Lesson 2 | Support by Restatement
What We’ve Learned
Often, when one begins to make attempts at identifying logical relationships, the distinction between them can feel fuzzy. Don't worry! As progress is made, these distinctions will be sharpened like a fine cooking knife. Just like an iron chef using his knife to cut rapidly at precise intervals, the diligent student will come to categorize and relate pieces of Scripture fluidly.
With every attempt to identify a relationship category, you are sharpening your Bible study tools.
What We Now Know
- In a restatement relationship, one of the two pieces is—in some fashion—pointing back to and telling us more about the other piece
- There are five restatement relationships:
- Action-Manner — one statement describes the way or manner in which the action in the other is carried out
- Comparison — one statement describes what the idea in the other is like
- Negative-Positive — one statement is denied while the other is affirmed
- Question-Answer — one statement answers the question in the other
- Idea-Explanation — one statement clarifies the meaning of an idea (either a word or an entire phrase) in the other
- Alternative and Negative-Positive need to be distinguished
- Alternative presents two options
- Negative-Positive denies one thing and affirms the other
- Rhetorical questions need to be identified and reframed as statements to identify their role
- On Biblearc, restatement relationships are represented by the color blue
What We Don’t Know Yet
We don’t yet know how to identify the direction of thought. Restatements are an excellent way to clarify what is being said, but once a statement is clarified, where do we go then? Having an answer to this question is going to be necessary for following any sort of flow of thought in Scripture. Fear not! This is the question that will begin to be answered by the distinct statement category in Lesson 3.