Practice: Surveying

Pick a book of the Bible, probably a shorter one. If you are thinking about working toward a badge, you may want to be intentional about the book you choose. These practice assignments can build toward the final Capstone, so you may want to pick a book with a passage in it that you want to study in more detail in later lessons.

Go through the steps of this lesson:

• Pray to the Lord for good observation skills and good thinking.
• Read the book three times, at least once in one sitting and from at least two different translations.
• Give a title to each chapter of the book.
• Now try your hand at outlining the book. Don’t peek at your Study Bible!
• Now ask about the “structural relationships” between the parts of the outline. Look for literary helps to the structure like intercalation, interchange, inclusio, and chiasms. Try not to see things that aren’t there but to observe clearly intended meaning. Now look for logical relationships like comparison, contrast, movement from general to specifics or from specifics to a generalization. Do you see real life cause and effect or logical cause and effect? Do you see substantiation or a statement of purpose for the whole book? Do you see movement from problem to solution or question to answer? Don’t get into the weeds! We’re looking for the big picture.
• We might add another step that we haven’t mentioned above. Ask questions about all these things. Who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. But, be careful, ask questions about the things you have observed, not about how something just strikes you out of the blue. We’re not doing lectio divina now but inductive study. Only ask questions now that the text “wants” to answer, that is, questions based on the observations you have made.

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