Dive Into The Bible

Time to dive in and go swimming in 2017!  Dive Into The Bible and Learn To Swim by Trevin Wax

Americans love the Bible; they just don’t read it enough.

According to research for the American Bible Society, the majority of Americans believe the Bible is inspired and that its principles should exert more influence on public life.

Eighty-eight percent of households in America own at least one Bible, including non-Christian homes (68 percent). The average family has three to four copies of God’s Word. Twenty-four percent of American families say they own more than five!

Reading the Bible

Bible ownership is high. Not so with Bible readership. Only one in seven adults reads the Bible daily.

Why so few? Most Americans claim it’s the busyness of their lifestyle or their own frustration in understanding the biblical text.

Among churchgoing Protestants, the number of Bible readers is much higher. Eighty percent claim to read the Bible at least once a week. That’s a hopeful place to start if you want to reinvigorate Bible reading in your church or push toward a “read the Bible every day” routine this year.

Bible Reading Practices

Lately, I’ve been sifting through some unpublished LifeWay research on how people interact with the Bible. Many of the tools available (cross-reference Bibles, topical indexes, and so on) help readers find the connections between Scripture passages or come across a timely word in a troubling season. People admit they are more likely to seek out Bible promises when they need encouragement in their daily life.

But I’m conflicted about these reports.

On the one hand, I want people going to the Bible for whatever reason may prompt them. I believe God’s Word changes lives. I believe his Word will not return empty. I trust Christ to accomplish his purposes through his Word.

Throughout church history, we see people transformed by a seemingly random portion of God’s Word: the eyes of Augustine falling on Paul’s instruction in Romans 13:13, or the preacher’s quotation of Isaiah 45:22 (“Look unto Me!”) that gripped the heart of a young Charles Spurgeon.

On the other hand, I want Christians going to God’s Word for more than daily tidbits for practical life. Too many of us go to God’s Word in order to get something out of it. I want more of us to go to God’s Word in order to get into it.

The Bible As A Book

Maybe you think you know the content of the Bible, but how much do you know about the Bible as a book? Check out "9 Things You Should Know About the Bible" from Joe Carter:

The primary thing everyone should know about the Bible is that, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness..." (2 Timothy 3:16). But here are an additional 9 things that you should know about the best-selling book of all time:

1. The English word Bible is derived from the Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία (ta biblia - "the books"). While Christian use of the term can be traced to around A.D. 223, the late biblical scholar F.F. Bruce noted that Chrysostom in his Homilies on Matthew (between A.D. 386 and 388) appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.

2. The word "testament" (Hebrew berîth, Greek diatheke), means "covenant." The term "Old Testament" refers to the covenant which God entered into with Abraham and the people of Israel, and "New Testament" to the covenant God has entered into with believers through Christ.

3. The practice of dividing the Bible into chapters began with Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury in the early 13th century. Robert Estienne, a 16th-century printer and classical scholar in Paris, was the first to print the Bible divided into standard numbered verses.

4. The first complete Bible printed in the Western Hemisphere was not in English or other Europeans languages. The “Eliot Indian Bible,” published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, between 1660 and 1663, was a translation in the Natick dialect of the Algonquin tribe of indigenous Americans. There were no English language Bibles printed in America until the late 1700's, mainly because they were more cheaply and easily imported from England up until the embargo of the Revolutionary War.

5. The first red-letter New Testament (i.e., words of Christ printed in red) was published in 1899, and the first red-letter Bible followed two years later. The idea of printing the words of Christ in red originated with Lous Klopsch, editor of Christian Herald magazine, who got the idea after reading Jesus' words, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20).

6. The Bible is not only the best-selling book of all-time, it is consistently the best-selling book of the the year, every year. (Even in 1907, the New York Times noted that the “daily sales of the Bible, 40,000 copies, exceed the annual sales of most popular novels.”) Currently, an estimated 25 million copies are sold or distributed in the U.S. every year, approximately one new Bible for every 12 Americans.

7. According to the Christian Booksellers Association, the most popular versions (ranked based on dollar sales) are: (1) New International Version, (2) King James Version, (3) New Living Translation, (4) New King James Version, (5) English Standard Version, (6) Common English Bible, (7) Holman Christian Standard Bible, (8) Reina Valera 1960, (9) New American Standard, and (10) New International Readers Version.

