The BibleDocs Open Bible Study is one of the BibleDocs Weekly Bible Studies that BibleDocs runs. It is associated with the BibleDocs Open Community, and goes through various topics related to ancient history and culture, Church history, hermeneutics, and more.
This page contains a reverse-chronological list of weeks from the Bible study.
List of BibleDocs Open Bible Study weeks
2026
In this lecture we will look at the Merovingian dynasty. With the fall of the Western half of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages begin. Descending not from the Romans but from the Frankish tribes living just outside the Roman boundery, the Merovingian Empire plays a significant role in shaping the new medieval world of the West. Although a number of the Germanic tribes embraced the northward expansion of Arianism, the Merovingians come from a people who resisted this faith. Many of the Meriovingian ancestors were decidedly pagan, practicing polygamy and ritual worship to various gods, including some forms of ritual sacrifice. This changed when Clovis I, the founder of the Merivingian dynasty proper, converts to Catholicisim. This kicked off the Catholicization of the Franks and opened the door for interactions between the them and the Catholic church hierarchy. In this lesson we also discuss the topics of hagiaropahy, evangelism, and the Battle of Tours, as well as several key factors that led to the downfall of the Merovingian dynasty and gave way to another Frankish Empire: the Carolingians, who eventually came to be ruled by Charles “the great” or Charlemange.
Contrary to prevailing misconceptions, the Middle Ages did not merely consist of people laboring through their miserable lives only to die an early death. Although this time period had certain customs and beliefs that we in the 21st century might find odd, the world during this time was not completely lacking in hygiene, money, art, or medicine. Many interesting artistic, theological and literary developments occurred during the Middle Ages.
To help conceptualize the overall sweep of the times, the Middle Ages are typically broken down into three separate periods: The Early Middle Ages, The High Middle Ages, and the Later Middle Ages. The developments and events that took place across this span of time (c. 500 A.D. to c. 1500 A.D.) are important to understanding and explaining how Western Civilization came to be; you cannot skip straight from Greece and Rome to the Renaissance. To properly understand what led to the Reformation, we must study the Middle Ages. History is more than a jumble of names, dates and places. Events happen within specific circumstances, and studying the background context will help us trace the lines of cause and effect throughout history. So this is why we study the Middle Ages before turning our attention to the Reformation.
In this lesson we will examine the spiritual nature of animals. Animals posses spirits and personalities, but do not have “the image of God” as mankind does; thus animals do not possess moral free will. This is the fundamental difference between animals and mankind, for while humans are sinful and in need of salvation, animals are not morally accountable and therefore cannot be spiritually redeemed in the same way as humans. However, animal behavior was negatively altered by the Fall. When Jesus returns and the Millennium commences, animals will be “redeemed” from some of the physical consequences of the Fall (seen most clearly in the removal of violence and hostility from among animals). But that is still a different thing entirely from spiritual redemption in a moral sense.
Although animals have spirits, this does not mean it is wrong to kill and eat them. After the flood, animals were given to humanity for food. Under the Law, animal sacrifice was instituted by God, so a moral argument against the killing and eating of animals cannot be made. This does not mean we are allowed to be cruel to animals. The Bible commands us to respect life. We should not forget that God loves all His creatures, for He feeds and cares for even the birds (Matthew 10:29). Given the known presence of animal life in both the garden of Eden and in the coming Millennium, the two “paradises” we know the most about, it is likely that animals will be present in the New Heavens and New Earth (i.e., the final paradise) as well.
In an earlier discussion page from this week, we examined the fact that it is completely possible for human beings to deceive themselves and yet be completely unaware of such. I did not particularly break out the root causes of self-deception there, but it turns out that there are a couple different umbrella categories.
On the one hand, some people lie to themselves by twisting scripture: pulling things out of context, improperly limiting or expanding the scope of things based on false interpretations of perceived audience (e.g., some people in the present day say “Well, Paul only meant this to apply to the people in the time/culture he wrote to, not us!”), or even just picking the wrong interpretation of multiple possibilities based on less overtly incorrect (though still incorrect) reasoning. The key word here would be “rationalization.” These folks still base the evidence for their positions on the Bible, they just have such faulty presuppositions – or do such violence to the text itself, hermeneutic principles, logic, or some combination thereof – that their “Bible-supported position” is in truth nothing of the sort.
