am reading ...but still...]


It probably took me about two weeks the first time I read it, about as long as a medium sized novel. The problem was, at the time, I really didn't have the grounding in theology to understand what I'd read. There was a lot of complex allegory and apparently literal statements, and I had no idea how to sort one from the other.

What I'm saying is the speed isn't much use if you don't understand what you're reading. A few chapters a night will take you a lot longer, but you'll likely understand it better. I think part of the problem is so many of us were not given much biblical grounding as children.

This used to be a fundamental part of a child's education, learning all the major stories and figures in the Bible. It was our shared heritage, just something you knew, like national history or literature. There was something in the news recently about how professors could no longer assume students would understand references to Solomon or Moses.

The bible would then be less of a blank slate to be read, but the deeper source material for what you already knew (if often child-friendly and limited scope). I was luckier in this regard, I was given books on Christian stories as a child which I read a lot. Unfortunately this was only useful for following the narrative.

For greater spiritual understanding, I had to read the works of Christian Identity scholars, which better gave me the key to understanding the scriptures. Individual study is important, but there's no shame in relying on the works of more knowledgeable people to improve your ability to study. See further by standing on the shoulders of giants!


Incidentally, I wouldn't really bother with most cross-references. You're really relying on the writer's understanding of the scriptures to bring up relevant passages, and they don't always make sense from a CI perspective.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Joe » Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:37 am

Thanks Fenwick
I use the Bible that Clifton Emahiser has for his 'Bible with a good cross-reference prove Christian Identity'. Most of the cross-references I feel are important to understand where the Bible connects together.

The commentaries often have things like 'this refers back to...', 'this is similar to the time' or 'this verse could also mean'.
I know I don't get much more from it, but every so often there is a gem.

2 weeks?, lol.

For greater spiritual understanding, I had to read the works of Christian Identity scholars, which better gave me the key to understanding the scriptures. Individual study is important, but there's no shame in relying on the works of more knowledgeable people to improve your ability to study. See further by standing on the shoulders of giants!

I remember when we had to read the Bible at school, most of the time it was difficult to understand the significance of it or what it was saying. But now it is much easier to understand the common theme with an understanding of the Covenant, race, idolatry, the Law. It is then that you finally get the most nourishment from it.

This used to be a fundamental part of a child's education, learning all the major stories and figures in the Bible. It was our shared heritage, just something you knew, like national history or literature. There was something in the news recently about how professors could no longer assume students would understand references to Solomon or Moses.

I think students should definitely still learn about it. But we can do better, we could help our children understand it much better.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Fenwick » Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:50 am

I use the Bible that Clifton Emahiser has for his 'Bible with a good cross-reference prove Christian Identity'. Most of the cross-references I feel are important to understand where the Bible connects together.

The commentaries often have things like 'this refers back to...', 'this is similar to the time' or 'this verse could also mean'.
I know I don't get much more from it, but every so often there is a gem.

2 weeks?, lol.
I've just looked it u, he seemed to be referring to the "KJV Zondervan Classic Reference Bible", which I don't have any direct experience of. When I originally read the KJV it was online with an excessive number of references listed, and with the Rotherham one I mostly use now, a lot of the references merely link to things that use similar wording, but refer to different things, or those that link to earlier passages that only serve to prove the internal consistency, but not my external understanding of what is said.

And I should add that the two weeks it took me to read it were in the holidays, in a heavy snow that made travel difficult and I had nothing else to do all day.

I remember when we had to read the Bible at school, most of the time it was difficult to understand the significance of it or what it was saying. But now it is much easier to understand the common theme with an understanding of the Covenant, race, idolatry, the Law. It is then that you finally get the most nourishment from it.
I never much understood the New Testament until I was much older. The significance of Jesus is very hard to justify without Christian Identity, (and this was Jehovah's Witness confusion anyway) and I much more enjoyed reading about the adventures of the ancient Israelites. Thinking back now with all these "New Testament Christians" denigrating the Old Testament, maybe I was closer to understanding than I thought!
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Joe » Sun Jul 13, 2014 2:31 am

I just wanted to add that I have found commentaries to be a constant companion in my reading of the Bible. Because I know about CI, commentaries really help me put it all together, at some times I just have a different idea about some things.

