Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bob@morningstar.com (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Bible Study Message-ID: Date: 18 Jul 90 09:07:42 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Morning Star Technologies Lines: 32 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) writes: In [the Inter Varsity manuscript studies], the student gets supplied with a manuscript containing neither chapter or verse numbers. The intention is to confront the raw text... I found this method to be very effective because one reads the text differently if it is not broken up into chapters and verses. One gets into the flow of the text, the progression of ideas. One also reads differently when the text doesn't appear in a book with thin, guilt-edged paper with the word `Holy' on it. I agree, this is a very helpful technique. A few years back, I set the text of Galatians in LaTeX; with wide interlinear spacing, very wide margins, and only page and line numbers for coordinating guides (which is all that chapter/verse divisions were invented for in the first place). Then we attacked it with several colors of highlighter markers, each of us adopting our own marginal annotation and color coding schemes. By the time we finished the study several months later, each of our copies were nearly illegible for all our marking on the front and back of each page. But we had a much better grip on the message than if we had just sat around with books open on our laps, and the text on the paper wasn't as important any more because we had it essentially memorized. Even though I scribble in my Bibles, the effect of having lots of sturdy white paper was remarkably freeing. The only problem with this approach is when I quote a section of the text from memory and am challenged to cite the source, but I don't have the standard chapter/verse delineations memorized. Since nobody else would know "page five, line seven, the orange part" I must resort to something along the lines of "...in the section where Paul's arguing for such-and-such position..."