Toward Becoming a Gospel Scholar

Other times, word studies are of extreme importance for theology. How should we understand the word teleios in Matthew 5:48, when Jesus instructs his disciples to be "perfect"? The word probably has much to do with being finished or completed, particularly in the sense of being fully initiated into sacred ordinances.

Even if a person cannot learn much Greek or Hebrew, he or she can easily study etymologies in standard dictionaries and can use interlinear Bibles that offer word-by-word translations. Beginning students may be relieved to know that Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible uses a numbering system so that any reader can locate the Hebrew or Greek word that stands behind every English word in the King James Version of the Bible.

Textual Units

Gospel scholars read texts in blocks or literary units. At this level of reading, it is important to understand the context, the overall construction, and the underlying purpose of the unit of text itself.

Sometimes it is easy to tell where a block of text begins and ends, such as is the case with the speech of Benjamin or the speeches of Alma. It is more difficult to tell in the book of Isaiah where one prophecy begins and ends.

Once these units have been identified, a gospel scholar can get a firm handle on these scriptures. For example, knowing the main purpose of Alma 32-33 (a speech that is better if not divided into two sections, but read as a single discourse), a gospel scholar can understand the logic of that block of text, which deals with not only planting the familiar seed of faith, but the themes of humility, prayer, faith, and specifically faith in Jesus Christ as well.

Key Passages

Placed in their proper context, key scriptures can then be properly understood within the purpose of the passage as a whole. These key scriptures should be memorized and remembered, especially as they may stand at the crux of a certain issue. In this way, gospel scholars become aware of crucial passages that become principal building blocks in our knowledge about certain issues.

Gospel scholars think in terms of specific issues and the classic passages in scriptures where answers to those issues are found. We only know certain things because of certain scriptures. For example, the only place in the New Testament that mentions baptism for the dead is 1 Corinthians 15:29; the only place in the Bible to describe the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane is Luke 22:43-44; and so on. Such passages become critically important for gospel scholarship, for the only things we know scripturally about certain subjects must be extractable from their classic locations or else it cannot be found in the scriptures at all. Thus it is important that the Greek word hyper, meaning "for" or "on behalf of," appears in the key passage of Corinthians 15:29; and it is significant that the Greek word agon, translated as "agony" in the key passage of Luke 22:44, does not mean so much "an agony" but "a contest, struggle, or fight, facing an opponent."

Many tools of critical analysis and literary insight help readers to identify and extract meaning properly from these key scriptures. Here again, scholarship requires that these tools be properly used, carefully explained, and cautiously employed. Otherwise the tools can cause havoc, perhaps doing more harm than good. For example, just because some passages in the scriptures are chiastic, this does not mean that all are; and although many letters written in antiquity were intentionally written in someone else's style and then attributed to that other person, this alone does not mean that many of the New Testament letters were similarly created and then attributed to Peter or Paul. 

Books within the Scriptures

Gospel scholarship also looks beyond the building blocks of texts to try to understand the big picture they are painting. The ancient prophets have organized their blocks of texts into books, presumably for specific purposes. They have consciously chosen not to leave us a systematic outline of theology or a set of instructions by the number. Instead, they have left us to put the pieces of an elaborate puzzle together, seeing how things fit together and how they relate to the overall purposes of the plan of salvation.

In my mind, the plan of salvation, especially as presented in the temple, offers as much as anything else, the picture on the box of the jigsaw puzzle of the scriptures. By looking at the picture on the box, we begin to understand how the individual pieces fit into place. It is the plan of happiness that makes the best sense of everything from the book of Leviticus, or the Sermon on the Mount, to the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the letters of Paul.

Of course the puzzle is not only a three-dimensional puzzle, but also one that is moving in the dimensions of time and spirituality. The picture on the box still is only an abstraction, but like a road map it is essential in arriving at the destination of gospel scholarship.