Practical QTSample

 #17 An example of colour-coding

Paul reminds us that the Scriptures contain a treasure of experiences and lessons to equip and encourage us.  Reading the Bible well can be of great benefit to us.

During the original email version of this series, I mentioned that I colour-coded the passages that I read, and some folk emailed me, asking about the colour-coding system that I use.  Here's what I use in the New Testament.  Different parts of the Old Testament need different approaches because the literature is different.  The NT system works well for OT narratives, but not for the psalms or the prophets.  Proverbs and Job are hard to colour-code.

Here's the NT system I use, with some examples from the book of Galatians:

• Blue: Statement worth noting — Gal. 5:22


• Red: Warning — Gal. 6:7–8


• Green: Promise, hope, prophecy — Gal. 5:16


• Yellow: Profound — Gal. 5:23b


• Orange: Instruction — Gal. 5:25–26

Remember that the colour-coding should never become an end in itself, rather it should always be an aid to concentration, learning and memorisation.

JB Philips was a scholar and academic who was the first to produce a paraphrase of the NT.  Here's a comment he made after working through Paul's letters...

The present translator who has closely studied these letters for several years is struck... by their surprising vitality.  Without holding fundamentalist views on “inspiration”, he is constantly struck by the living quality of the material with which he is working.  Some will, no doubt, consider it merely superstitious reverence for “Holy Writ”, yet again and again the writer felt rather like an electrician re-wiring an ancient house without being able to “turn the mains off”. (JB Phillips.)