Once you have set out a section of the text to study, you need to find the text’s structure. Every author uses a flow or tells a story when writing. What is this flow or story? How do you find this flow or story?

Outline the argument

Begin by formulating a statement describing the main point the author is trying to say in this section of text.

If the author is describing an event, why is this event included in the Scriptural record?

God can walk and chew gum at the same time, so there might be more than one purpose. Don’t let this bother you—find one line of argument and follow it. Studying the Scriptures is a lifelong pursuit; you can study this passage from a different angle later.

For now, just find one argument the author is making.

Once you have found the argument you want to consider, build an outline of the points the author uses to support the argument. This outline does not need to be complex, nor does it need to be simple. The outline does not need to be permanently fixed; you can change the outline as you study the passage. Building this outline might convince you to extend or shrink your original section of text.

All of this is okay.

An outline is just some place to hang your thoughts. Without some kind of structure, it is very easy to wander around in the weeds for hours without learning anything.

Look for textual hints

The Scriptures do not have punctuation, mixed case, bold, italics, etc., in their original languages. Uncial manuscripts–the most common kind of manuscript–look something like this:

How did writers express anything beyond bare facts using this style of text? Using figures of speech and textual structure. Your job, as a reader, is to be sensitive to these figures of speech and textual structures.

Figures of speech and textual structures are part of the original context.

Describe the Context

What do you need to look for?

Is this descriptive, proscriptive or polemical?

Is the author:

• Telling readers how something happened, or what someone did? This is descriptive.
• Commanding readers (or someone who follows God) something they should or should not do? This is either proscriptive or prescriptive.
• Making a point in an argument, explaining why someone should believe something, or trying to persuade someone to act? This is polemical.

It is sometimes difficult to tell which category a given passage belongs in. For instance, many men marry multiple wives in the Bible—is this simply describing what happened, or is this something God approves?

A particularly difficult instance is the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. Many scholars take this sermon as proscriptive—as commands for the church. Others, however, take the Sermon as a description of an ethical ideal, while still others see the Sermon as a polemical argument against the Jewish religious leadership at the time.

Consulting a few different experts in the form of commentaries, journal articles, sermons, etc., can be helpful in deciding. Remember that you do not need to agree with the experts—they should inform rather than control your reading of the text.

Is this didactic or narrative?

Is the author making a direct claim, such as giving a commandment or stating something about the nature of God? This is called a didactic passage.

Is the author telling a story about what happened. This is called a narrative passage.

Narrative passages tend to be descriptive, while didactic passages tend to be proscriptive or polemical.

In fact, some scholars will argue theology and doctrine can never be developed from narrative passages. To determine for yourself whether you hold this view, consider the narrative in Matthew 12 about the Disciples picking grain and eating it on Sabbath. Jewish leaders claimed Jesus was breaking the Mosaic Law.

Did Jesus answer with an explanation of the Law contradicting theirs, or did he answer by pointing out a narrative someplace else in the Scriptures?

Are there figures of speech?

Analogies, parables, synecdoche, hyperbole, irony, and even sarcasm are all found in the pages of the Scriptures. It is often hard to decide if a particular passage contains any of these, especially hyperbole, so you might have to make an initial judgment and refine your understanding later.

Most people confuse these three:

• Analogy: Describing the relationship between two things using the relationship between two other things. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
• Parable: A short story illustrating a single ethical point.
• Synecdoche: Using a single word to describe a class of things. A common form of synecdoche in the Scriptures is a merism,using a pair of opposites to describe a whole. “Day and night,” describes the entirety of time, for instance.

Again, consulting experts can be helpful here, but always be careful to read the reasons these experts give for classifying a particular piece of text as a figure of speech. You do not need to agree with the experts just because they are experts.

Is there a textual structure?

There are many textual structures in the Scriptures, such as poetry of various kinds. One of my favorites is the chiasm, which is named after the Greek letter chi, whose upper case is shaped like an English X. The best way to explain a chiasm is by example. Charting out Genesis 17, for instance, we find:

• A: Abram was 99 years old (1)
• B: The Lord appears to Abram (1)
• C: God begins to speak (1)
• D: I am Almighty God (first speech) (1-2)
• E: Response from Abram, falls on his face (3)
• F: God’s second speech (My covenant with you, name change) (5-8)
• G: God’s third speech (9-14, circumcision)
• F’: Sarah name change (15-16)
• E’: Abram falling on his face (17)
• D’: God’s fifth speech (19-21)
• C’: God stops speaking (21b)
• B’: God departs (22)
• A’: Abram was 99 years old (24)

Genesis 17:1 and 17:24 both describe Abram’s age—these are the outer bookmarks of this chiasm. Working in from this pair, each pair describes either the same or opposite of a topic—the Lord appearing or departing, God speaking or ceasing from speaking, Abram falling on his face, etc.

Chiasms are a great tool for:

• Marking out the scope of a passage. If there is a chiasm, the chiasm marks out a section of the Scriptures.
• Helping to find the passage’s focus. The center of the passage is the author’s point of emphasis. In the example from Genesis 17 above, the focus is God’s third speech, which includes circumcision—so the rest of the passage should be read with circumcision as the most important aspect.

There does not appear to be a book or resource of all the chiasms in the Scriptures. They are often called out in commentaries—although you might need to consult several different commentaries, as not every commentary calls out every chiasm.