Geoffrey's Notebook

Week 26 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 24 & 25 Young's literal translation + Manna/Memory 1 John 2:18-23 + God Has Spoken in 1st John (Kaung) 1 John (Youngs) We're in the 2nd half of our 1st John studies! It's time for us to share more of our notes and begin to fellowship with others who have studied and shared their comments. I've been reserving some of my notes to not overwhelm the group before we reached this spot, but I'm planning to share more now and encourage everyone to do the same. Translation: First, let's read the Young's literal translation this time. I have a large white paperback version of this at home but you can find the digital version everywhere that has Bible translations. Attached is a copy just in case. You may have seen Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible. That is a concordance worth having at home. It's not just for searching to find a ...

Week 24 & 25 —1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 23 1 John 2:12-17 Manna + Memory + Paraphrase (6 verses for 2 weeks). Use your normal translation for both weeks. Hey everyone, these will be our last weeks without commentaries. In general, I try to not use commentaries until after reading through the first 25 times. By that point, I'm well into my detailed outline of the book and I'm actually very interested in what others have to say, what nuggets of gold they've discovered, etc. Some of us are still catching up, and others may almost find the study boring without enough direction. That's probably normal for Bible study. You either are hungry for a lot more or you are overwhelmed by it. Then sometimes you're at the sweet spot of enjoyment and enlightenment. It's the drudgery of the regular study that brings out the depth of light and life that we may hear in a good sermon or read in a good...

Week 23—1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 23 Paraphrase 2:3-11 + RV vs ESV translation. 1 John (RV vs ESB) This week we have the RV vs the ESV. Remember that ESV is based on the RV just as NASB is based on ASV. And the ASV team was together originally with the RV team. When the RV was released people weren't sure if it was okay to read it. In England, for example, they weren't sure if it was approved since it wasn't the "authorized" version. People were more used to the English of the KJV thought it was still outdated. It's possible that Spurgeon said the RV was strong in Greek but weak in English (I've read that quoted in various places but I can't find the original). But he still quoted the RV often in sermons to bring up the original text and used it as the better study translation. Watchman Nee mentions the RV text in his talks on Bible Study as possibly the best translation at...

Week 22—1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 21 Paraphrase 1 John 1:5-2:2 and read NASB (or ASV vs NASB attached). 1 John (ASV vs NASB) NASB is the update to ASV. Now you can see some of the differences. I'm especially interested in how the footnotes changed. I did take out the subheadings from NASB. They seemed to have been created in a rush :) We'll spend the next two weeks paraphrasing before we get to memorizing any further. We've been in these verses so much and it's time to have it flow out of us. Some may want to keep the same style as their paraphrase of 1:1-4. Consider that we'll try to paraphrase the whole letter. So if you're planning on changing styles or emphasis, now would be the time. We're paraphrasing to help us purpose to touch on each part of a verse. We have considered these verses. We've meditated and memorized. Now we're reading the word and giving "the ...

Week 21—1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 20 John 2:10-11 Manna + Memorize 1 John 2:2-11 + the Murdock Translation 1 John (Murdock   KJV vs Murdock) Have you heard of the Peshitta Bible? It's an old Aramaic translation. I'm adding links in the comments for more info on Murdock's translation + the Peshitta in general. It's worth checking out. Below is the Murdock translation plus an option to see KJV vs Murdock. That's helpful especially to see if anything very odd is there. After this week we'll work on paraphrasing the full section of 1 John 2:2-11 and plan another fellowship time over zoom.

Week 20—1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 19 Back to manna and memory + normal translation. We're in 1 John 2:3-9 this week. Let’s get back to the ultimate of studying: meditating verse by verse and memorizing. Then we can keep taking sections at a time for some video fellowship on it. Let’s take one verse each day. My daughter also had some meditation on 1 John 2:3. Done with this week's assignment?  Click here  for the next assignment.

Week 19—1st John Bible Nerd-Study *Missed last week?  Click here  for 1st John Bible Nerd-Study - Week 18 For this week simply read in any translation. We want to make sure we're caught up with all of our other assignments and get ready to get back to manna+memory+paraphrasing with the rest of 1st John. Manna is really the ultimate way of focusing on and memorizing each verse. And memorizing is an unknown foundation for thorough Bible study. When we memorize it we end up studying and making connections all the time. I believe we've been experiencing that some too. Done with this week's assignment?  Click here  for the next assignment.