Expansion
After you have built up your personal knowledge and understanding of a passage, you can expand on that by considering the thoughts and teachings of others. This is intentionally delayed until this point, since much of the value of deep study is in solving the problems yourself, and doing the difficult work. It is our goal to be self-sufficient and built our own knowledge and faith rather than relying solely on the thoughts and interpretations of others. However, we can still gain tremendous value after completing our own study by considering others' ideas, which we may not have considered, particularly from prophets and experts.
Prophetic Understanding
Often, the first external source we should go to in order to better understand scripture is the words of the modern prophets and apostles. These are men called of God. Even though they may not always be historical or scriptural experts, they receive divine inspiration to interpret the God's Word for our gain, and we should trust in them over the voices in the world.
We can leverage various searching tools to see what commentary and interpretations modern Church leaders have given to scripture.
Reliable Commentary
We can further look for what other, reliable sources have said about the scriptures. For instance, there are many scriptural and historical experts who have dedicated their careers to studying these texts, and they have a wealth of academic knowledge from which we can draw. However, with so many voices and opinions, we must take care in deciding those which we will trust.
Alternate Translations
As we continue to dive into particularly interesting or challenging sections of scripture, it may be useful to view alternate translations. Viewing the text in another language or in another English variant can provide additional insight which may be easy to miss when reading in our standard English translations.
Cross-Reference
Only now that we have a much deeper understanding of the relevant passage do we complete our own cross references by doctrine and principles. James E. Faulconer warns about the dangers of cross referencing too early. He explains that if we do not have sufficient understanding of the author's intended message in the scripture, then cross-referencing is likely to inject our own biased interpretation upon it, and we may not expand our knowledge beyond what we already have.
In this cross referencing exercise, we can connect the doctrines, principles, themes, characters, and stories to those we find comparable in other scriptures. Note that we are not completing glancing back or glancing forward based on key words and phrases, as that was already done in the Key Words and Phrases Strategy.
Backlinks
- Overview / How I Study / Deep Reading / Key Words and Phrases
- Glancing back and forward is separate from general cross-referencing. When glancing back and glancing forward, you are looking for intentional connections the author themselves made between passages, whereas in general cross-referencing, you are making connections yourself between passages based on concepts or doctrines as you understand them, but which may not have been intended by the author.