Inductive Bible Study

Can someone explain how to choose a book, chapter, and verses for inductive bible studying? All the books and videos I have read and watched give an example say Ephesians 6:10-20. Why did a person select a certain book, chapter, and verses? It seems like it is cherry-picking and not the whole book. Why doesn't someone do Ephesians 1:1-5 or something in that order? Picking just a few verses seems you are missing the big picture of what the book is all about as far as Who, What, Where, Why, and How is all about. The verses you pick may not have the answers to Who, What, Where, Why, and How. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

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Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Can someone explain how to choose a book, chapter, and verses for inductive bible studying?

Welcome [:D]

Chapter and verse numbers are relatively recent additions to Bibles: added ~500 years ago. In a number of places, verse numbering lacks correspondence with discourse thought boundaries. For example, Philippians 4:6 is in the middle of a Greek sentence. Paul wrote a number of long sentences in Greek: e.g. Ephesians 1:3-14 is one long Greek sentence.

Thread => Can you recommend a reading plan for a brand new believer? includes some whole Bible Book suggestions. Also refers to "pericopes" as "the headings" in a Bible. Thankful for How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth so like using pericope (heading) groups of verses for contextual reading & study.

Faithlife offers two inductive studies by Precept Ministries International

Thread => more inductive symbols may be helpful.

For the whole Bible, a resource to consider => The Layman’s Bible Study Notebook: An Inductive Bible Study

Keep Smiling [:)]

Simon’s Brother

Can someone explain how to choose a book, chapter, and verses for inductive bible studying? All the books and videos I have read and watched give an example say Ephesians 6:10-20. Why did a person select a certain book, chapter, and verses? It seems like it is cherry-picking and not the whole book. Why doesn't someone do Ephesians 1:1-5 or something in that order? Picking just a few verses seems you are missing the big picture of what the book is all about as far as Who, What, Where, Why, and How is all about. The verses you pick may not have the answers to Who, What, Where, Why, and How. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

John,

Good observation and question. I don't know why people use the examples they do. Maybe they see the passages they choose as being better able to help them explain the process. The beginnings of all NT epistles at least follow a fairy standard format and so they choose an example later in the book that might to them seem to offer more in terms of demonstrating the process.

But when you are doing your own inductive study I would recommend looking at a much larger chunk of scripture, a whole book if possible. Some books might be more challenging to take on as a whole for an inductive study, or at least required a much longer time commitment.

What to study ?

NT Epistles are great for undertaking this type of study, particularly when you are new to this process due to their size. If your church is working through a book study then this makes for a good choice to do your own inductive study. And don't leave prayer out the process. Pray about it, ask God to put it upon your heart, to lead you to a book that he might want you to learn and grow from. After all, bible study, regardless of method is about growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Materials to assist

While you haven't asked this directly if you do want some guided assistance in your inductive study I would highly recommend Irving Jensen's materials:

https://www.logos.com/search?sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&ownership=all&geographicAvailability=availableToMe&autoFacets=0&filters=author-6853_Author

He has some very good how to books as well as guided study's through various books of the bible. His Survey's of OT and NT I would highly recommend along with these studies. I have had them in print for many years as well as now in Logos and would never part with print copies.

If you want some popular level Inductive Studies Faithlife eBooks has a large range of Kay Arthur's study guides available.

https://ebooks.faithlife.com/search?query=Kay%20Arthur&sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&filters=status-live_Status%2Bauthor-17196_Author%2Bgenre-biblicalstudies_Genre%2Bgenre-biblicalstudies-biblestudyguides_Biblical%20Studies&ownership=all&geographicAvailability=availableToMe

Training ?

If you want some training on how to get the best of Logos as a tool for Inductive study consider taking a look at Learn Logos training Videos.

Inductive Bible Study Training (learnlogos.com)

But If you have questions please ask on the forums. I am sure there will be somebody around who can help you with questions about doing Inductive Study with Logos.

John Morgan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1165893#Comment_1165893

Thank you so much for your kind answer. I am ordering a couple of books from each of the authors you recommended. I think you are right in that the authors use a small segment of a book of the bible in order to make it easier to explain rather than the book of the bible. I have several Logos how to courses and have used online help, but none of them could explain why they use such a small portion of the verses in a given book of the bible. It is confusing when you are new and trying to learn how to make sense of the bible and want to continue after you have done the examples that are in the training lesson but don't know where to go next. Thanks and God Bless

Hamilton Ramos

Hi John:

I had a similar question on my mind:

Are there topical inductive Bible studies?

Much to my surprise the answer is yes. If you google for some of the following samples, you will find there are some:

Inductive Bible study on Holiness.

Inductive Bible study on Stewardship.

Inductive Bible study on Christian Priorities in Life.

So the main problem can be that the pericopes / verses chosen for the study, may not be all there are, or maybe they include some you may not consider relevant, etc.

So one way you can leverage Logos is by following the tips in the "Finding direction" video that is available in the following page:

https://www.ccbs.edu/logos-bible-software/

After identifying some information in tertiary resources, it shows you how to add verses to the passage list and how to create sub categories, etc.

