Please Help me with Inductive Bible study

Tes said:

In verse 6 ‘’in order’’ and then ‘’so that’’. It would be good even if there is a means of searching result and purpose from the original, if there is how`?

Tes,

One of the challenges is that determining whether something indicates "purpose" or "result" can be tricky, and sometimes it is possible for a caluse to indicate both purpose and result. Normally "in order" indicates purpose and "so that" indicates result, though this isn't a hard and fast rule. But you're asking about getting answers from Greek. There is a resource that gives this type of information and labels it clearly. It is "The Lexham Clausal Outlines of the Greek New Testament." Information can be found here: http://www.logos.com/logos3/new/clausaloutlines. However, I can't find it for sale and don't know when I acquired it. Perhaps someone else can help answer that question. The resource assumes you know Greek, but you can use a Reverse Interlinear to help you as in the screen shot below. You can either find occurrences of "in order" or "so that" and then check to see how they are labeled, or you can just scan the left hand column and look for "pur" (which stands for purpose) and "result." But remember, these labels are interpretations!

That's where the interlinears can be helpful, as in the picture above.

On the other hand, the easiest way to approximate it is to assume that "in order" indicates purpose and "so that" indicates result. The problem is that in Greek purpose and result can be indicated by a wide variety of words and constructions. And the same words/constructions that indicate purpose sometimes can be used to indicate result! Often times the context of the passage is what must be used to make a decision. So without knowing Greek, the best bet is to trust the translators.

oopps..    part of my message did not go through...

hopefully, here it is....

xxxxx Inductive Bible Study helps you find the central truth and builds that truth into your life.

To get the most from this study you need:

A version of the Bible with paragraphs
notebook for writing your findings

When you open God's Word, expect to meet with Him and to learn something about Him. Expect to find more of who He is and what He wants you to be like. In a wonderful way you'll grow to understand God and His ways if you approach the bible open to be changed by what you find there.

Each day as you begin, open your heart to the teaching of the Holy Spirit; ask Him to give you understanding and to help you think and act in God's way.

As you conclude a day's study, apply to your life one truth God has shown you as you relate to Him. Do as much of a step as you are comfortable with each day.

Read it, if it's brief. If it's long, skim it. If it's a narrative, jot down a fact about one or two of the main characters; list a few major events. If it's a letter, note a few facts about the writer and those being addressed. If it's another kind of literature, list some facts that impress you.

Write down a few of your major impressions of the book.

What helps do you think you'll get for your life from this book? Write down one or two and ask the Lord to move in your life in these ways.

Tes,

You could also try here for free PDF study guides using inductive study:

http://www.precept.org/site/PageServer?pagename=brd_PFL_download_archive

Kaye

Tes said:

Milford Charles Murray said:

Tes, for some reason I'm having difficulty pasting the actual website...

You might just want to go directly there to get it straight.

Yours in Christ,

Mel

Thank you Milford,I have been doing the inductive bible study many times.My quetions is not now general,it is specific as I am confronted with difficulties,with squences and dealing with and structures and so on.such as  paragaphes ,as I have shown it above by screenshopt,I have disvovered that,I have a problem,which needs to be resolved ,by consulting to someone,who can help me to  lay a foundation.I would appriciate ,if some one takes time as you did ,who can help me in a detail by referriing the above in screenshopt. 

         It's almost noon in this part of Eastern Canada, and perhaps I still haven't quite woken up yet.

                    However, I just read this entire post once more; and I'm really unsure of what help you need????

Every Blessing to you also!

Tes said:

 

I am trying to study the book of Rome inductively. 1. I am facing difficulties to arrange the sequence as well as the structure, as the same time 2.,I have a problem as well, to determine the tense for eg. In verse 6 ‘’in order’’ and then ‘’so that’’. It would be good even if there is a means of searching result and purpose from the original, if there is how`?

I would be very grateful, if someone takes time and lays a foundation for me, to arrange it ,so that I am  able to study  the Roman epistle .

 

 

          Tes, I realise that I'm not being helpful and probably won't be able to help.  Very sorry, indeed!  I just don't see why you want to arrange it ...

However, I thought David Phillips answered you extremely well, also concerning your "in order" question and also concerning you "so that" question.

          Also, he shared with you what he had open.  Since you have Platinum, you have all those books.  You could open them just as he did - AND - just Study them!

          Finally, I really enjoyed the "marking up" that you did.   *smile*     So bright, so colourful!  Appreciated it! 

          What I did was to read it through at least 6 or 7 times, enjoying it, appreciating it, letting God speak to me!  You know what!  I think HE DID!   *smile8

Wish you well, Tes!  And this is probably my last word...           