Here are some examples:

Jeremiah kept using the phrase 'Daughter of my people' ...I started to think this phrase had some deeper meaning. But it didn't really, which helped me realise that I was thinking in the same way most people.

From Poole, he says the same thing most say.
Of the daughter of my people; see Jer_4:11; possibly because Jeremiah loved them, instructed them, admonished them as a daughter.


Usually I think I am pretty good at understanding most verses, but sometimes the commentators have some really good insights, like on this passage from Jeremiah:

Jer 8:1 At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves:
Jer 8:2 And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.


Poole
And the moon, and all the host of heaven, viz. all the rest of the stars, to show that they should not lie out in the day time only, but night also, before the moon and stars, Jer_36:30. Their carcasses shall be cast to their idols, Lev_26:30 2Ki_23:14,20; a kind of lex talionis, that as they had served and worshipped these creatures, God doth, as it were, appoint them as spectators and witnesses of his vengeance, and what contempt he pours upon them, their carcasses being brought before their idols, which will be so shameful, as if one should draw forth the adulteress with the adulterer into open view, and expose them together; and it also insinuates the inability that is in these dumb idols to help them in their misery.


Jamieson, Fausset and Brown:
spread ... before the sun, etc. — retribution in kind. The very objects which received their idolatries shall unconcernedly witness their dishonor.


I would add that it shows the fate of those gods and their peoples.

The cross-reference system I have is best when it links to the Psalms, it often links to the Psalms. There were some really good ones that I didn't write down, but here is one that I did.

Jer 9:2 Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.

Was cross-referenced to;
Psa 55:6 And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.

Often the cross-references really add much to the meaning, or often Justify God's actions against the idolatrous by cross-referencing Deuteronomy.

Anyways just thought I would show some of the ways I use these systems. I know other people use 'Concordances', but I am not familiar with them. That's what I was hoping to get some advice on.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Fenwick » Wed Jul 16, 2014 2:36 pm

Joe wrote:I know other people use 'Concordances', but I am not familiar with them. That's what I was hoping to get some advice on.

I've only really used Strong's via website myself:

http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html


I don't really sit analysing every word that I read, but if I find a passage that seems odd, or out of place, I look it up in Strong's to see what the meaning of the original word might have been, and maybe compare it with a few different versions. An imperfect system, but the simplest means to uncover the words, if not always the deeper meaning, immediately available to most people.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Joe » Thu Jul 17, 2014 12:59 am

Thanks again Fenwick. I also think it would be hard for me to understand much of the more obscure passages without some help/different techniques.
I use strongs and other dictionaries through esword.

If anyone wants some help getting a bunch of different free translations (including the Septuagint translations) and commentaries and dictionaries for esword, just PM me.

I wish I knew how to make the esword Bibles, I was trying to learn. I would probably make a private translation of the Christogenea NT. Of-course I wouldn't release it anywhere or tell Bill about it.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby wmfinck » Thu Jul 17, 2014 9:41 pm

Joe wrote:Thanks again Fenwick. I also think it would be hard for me to understand much of the more obscure passages without some help/different techniques.
I use strongs and other dictionaries through esword.

If anyone wants some help getting a bunch of different free translations (including the Septuagint translations) and commentaries and dictionaries for esword, just PM me.

I wish I knew how to make the esword Bibles, I was trying to learn. I would probably make a private translation of the Christogenea NT. Of-course I wouldn't release it anywhere or tell Bill about it.


There is already a CNT for Bible Analyzer. http://christogenea.org/CNT/utilities

It still needs to be update to match the latest changes on the Errata page, but it should match the last print edition.

If anyone can make the CNT for other programs, so long as they make certain to use my text, and so long as Christogenea is the distribution point for it, of course I would allow it
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Joe » Mon Jul 28, 2014 6:24 am

I was not trying to sound pious by trying to be more disciplined in my reading of the Bible, regardless, I just wanted to note that I have not maintained my initial striving. The heaviness of life always gets in the way.

Of-course the Bible, His word, His way is light. I am in error to let things distract me so.
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Re: Effective Study

Postby Joe » Thu Sep 25, 2014 11:41 pm

I have been working more effectively by adding every translation I could get my hands on to esword. In comparing the different translations I get a better understanding without going through several commentaries.

(People from a catholic/apostate background may have the same difficulty when they first get into CI).
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