That way you can check different resources to see what they consider applicable verses and pick and choose the ones you consider most significant.

Now I am thinking to take it a little further, and try to see how within the chosen pericopes, there are discourse analysis train of thoughts in a given topic.

It can all become very interesting.

I hope with the explanation above, that you can see that one whole chapter or book, may have many sub topics, which may or may not be suitable for independent study.

At the end it would be interesting to see which Bible thrusts seem to be supporting of a main idea.

Not sure but I would think that different denominations would focus on different passages, so that there is coherence with their particular view in their theological constructs.

Hopes this helps.

Peace and grace.

John Morgan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167605#Comment_1167605

Thank you ever so much for the information and I will check out the link you sent. May you be blessed with your kindness.

Peace and Blessings

Josh Hunt

The first pastor I served under gave me some advice on this. "Don't spend too much time choosing a text. it is all good and all needs to be preached. You will get to all of it eventually."

Dive in anywhere. John is probably better than Haggai.

Hamilton Ramos

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167619#Comment_1167619

You are welcome John.

For application portion of inductive study, there is a classic article:

https://blog.logos.com/how-do-you-use-logos-dave-moser/

Peace and grace.

Robert Neely

Can someone explain how to choose a book, chapter, and verses for inductive bible studying? All the books and videos I have read and watched give an example say Ephesians 6:10-20. Why did a person select a certain book, chapter, and verses? It seems like it is cherry-picking and not the whole book. Why doesn't someone do Ephesians 1:1-5 or something in that order? Picking just a few verses seems you are missing the big picture of what the book is all about as far as Who, What, Where, Why, and How is all about. The verses you pick may not have the answers to Who, What, Where, Why, and How. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

John, the short answer is that Eph 6:10-20 is a pericope on the Armor of God. A pericope is a rhetorical term for a portion of a text set apart for study or to be read in worship, e.g., a passage from the Psalms, a prophetic oracle, part of a narrative, a thought-unit from an epistle, or a parable.

Pericopes can be identified in your bible by the sub-headings in each chapter.

This link provides pericope files in word and excel formats. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/70978.aspx

Good luck with your study.

Bob

John Morgan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167663#Comment_1167663

I would like to thank you ever so much Robert. You really did a great job of listing the different pericopes, in both Word and Excel, which will come in handy in my studying of the bible. I finally have directions as to how to do my Bible Study and where I should be starting.

Peace and Blessings John

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167630#Comment_1167630

The first pastor I served under gave me some advice on this. "Don't spend too much time choosing a text. it is all good and all needs to be preached. You will get to all of it eventually."

Dive in anywhere. John is probably better than Haggai.

My first book was Philippians and I started verse by verse going over the text word for word line by line. I took Paul and studied who he was. Then Timothy and studied who he was. Then "all the saints" and studied what the word saints meant and who it was referring to and why they are saints "in Christ." Then studied Philippi, Deacons and Bishops...and so on and so forth, until I finished the entire epistle. It was a long but rewarding experience for such a short letter. After that, I changed my method, but still recommend it to beginners along with other methods. 15 minutes a day or even 30 and you can actually learn a lot and write your own commentary with all the notes you'll end up with from your studies. It'll be like having your own "Study Bible."

There's really not exclusive way to studying the Bible. There are so many methods and tools now days, that whoever claims they don't have the time nor the tools to dig deeper into God's Word you know they're lying and making up excuses. I see people making time for everything except time to study God's word.

So to the OP keep studying and cultivating that desire to feed on the Word. It'll help you in your spiritual journey and make you a better person.

I recently bought a book called Rick Warren's Bible Study Methods. It gives you 12 ways to study the Bible. There are others that are similar; whichever one you choose, it'll give you more ways to study the Bible and grown in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

DAL

Hamilton Ramos

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167670#Comment_1167670

Then "all the saints" and studied what the word saints meant and who it was referring to and why they are saints "in Christ."

Hi DAL: did you ever make a common "themes" running through the NT, to see if there was a seeming hierarchal order to them?

I am planning to make a cross study between the categories for the 613 mitzvoth, and modern Jesus commands categorized to see how they relate. It would be interesting also to cross check with the common running themes in the NT books.

http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PQdLjfPPd7e3F-ycqkrm5mfvbK7nzN1GxXM12GNjYXo/edit

Any ideas?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167777#Comment_1167777

http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

Or Brannan, Rick, ed. Commandments of the Law. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2015.

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1167777#Comment_1167777

Then "all the saints" and studied what the word saints meant and who it was referring to and why they are saints "in Christ."

Hi DAL: did you ever make a common "themes" running through the NT, to see if there was a seeming hierarchal order to them?

I am planning to make a cross study between the categories for the 613 mitzvoth, and modern Jesus commands categorized to see how they relate. It would be interesting also to cross check with the common running themes in the NT books.

http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PQdLjfPPd7e3F-ycqkrm5mfvbK7nzN1GxXM12GNjYXo/edit

Any ideas?

No, I never did. It would make for an interesting study if I had the time like I used to.

DAL