Christian Living

---

In Part 1 of this series, I explained what I mean by “spiritual cutlery” and why the one piece of spiritual cutlery you’re probably being told not to use is very probably the first one you should get.

This time round I’m going to recommend several new items of cutlery you should get to help you investigate Bible words and verses you find confusing or hard to understand. I’ll also mention another item you should probably avoid as a new Bible reader because it offers short-term gains but can create problems in the long run.

My recommendation is that you get hold of and use several different Bible translations (or versions) to help you understand the Bible better. We tend to think of the translation we read at any given moment as “the Bible”, but that’s not strictly true. A translation is “the Bible” only insofar as its words offer readers the actual meaning of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words in the surviving copies of the original language manuscripts.

Think of the different Bible versions as the bowls and dishes in which the feast of God’s Word is served. No one bowl or dish contains the entire feast, and no single one of them can offer you all the sights, smells, and flavours of the whole feast. You need to learn what each one contains, and how best to sample them.

Technically, I suppose that means the translations are spiritual crockery rather than cutlery, but let’s not fuss about that for now. Instead, let me do something much more important by helping you to save a small fortune before you spend it. I’m going to recommend a web site you should mark as a favourite and use as your first port of call whenever you want or need to look at a Bible passage more carefully. It’s called www.biblegateway.com

You might at this point be tempted to ask me a number of questions. Which translations should you get? How different are Bible translations from each other anyway? And how do you know you’ll use them? This is where biblegateway.com comes into its own. You see, there is an important difference between buying multiple Bible translations and merely “getting hold of and using” them.

The site I’ve just recommended is free to use at time of writing, and I do not receive any kind of payment for mentioning it here. When I trained as a lay minister a few years ago, biblegateway.com was highly recommended by my teachers. I know first-hand that both my former teachers and fellow students still use it a great deal. And now, here’s how the site can help you as a new Bible reader to work out which translations you might want to buy later.

Let’s imagine you’ve decided to start reading the Bible regularly, and you’re using the King James Version. You’ve got an old copy lying around the house, and you don’t feel either confident or rich enough to spend money on a newer translation. As far as you’re concerned, there are too many to choose from and you don’t know how you would decide which ones to get. So as you’re reading through the King James Version, you see that in Exodus 28:11(KJV) God commanded the Israelites to make “ouches of gold”. Ouches? What are those?

You try to guess from the context of the word, but deep down you know that’s what it is: a guess, and not a very well informed guess if you’re honest with yourself. Some people will tell you to use a dictionary at this point. Seriously? What sort of modern dictionary is going to tell you what a word meant in the early seventeenth century, when the King James Version was first translated? The answer is a highly specialized, very expensive dictionary. Don’t bother.

Instead, head on over to biblegateway.com and look up the reference there in the same translation you’re using at home. This will let you check you’ve looked up the right verse. Then click on the “Other versions” option to see the same verse in a wide range of different translations.

This sort of trick may be horrible if you’re trying to memorize Bible verses, but it’s great if your goal is to understand what a particular word or verse means. This tip will help you understand your Bible better, and sample different Bible translations free of charge.

You’ll soon find out which translations you generally find easier to read and understand, check how different the translations really are from each other, and also get a feel for which translations might be more literal and which ones try to offer you the gist, the essential idea, of a passage.

Meanwhile, I think you’ll agree I’ve just given you a way to find out some very useful information before you even think about buying one or more modern Bible translations for personal reading and study. When you do eventually buy several different Bibles, I suggest you get a mixture of literal and looser translations. Now I’m going to recommend an item of spiritual cutlery to avoid – at least for the time being. They’re called cross references.

Cross references are usually indicated by offset individual letters which seem to float half-way up the verses of your Bible. They refer to particular Bible verses via either footnotes or centre notes depending on which Bible edition you’re using. If you’re new to the contents of the Bible or you’re trying to get into the habit of reading the Bible regularly, I suggest you avoid using cross references during your readings for three reasons.

First of all, unless you’re using an electronic Bible of some kind, using cross references can be very slow unless you know both the names and the order of the books of the Bible. Most Bible readers, especially new readers, don’t know how to navigate around the Bible very well. Whereabouts is Haggai again? Is Jude in the Old Testament or the New Testament?

Unless you already know details like this, using cross references in a hard copy Bible will force you back to the Table of Contents over and over again to find a verse. This might teach you the importance of learning the books of the Bible by heart, but something tells me you’d be better off reading the Bible in the first instance.

Secondly, looking up cross references in the middle of a reading can easily distract you by taking you to a completely different part of the Bible. I’m trying to help you get into the habit of reading the Bible in a structured way. Hopping about from one book to another chasing down scattered Bible verses is not going to help you achieve that goal, especially in the early days. It can be great fun to follow these Bible rabbit trails if you’ve got time on your hands, but frustratingly distracting and time consuming if you’ve got other things to do.

My final reservation about cross-references is that they are inevitably very selective. They give you what someone else thinks you need to know the Bible says about a verse. But they can’t tell you everything the Bible has to say about the multiple subjects often found in just one or two verses. The risk is that new Bible readers may be exposed to the theological opinions governing the selection of a cross reference without even realising that one or more other Bible references may help them understand the verse in a very different way.

Besides, even if somebody wanted to tell you everything the Bible has to say about a verse, it would assume not only that they had enough space to give you all the references, but also that they knew everything every Bible verse says about every other Bible verse. That’s a huge amount of information, far more than any one Bible scholar or translator can bring to mind. It’s one of the biggest reasons why we will never grow out of reading the Bible, even after we reach the final state of perfection God is waiting to give us.

© 2015 by Christopher Bevis. A Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England, a Christian for many years, and an avid reader for even longer, Christopher is a UK-based writer who has long-standing friends and contacts in the USA. Christopher is available to research and write for hire on Christian matters via the Faithwriters.com website.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE AS A MEMBER OR VISITOR