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How to Study the Bible

Free
Free access this course
  • Level
    Beginner
  • Total Enrolled
    2
  • Last Updated
    August 27, 2026

Description

A practical path from confused to confident.  For anyone who’s ever wanted to actually understand their Bible, not just read it.

Most Christians own a Bible. Many believe it’s true. Far fewer feel equipped to actually open it and study it well. If you’ve ever felt lost in a genealogy, unsure what a parable is really asking of you, or quietly embarrassed that you can’t explain why there are so many translations – this lab was built for you.

How to Study the Bible is a complete, hands-on training ground for learning to study Scripture with real skill and lasting confidence. Across ten chapters, you’ll move from foundational conviction to genuine mastery. You will learn to observe a passage closely, interpret it faithfully, recognize what kind of writing you’re reading, apply it honestly to your life, and build sound belief on top of careful study. No seminary degree required. No guesswork. Just a clear, repeatable process you’ll use for the rest of your life.

Built to be lived in, not just watched. Every lesson unfolds through short, engaging videos – a quick hook to set the stage, a personal story to make it real, in-depth teaching, and hands-on walkthroughs of both free tools and Logos Bible Software. Then you put it into practice: a quick knowledge check, and a guided workbook activity that has you actually opening your Bible and do the work, not just absorbing information. You’ll return to the same passages again and again throughout the course, watching them open up layer by layer, until the process becomes second nature.

By the end, you won’t just know more facts about the Bible. You’ll have a genuine, repeatable way of opening it up and hearing from God for yourself – for the rest of your life.

What I will learn?

  • How to observe a passage with real precision, before ever asking what it means
  • A disciplined method for interpreting Scripture accurately - background, context, grammar, word study, and letting Scripture interpret Scripture
  • How to recognize and rightly handle the Bible's different genres, from narrative and law to poetry, prophecy, Gospel, and epistle
  • How to move faithfully from what a passage meant then to what it means for your life today
  • How to build sound, careful theology from the whole of Scripture - not just a handful of favorite verses

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Target Audience

  • Anyone who owns a Bible and wants to actually understand it. No prior training required, just a willingness to slow down, do the work, and let Scripture change more than just your knowledge.

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Course Curriculum

Chapter 1: Welcome
Before you dive into the content, this chapter gets you oriented. You'll get a full walkthrough of the lab - every chapter, every lesson, and how they build on each other - along with practical coaching on how to actually finish a self-paced course like this one. You'll see exactly how each lesson is structured so you always know what to expect, get Logos Bible Software set up if you plan to use it, and get to know the person walking you through this whole journey.

  • 1.1: Course Overview: The Roadmap
  • 1.2: How Each Lesson Works
  • 1.3: How to Get the Most out of this Course
  • 1.4: Logos Setup
  • 1.5: About Paul Petroski

Chapter 2: Why Are You Here?
This chapter lays the groundwork everything else in the lab depends on - and it's more personal than practical. You'll get honest about your own reasons for wanting to study the Bible, and name clearly whatever has been holding you back, whether that's confusion, busyness, or a bruised past experience. Then you'll confront the real distance between yourself and this ancient book - across time, geography, culture, and language - and settle the core convictions that make careful Bible study possible in the first place.

Chapter 3: The Nature of the Bible
Here, you'll step back and explore what your Bible actually is. You'll trace the one continuous story running from Genesis to Revelation, discover how these sixty-six books came to be trusted as Scripture, and see how the Old and New Testaments fit together as a single unified story rather than two books awkwardly stapled together. You'll also finally make sense of why there are so many English translations - and how to stop feeling overwhelmed by that dropdown menu in your Bible app.

Chapter 4: Observation – Learning to Actually See
This is where the real skill-building begins. Before you can accurately interpret a passage, you have to genuinely see what's on the page - and this chapter teaches you exactly how. You'll learn why observation is the most overlooked step in Bible study, and walk away with a simple, repeatable three-readings method you can use on any passage for the rest of your life.

Chapter 5: Interpretation – Finding What the Author Meant
The largest and most substantive chapter in the lab, this is where you build five connected skills for uncovering what a passage actually means: understanding its historical and cultural background, tracing its immediate context, paying attention to grammar, doing careful word studies, and letting Scripture interpret Scripture. You'll build these skills using three real passages, returning to each one lesson after lesson so you can watch, firsthand, how much a text opens up once you do the work.

Chapter 6: Bringing It Together: Three Passages
A short but genuinely satisfying chapter. You'll revisit the three passages from Chapter 5 and walk through each one, start to finish, watching every layer of interpretation connect into one complete, coherent picture. If you've done the work up to this point, this is where it all clicks.

Chapter 7: Genre – Reading the Bible as It Actually Is
The Bible isn't one kind of book - it's a whole library. This chapter teaches you to recognize the Bible's major genres, from narrative, law, poetry, prophecy, and wisdom literature in the Old Testament to Gospel, Acts, epistle, and Revelation in the New. Each genre comes with its own rules for how meaning actually works, and learning to spot them changes everything about how confidently you can read a passage.

Chapter 8: Application & Theology – Living It, Then Believing It
Understanding a passage is only half the work - this chapter is about what you do with it. You'll learn a careful, honest process for moving from a passage's original meaning to a faithful application in your own life, avoiding the common mistakes that lead to misapplication. Then you'll take the next step: learning how to responsibly build real, lasting theology and doctrine on top of careful interpretation, grounded in Scripture rather than guesswork or borrowed opinion.

Chapter 9: The Capstone – Putting It All Together
This chapter hands you a single, reusable worksheet that pulls every tool from the entire lab into one document - something you can use on any passage of Scripture, for the rest of your life. Then you'll put it to work together on one final passage, James 5:13-16, walking through the complete nine-layer process one more time, start to finish, so you can watch, and practice, everything you've learned in one place.

Chapter 10: Where to Go From Here
The lab closes by looking forward. You'll learn how to apply everything you've built to three different kinds of ongoing study - digging into a single troublesome passage, working through an entire book, or tracing a theme across the whole Bible - and then you'll be challenged to make one genuine, specific commitment to keep studying, long after this lab ends.

Ready to begin your bible study journey?

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