{"id":1791,"date":"2007-01-22T02:10:56","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T02:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2007\/01\/bible-study-love-it.html"},"modified":"2007-01-22T02:10:56","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T02:10:56","slug":"bible-study-love-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/01\/bible-study-love-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Bible Study: Love it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Psalm 119:97-104, the section labeled <em>mem<\/em> because every sentence begins with this letter, is about Bible study, or more accurately, Torah devotion. Today we look at v 97 and v 104. <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nO how I love your Torah! It is my study (or musing) all day long (97).<br \/>\nI ponder your precepts (<em>piqud<\/em>), or judgment-decisions-mandates.<br \/>\nThe psalmist &#8220;loves&#8221; the teachings of God &#8212; and he devotes himself all day long to thinking about them. And he ponders in the sense of examining for discernment.<br \/>\nI wonder how much you read the Bible, how much you ponder the Bible, how much you delight in the Bible. Let me make a suggestion that you do something that has helped me, and it is something I wrote about briefly in <em>Praying with the Church<\/em>. Sometimes I think we try to get too much from the Bible. Sometimes I think we approach the Bible as something to be studied by way of intense examination of Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic words &#8212; and we can&#8217;t seem to open our Bible unless it is to figure out something new and clever.<br \/>\nExegesis has its place.<br \/>\nBut more importantly, listening to the Bible has its place. The psalmist was like the many in ancient Judaism: they pondered as they read and heard the Bible. They didn&#8217;t have concordances and word studies and commentaries. They had the Torah; they opened it; they read it; they heard it; and they pondered what they heard.<br \/>\nIf we read it to hear it, we will also learn to love it.<br \/>\nRecently I became aware of Zondervan&#8217;s new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Inspired-Bible-Experience-New-Testament\/dp\/0310926319\/sr=1-1\/qid=1169301787\/ref=sr_1_1\/102-8704257-5927314?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books\"><em>The Bible Experience<\/em><\/a>. It is the Bible &#8220;read&#8221; &#8212; CDs of the whole NT with actors and acrtresses reading the Bible with the skill of oral interpretation. Why not think of popping it in, sitting in a chair with your eyes closed, and just listening?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psalm 119:97-104, the section labeled mem because every sentence begins with this letter, is about Bible study, or more accurately, Torah devotion. Today we look at v 97 and v 104.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psalm-119"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bible Study: Love it - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/01\/bible-study-love-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bible Study: Love it - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Psalm 119:97-104, the section labeled mem because every sentence begins with this letter, is about Bible study, or more accurately, Torah devotion. Today we look at v 97 and v 104.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/01\/bible-study-love-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-01-22T02:10:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bible Study: Love it - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/01\/bible-study-love-it.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bible Study: Love it - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Psalm 119:97-104, the section labeled mem because every sentence begins with this letter, is about Bible study, or more accurately, Torah devotion. 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