"Study to show thyself approved unto God."

Reading the Bible, and studying the scriptures are two different things. Many Christians only read translations. Some read devotionals, and pocket promise books or Our Daily Bread. Many neglect reading the bible altogether. I've been around countless Christians in 30 years, and discovered that studying the scriptures is rare. Why don't more Christians study? Laziness, the cares of life, and not being properly taught how to study, would be my guess.

Back when I was a new Christian, I wanted to understand the things I was reading in the scriptures. I explored the Christian book stores and found the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance which was mated to the King James version. When you look up a word in this concordance, it has a number near the word, telling you where to look in the to get the original Greek or Hebrew meaning of the word you're looking up, in a section of the concordance.

Merely reading a bible translation is never going to give the understanding a person needs, because not only are the "messages" often lost in translation, but there are also assumptions made in translating, and you won't know when a passage is a figurative message, analogy, literal, or metaphor. Think of the Bible as not only a history book, but a book filled with messages from God. Reading a translation will greatly limit (and even fog up) the messages.

Human beings translate the scriptures from the original languages, into the desired language. Mistakes can be made, and are. Language mechanics differ. For example, the word "eat" could appear in a passage 3x, and have a different meaning each time. Yet, we won't know this unless we study the original words used. Translators also substitute words when they cannot translate the meaning. Many of these substitutes are poor ones.

If you have never studied the scriptures this way, you're missing out on a lot of important & exciting stuff. Though translations are good for getting a basic idea, they are greatly lacking in accuracy. The bible is like a jigsaw puzzle. Studying assists in finding these pieces of the puzzle, until we have the big picture, as well as the messages. It takes time, but if you care and want to really have an accurate picture of things, you will find it very rewarding. Happy studying!

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