I’d like to take this opportunity to let you know about an on-line resource that I think may be a great help to your personal Bible study or sermon preparation.
The name of the website is BibleArc.com, developed by a friend of mine in the TBI program. The purpose of the website is to provide a user-friendly platform for engaging the text of Scripture through a process called “arcing,” which is simply the method of splitting a passage up into individual units of thought (called propositions) and demonstrating how those units of thought relate to one another. You can do this in Greek or in English. Here is an example of what Romans 12:1-2 looks like when it’s arced:
Now it may not look like it, but what you’re seeing is a treasure map. All those curved lines and abbreviated symbols are leading you to Paul’s original intention in writing what he did under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They’re a graphical representation of the apostle’s flow of thought, which is the gold we’re after.
If all of this is new to you and you have no idea where to start, you’ve come to the right place. Along with allowing you to construct your own arcs, BibleArc.com offers a whole section chock full of video tutorials that take you through the process step by step and give you examples of each of the possible relationships that can exist between propositions. The following video from the website explains why a tool like arcing can be invaluable:
Personally speaking, I would say arcing is one of the most significant tools for Bible study I’ve ever learned. One of the benefits of this approach is that it forces you to slow down and ask hard questions about why an author says what he does. It takes some time to learn, but it becomes easier with practice and is worth every ounce of energy you put into it.
Listen to this testimony from John Piper about the influence this kind of approach to Bible study had on him:
It was a life-changing revelation to me when I discovered that Paul, for example, did not merely make a collection of divine pronouncements, but that he argued. This meant, for me, a whole new approach to Bible reading. No longer did I just read or memorize verses. I sought also to understand and memorize arguments. This involved finding the main point of each literary unit and then seeing how each proposition fit together to unfold and support the main point. (”Biblical Exegesis: Discovering the Meaning of Scriptural Texts,” pg. 18)
If you’re interested in pursuing this method of getting inside the Biblical authors’ heads, I would warmly encourage you to check out BibleArc.com.
9 comments
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October 15, 2008 at 11:01 am
chedspellman
This looks very helpful in visualizing an author’s argument. Thanks for the tip.
October 15, 2008 at 8:31 pm
ED...
Thanks for directing us to the helpful sequence of videos. My suggestion for improvement of them is to include a final caveat section on the limitations of arcing as a method of exegesis. Close reading clearly has much to recommend it, and I admire the attitude to scripture which pays attention to what it actually says, of course, but the documents which comprise the bible were never written to be dissected, but to be understood. It seems to me that arcing on its own mitigates against understanding.
Arcing is not a process which lends itself to discovering the broader sweep of a book, or even a sequence of books. Thematic reading, dramatic reading, legal reading - none of these is facilitated by arcing, yet these were certainly concerns of the bible’s original writers. The problem with looking at the trees is that you can miss the wood, in other words. There’s nothing in the biblearc tutorial that really gets that point across, and I wonder if maybe there should be.
Best regards,
ED…
October 15, 2008 at 11:55 pm
BibleArc Lets You Create Thought-Flow Diagrams | Nerdlets
[...] Read more here [...]
October 16, 2008 at 7:49 am
John Meche
I bought Piper’s little book an arcing about a year ago. This is going to be an invaluable tool for me.
October 16, 2008 at 9:05 am
Rich Owen
I wonder how well this works with less propositional texts… apocalyptic, narrative, parable etc. But yeh, it looks cool :)
October 16, 2008 at 11:05 am
Bible Study Training: Arcing and Tracing « The Crimson Window
[...] seminary I don’t know if I would have ever been able to teach myself. Just recently though Johnathan Bowers, a student at The Bethlehem Institute, has introduced a website called BibleArc.com which is an [...]
October 16, 2008 at 11:26 am
David Matthew
I agree that, with arcing, there’s a danger of focusing in so closely that you lose sight of a book’s overall ’shape’ and message. But surely any Bible student worth the name would realise that and seek to hold his arcing in balance with that broader aspect. And it’s unhelpful to say that arcing ‘mitigates against understanding’ - it’s purpose is the very opposite!
October 16, 2008 at 2:59 pm
ED...
David, you’re right that it is unhelpful to say that arcing mitigates against understanding, which is why I was careful not to say that. My point is that arcing *on its own* mitigates against understanding. Maybe if I’d written that in Greek and English it’d have been easier to arc…
;o)
ED…
October 28, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Bible Arc dot com, a Review and Infomercial « Via Emmaus
[...] off to all those who created this web gem. If you are serious about Bible studies, I encourage you to drop the ten bucks and avail yourself [...]