The Most Basic Bible Study Tools

What tools and techniques do you need to understand Scripture properly? If you look up books on hermeneutics, you will be greeted by a host of methods for understanding the Biblical text. Suffice to say, whether you are a new believer or a seasoned expositor, you can always find ways to improve your analysis and application of Scripture. However, just like in an actual tool box, there are some tools that are so fundamental and useful that everyone needs to know how to use them. In this post, I want to give two of the most basic Bible study tools that you need in order to understand Scripture.

Tool #1: Decomposition

Decomposition is simply taking something complicated and breaking it down. You come in contact with decomposition every day without even realizing it:

• Recipes decompose a dish into a series of logical steps
• Your GPS decomposes a route into a sequence of turns
• A to-do list decomposes your day into tasks to complete
• A puzzle decomposes into a large set of individual pieces
• Sentence diagrams break apart a sentence into its component parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc.)
• A pros and cons list decomposes a decision into its benefits and drawbacks

And those are only a couple examples. Essentially, the goal of decomposition is to take the complex and make it simple. Decomposition allows you to understand the pieces that make up the whole. The best metaphor for decomposition is taking apart a puzzle: you have something big and complex and you want to break it apart into pieces to understand how they fit together.

Decomposition is one of the most basic bible study tools you can apply to a text. You can view any text of Scripture, long or short, as a complicated blend of language, theology, historical context, authorial intent, and a host of other things. Your goal in decomposition is to simply separate each of these pieces in order to examine and understand them. You break text apart so when you put it back together again, you understand how the pieces relate to the whole.

Decomposition Example

There are countless specific ways to decompose a Biblical text. You can decompose it based on the languages, you can decompose it in terms of how it relates to the surrounding context, you can decompose it by looking at the “5 Ws and H”. Any time you divide and examine the parts of a Biblical text, you are doing decomposition. Consider the verse below:

but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:31 ESV

You might roughly decompose this verse by outlining it as follows:

• What: These are written
  • Why: So that you may believe
    • What: That Jesus is
    • Who: the Christ, the Son of God
  • Why: and that by believing you may have life
    • How: in his name

As you can see, by simply doing this rough and approximate decomposition, you can already begin to notice some features of the text. The main point of the verse is to describe why John wrote his gospel and there appears to be two related reasons given: that the reader might believe something about Jesus and that the reader might experience the outcome of that belief. You can further analyze the text by asking what specific things does John mention that a person should believe about Jesus.

Again, this is only a rough example of one way you can decompose a text. There a countless other tools that are essentially ways of decomposing a text. But the important thing to notice here is that good decomposition can lead to better observations. Before you make observations of the text, start with decomposing it. Once you have the pieces broken out, you can look at them and then make more insightful observations on each component of the text and how it relates to the whole.

Tool #2: Externalization

The second of these two basic Bible study tools is externalization. Your mind can only hold so much inside it at once. Therefore, a crucial tool for analysis is externalization. This means simply getting what you are thinking in your mind written down on paper. Again, you externalize throughout every day of your life:

• You write out a meal plan so you don’t have to remember all the meals for the week
• Your to-do list is simply an externalization of what you think you need to get done in a day
• When you take notes during a presentation you are externalizing ideas you want to remember so you don’t have to trust yourself to remember every detail of the presentation
• Any form of writing is externalization and if you are reading this post, you are simply reading an externalization of my own mind and thoughts

Externalization gets your thoughts outside of your mind. And the purpose of this is simple: once your thoughts are written down you can examine them critically, add or subtract from them, reword them in a better way, and otherwise analyze them. The more you externalize, the less you have to hold in your mind at once and the better you can think about an issue.

Externalization stands out amongst other basic bible study tools because a lot of times people don’t actually think of it as a “tool”. Even though a lot of Christians journal or write their thoughts on a text when preparing a sermon, very rarely do they consider how important externalizing their thoughts about a text is. Whether you are doing a brief morning devotion or preparing a 45-minute sermon, you need to externalize all your thoughts about a text.

Ideas for Externalization

Why does this help in Bible study? Because thoughts and insights are fleeting. Don’t ever assume you will remember an insight about a text tomorrow that you noticed today. If you see something noteworthy, write it down. My Bibles are covered with notes and cross references that came to mind when I read a particular passage. If I notice a repetition in the text, I externalize it by circling the repeated word. When I intuitively understand the structure of a passage, I write a quick outline and save it for later.

As with decomposition, there are many ways you can externalize your thoughts when studying a passage:

• Have a blank journal where you write down your thoughts as you read through the Bible
• Write down related texts that come to mind in your Bible when you read a particular passage
• Have a folder of “sermon skeletons” where you have rough outlines of passages
• Circle, underline, use multi-colored pens, anything to notate to your future self what you notice in a particular text as you study

Your mind will not be able to hold everything you know about Scripture at once. By externalizing your insights, you can come back at a later date and see if you notice the same things you noticed in the past. Externalizing is a Bible study tool because it allows you to connect thoughts you have had in the past to what you are studying in the present. Every time you read a good commentary you are benefiting from someone else externalizing their thoughts. By getting something down in writing, you can come back to it later and analyze it and reorganize it as needed.

Conclusion

Decomposition and externalization, in my opinion, are the most basic Bible study tools and almost every other tool or method depends on both of these. Even if you didn’t know it, you probably have used these tools in the past when you study a text. Improving in Bible study is not just about learning more and more new techniques. You also need to work on getting better at the fundamentals. If you can master the arts of decomposition and externalization, you will see fruit in your Bible study, your teaching, and your preaching.

This post was inspired in part by a section in “Psychology of Intelligence Analysis” by Richards Heuer, Jr. It is a good read if you want more detail on these subjects.

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