                Yours in Christ,

                                                  ............    Mel

Tes, if you want to understand the structure of a passage, you need to look at all the connecting words, because those are the key to its structure. As one Bible teacher of mine used to say (perhaps quoting someone else famous), "you have to figure out what the 'therefore' is there for." Words and phrases like "therefore," "for," "then," "or," "and," "even so," "now," "so that," "also," "too," "but," etc. I notice you didn't have any of the "therefore"s highlighted, but they are quite important, because they indicate a causal relationship. Paul's writing in particular is full of these kinds of structural links between one sentence and the next, or between the parts of a sentence. Following his arguments requires paying attention to all these relationships. It is sometimes not obvious even for people whose native language is English (or who can read the original Greek), so it must be especially hard to do this in a language not your own. It isn't really something another person can do for you; otherwise they'd be doing a lot of work for you. And they would only be helping you with that one passage, they wouldn't help you be able to do the work yourself some future time on another passage. I'm afraid that will take time, just learning English better, so that you can recognize some of these structural relationships intuitively.

If we had the sentence diagramming tool (which was in L3 and is coming in some future release of L4) you could work on diagramming the sentences in the passage to be able to better see the structure. Some of the Lexham resources might help. Lexham Clausal Outlines as mentioned by David Phillips. Also Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Sentence Analysis and Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. But I think you will grow to understand the structure better if you work it out yourself from the English text. Here is an example I show you with Romans 6:4. I can't do it for every verse as it would take too long. And if I do your work for you, you will not learn how to do it in the future. So instead of giving you a whole fish, I'm giving you a little bite of fish and teaching you a first lesson on how to fish. (Do you have that proverb in your language: "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime"?)

Romans 6:4 from ESV: "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life."

Now here are some notes about it. I am not using any complicated formal grammatical jargon, just explaining what I see as I see it.

1) Repeated words are often the first thing people look for in a Bible study, but that can be a distraction. Repetition is not often the key to structure. The small connecting words are more important for that.

2) Here are the first level connecting words and phrases (dividing the major sections of the sentence and its relation to the preceding ones) highlighted: "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." How did I figure that out? Well, you look for what parts of the sentence would make sense as full sentences by themselves without the connecting words. If you highlight all the remaining text I didn't put green highlighting on, you see this: "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." See how I've highlighted using three different colors so you can clearly see the three different sentence fragments which would each stand alone as a sentence if they were pulled out from the connecting words:

a) We were buried with him by baptism into death.

b) Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.

c) We might walk in newness of life.

3) OK, next step is to see how those connecting words which I highlighted in green show us how these three sentences are related to each other and joined into one longer sentence:

a) Therefore usually indicates a causal relationship: either from the preceding text to the following text (usually the case) or (less frequently) the other way around. It is very subtle and hard to tell the difference unless you are a native speaker, so I can't really teach you how to tell. You will pick it up from context or through experience. Here are some examples: "It is raining, therefore I will take my umbrella."  A (it is raining) is the reason for B (I will take my umbrella). "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." (Rom 13:10) Because of A, we know B. It isn't really a causation in this case, but it is a primary-secondary relationship nonetheless. More a causation of meaning than a causation of action. Someone who knows grammar better than I do might be able to explain it with official terminology and big words and confuse you even more... ;-)

b) Don't let the fact that in Rom 6:4, "therefore" appears in the middle of a clause confuse you. English, like Greek, does have a certain amount of flexibility of word order. In this case, the word therefore could have been at the very beginning of the sentence and it would have meant the same thing: "Therefore, we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." It was only a stylistic decision on the part of the ESV translators to put "therefore" after "buried." I don't know why they did it, but since it doesn't change the meaning at all, it doesn't matter. It could have been to avoid a repetitive and boring usage of "therefore" always at the beginning of sentences. It can get kind of monotonous, so good writers and translators will often mix things up a bit.

c) So now we know that "therefore" relates "We were buried with him by baptism into death" to whatever came previously. Thus we must look back in the context of the chapter to find out what that "therefore" is there for. Well, the preceding verse is "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" (I have bolded the main content of the sentence and not the connective phrase.) It isn't always the exactly preceding verse that a connecting word will relate a particular sentence to, but it's a good bet that that preceding sentence is at least part of the discursive unit being related to (unless it is a parenthetical remark). So this clause "all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death" is the A in the causal relationship which "therefore" sets up, and B is "We were buried with him by baptism into death." In this case, the causal relationship seems to be that B is merely a further elaboration of what A means. Again, it's not that A caused B to happen, but because we know A is true, then we understand that B is true too.

4) The next important connecting phrase is "in order that." This one also sets up a relationship between two clauses. A in order that B means that A needed to happen for B to be able to happen. Some examples: "I brought my umbrella in order that I wouldn't get rained on." Or "I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments." (Col 2:4) Paul needed to say this or his readers might have been vulnerable to being deluded. I will explain later why in Rom 6:4, clause A is "We were buried with him by baptism into death" and clause B is the last of the highlighted clauses: "We might walk in newness of life" not the second one. (Basically, it's because the second clause is subordinate to the last one.)