8. There are two general approaches to Bible translation, formal equivalence and functional equivalence. Formal equivalence seeks to reproduce the grammatical and syntactical form of the donor language as closely as possible in the receptor language, making only such changes as are necessary for intelligibility. Functional equivalence focuses on the meaning and attempts to accurately communicate the same meaning in the receptor language, even if doing so requires using different grammatical and syntactical forms. As Rodney J. Decker explains, all translations include both formal and functional equivalents and thus fall on a different part of the translation spectrum (e.g., KJV, and ESV are more formal while the New Living Translation is more functional).

9. All the books of the Old Testament except Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon are quoted or referenced in the New Testament. Jesus quoted or made references from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, 1 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Micah, Zechariah, and Malachi.

Crises of Bible Illiteracy

Good article at Biola Magazine on The Crises of Biblical Illiteracy:

Stacey Irvine ate almost nothing but chicken nuggets for 15 years. She never tasted fruits or vegetables. She occasionally supplemented her diet with French fries. One day her tongue started to swell and she couldn’t catch her breath. She was rushed to the hospital, her airway was forced open, and they stuck an IV in her arm to start pumping in the nutrients she needed. After saving her life, the medical staff sent her home, but not before they warned her that she needed to change her diet or prepare herself for an early death.

I’ve heard people call it a famine. A famine of knowing the Bible. During a famine people waste away for lack of sustenance. Some people die. Those who remain need nourishment; they need to be revived. And if they have any hope of remaining alive over time, their life situation has to change in conspicuous ways.

During normal famines people don’t have access to the food they need. But Stacey Irvine could have eaten anything she wanted. She had resources, opportunity and presumably all the encouragement she needed to eat well. Can you imagine what would happen if all of us decided to follow her example and discontinued eating all but non-nutritious foodstuff? If we happened to beat the odds and live, we undoubtedly would suffer in the long run from nutrition-related chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Like Stacey Irvine, we’re killing ourselves. It’s surely not for lack of resources; nevertheless, we are in fact starving ourselves to death.

Christians used to be known as “people of one book.” Sure, they read, studied and shared other books. But the book they cared about more than all others combined was the Bible. They memorized it, meditated on it, talked about it and taught it to others. We don’t do that anymore, and in a very real sense we’re starving ourselves to death.....

More at the link.

Is Your City "Biblically Minded"?

From an article by Joe Carter at the Gospel Coalition:

The Story: A new report from Barna Group ranks how 96 of the largest cities in the nation on how they view the Bible.

The Background: The study, based on 42,855 interviews conducted nationwide, attempts to determine the overall openness or resistance to the Bible in the country's largest markets. The report ranks the most and least "Bible-minded" cities based both on weekly Bible reading and who strongly asserts the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches.

The Takeaways: Some of the more interesting findings from the survey include:

• The top ranking cities, where at least half of the population qualifies as Bible-minded, are all Southern cities.

• The least Bible-oriented markets include a mix of regions, but tend to be from the New England area.

Need a Hug?

Are You More Biblical Than a Fifth-Grader?

Do you know more about the Bible than a fifth-grader?  Well. that's not the title of this new show, but pretty well summarizes what it will be like: From Kathy Schiffer at Patheos:

Jeff Foxworthy, host of the popular game show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader,” has signed a contract with GSN (the Game Show Network) to emcee a Scripture challenge. The new show will be called “The American Bible Challenge.”

According to a statement by GSN, questions will be designed to acknowledge and celebrate the Bible’s continuing importance in contemporary life and culture. Contestants on the show will share their personal faith stories before a live studio audience. Competing teams will represent “worthy faith-based organizations.”

Foxworthy—the self-proclaimed “redneck”—said, “I am excited to be hosting a show about the best-selling book of all time.” His goal is to present the Bible in a fun and entertaining way.

Another article has some sample questions:

Do you know what Balaam’s Ass did?
What were the names of Noah’s sons?
What was the name of Adam’s daughter?
Trick question! She’s not named in the Bible.

Should be fun!