Thus we now understand that "We were buried with him by baptism into death in order that we might walk in newness of life." It was for this reason (that we might walk in newness of life) that we needed to be buried with him by baptism.

5) Now let us tackle the next major connecting phrase "just as" (which I see "too" being very much related to; almost part of it). This phrase connects two clauses together in a relationship of similarity. "Just as you use Logos Bible Software, I too use Logos Bible Software." The auxilliary word "too" isn't necessary. In some cases it is left out entirely, or the word "so" could be used instead, for example: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ." (1 Cor 12:12). And you can even sometimes find the A and B clauses reversed with "just as," which makes sense because it is a symmetric relationship. A and B are similar, so it is equally true that B and A are similar. For example: "...I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised" (from Gal 2:7); in this case it is B just as A. The A clause is usually considered prior (either in time or logical/grammatical importance), but they are usually of nearly equal actual importance.

So back to our verse: "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." A relationship of similarity is being set up between "we" and "Christ." Christ was first raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. So in this case clause A does come prior to B in time. And "We too might walk in newness of life" is a later reality which we can experience because "we were buried with him by baptism into death." Whether it is a present reality or a promise for the future is not made clear and that is left for the reader as an interpretive exercise. The word "might" is an indicator that the verb is in the subjunctive. And indeed if you look at the Reverse Interlinear you will see that the underlying Greek word which is translated "might walk" is in the subjunctive case. (Here you can insert a whole brief essay on how to interpret the subjunctive which someone else will perhaps write for you, or direct you to some resources to explain it. But I'm already going on too long, so I will pass.)

6) Having dealt with the major connecting words, we now go to the minor ones, the ones which divide clauses that can stand alone as sentences into smaller chunks that cannot stand alone. I will address each of our sub-sentences in order, and highlight the connecting words:

a) "We were buried with him by baptism into death."

At this level, you are usually looking for connecting words such as conjunctions (and/or) and prepositions (e.g., in, from, and all three of the highlighted words above). I'm sure you know what these English words mean; it just remains to explain their function in this particular sentence. The word "with" indicates togetherness. We were buried with him (pronoun standing for Christ). It doesn't mean literally we were buried in the tomb with him on the day of his crucifixion. But in some spiritual way we were buried with him. (It will be up to you, with the help of commentaries, to figure out what that means.) The word "by" answers the question "how?" How were we buried with him? By baptism. Again, how does this work? The sentence structure itself does not explain it. There is a mystery involved here. I cannot give a theology lesson, but read what the commentaries say on how it is that baptism (whose and what kind? ours or Christ's? a literal baptism of water or a figurative baptism of death?) causes us to be buried with Christ. And "into" answers the question "where?" or in this case perhaps "what kind?" -- what kind of baptism? A baptism into death. Again, all this structural analysis will do for you sometimes is to set up the questions that you need to ask yourself and God and have in mind when you're reading the commentaries.

b) "Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father

Here we have three more prepositions. The first one, from, answers the question "where?" or "how?" -- Where was Christ raised? From the dead. The second, by, again, as before, answers the question "how?" -- How was Christ raised from the dead? By the glory of the Father. (I'll leave it up to you to figure out, using the commentaries, what on earth that means. How is it that the glory of the Father caused Jesus to be raised from the dead? But now you know that's what this sentence is saying and what questions to be armed with when you read the commentaries). Finally of sets up a possesive relationship, answering the question "whose?" or "what kind?" -- Whose glory is it? The Father's glory.

c) "We might walk in newness of life."

Again, more prepositions. The first, in, answers the question "where?" or possibly "how?" -- Where or how might we walk? In newness of life. And again of indicates the possessive (in this case it's more of a "what kind?" than "whose?" kind of question). What kind of newness? Newness of life.

Putting it all together into a sentence diagram (you don't need the sentence diagramming feature of Logos; I used the Reed-Kellogg Sentence Diagrammer online to make these diagrams; I had to do it as three separate diagrams because the parser couldn't handle the whole sentence at once):

You can read more about the Reed-Kellogg method of sentence diagramming here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_diagram. I don't know if you will find these diagrams helpful or not. Some people might make the sentence diagram first and then figure out how to understand the structure of the sentence from that. I did the diagrams afterwards, as a summary of what I'd discovered already through common sense.

See how much work this is, and why nobody has jumped in to help you do the structure of the entire Romans chapter you showed us! [:)] Now go fishing! [:)]

Rosie Perera said:

See how much work this is, and why nobody has jumped in to help you do the structure of the entire Romans chapter you showed us! Now go fishing!

Wow, Rosie, You gave full lecture on the subject. [Y]

I really appreciate all your effort and time you invest into the Logos Forum. Logos should be very happy with having you on their side [:)]

EDIT:  I just copied your explanation to my One Note, just not to lose it in the sea of the forum... [:)]