On the other hand, others lie to themselves by making it all about how they feel, minimizing the role the Bible itself plays in their beliefs. Arguing with such people is very difficult, because emotion/experience is not directly falsifiable. If someone says “I feel like God has told me that I ought to ‘speak in tongues’ when I pray,” well, you can’t have much of a debate about 1) what “speaking in tongues” means to begin with (e.g., in Greek, the word γλῶσσα refers to a real language, not babbled nonsense – cf. Acts 2:4-12), and 2) whether this practice is something that God still empowers even in the modern day. Both things are simply presupposed based upon how the other party “feels,” with emotion put forth as the last word on the matter.
Of course, many times, people believe things that are false due to a veritable “cocktail” of rationalizations and presuppositions and mental gymnastics. These things are not necessarily mutually exclusive with each other, in other words. Nonetheless, on this page, we are going to briefly examine just the relationship between emotion and conviction, and make a case that true conviction is based primarily upon the truth as contained in the Word of God, not emotion.
One of the most natural questions to ask when the topic of spiritual conviction comes up, in my opinion, is the question of exactly what matters it typically applies in, and how far it goes. Are we given a wealth of detailed guidance, or only the barest hint of an outline as how we ought to order our behavior? Which extreme is the reality of the situation actually closer to?
It is a good question, for if we spend lots of time with an ear to the ground, listening for answers about things that God will in no way give us specific guidance on, at best we waste our time, and at worst we will come to listen to some voice that is not from God. So it does make sense to discuss the topic of exactly what conviction means for us as Christians, and whether we should regularly expect it in our lives. This page will set out to discuss such things.
This week’s lesson discussed Colossians 3, including Colossians 3:1-2, verses that talk about setting our minds on things above, rather than on earthly things.
In this world of lust, rust, and dust, it is all too easy to let our focus slip off of higher spiritual things and down into the mud and mire of our lives here in Satan’s world system. And it’s not always just us getting distracted by the temptations before us in the world; sometimes it may be pressure that gets to us instead, rather than temptation.
When things get really hard and everything goes sideways, it can be difficult to keep our head up and our eyes quickened with the spiritual perspective that comes through faith. It is all too common for people’s Christianity to go out the window when they metaphorically get punched in the face, even though it is the very time they most ought to trust in God rather than themselves.
Instead, we ought to aspire to have the peace and confidence that comes from intentionally holding onto the proper spiritual perspective, even as the world falls to pieces around us (compare Psalm 46:2-3), leaving God to sort out our provision. This page is going to examine this concept.
Hebrews 11:4 says that by faith Abel was approved as a righteous man on account of the sacrifice that he gave to God, and that his sacrifice was better than Cain’s.
People have an easy time understanding why Cain was punished after he murdered his brother. But why was Abel’s sacrifice pleasing to God to begin with, but not Cain’s? That is the question that this page will set out to answer.
This week, our Workbook made several points:
Our faith gives us assurance that what we believe will become a reality. When we know the character and power of God, and we believe what God has promised, then we can be assured that God will do what He has said He will do.
In the Bible, faith is always God-centered. The writer of Hebrews does not encourage us to have faith in ourselves or in our own desires, but in God. We cannot always make our own dreams successful, regardless of how hard we work to that end. But faith in God is always rewarded. It is not the power of positive thinking, for we are limited in how much we can make our thoughts become a reality. God, however, can bring every one of His purposes to reality in our lives. When we place our faith in Him, we can be absolutely confident that He will do what He has said.
On this page, we will be examining the idea that our faith leads to certain outcomes if and only if said outcomes are in the Will of God. In other words, we do not get to twist God’s promises into whatever we might want them to be.
In this week of our study, the Workbook used Hebrews 11:1-6 and Hebrews 11:13-16 in its discussion of how another variable in determining if a voice is of God is if it calls us to trust God, to exercise faith.
Hebrews 11 starts off with a definition of faith: “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This page will examine this statement, especially as it relates to the idea that having faith is not somehow illogical, despite not having “proof” in the sense that science-focused skeptics want.
In John 17:2, 6 Jesus mentions those “whom the Father gave Him.”
This page will examine exactly what that means, in the context of Calvinism, predestination, and free will.
When discussing the serpent of Genesis 3, it is natural to ask if this is Satan we are talking about here. There has been a certain amount of scholarship of late that has scoffed at Christians “reading the devil back into the Old Testament” (as they would phrase it)—arguing that the specific being discussed in the Old Testament did not at time of writing have overtones of supernatural evil, and that it is only possible to view things that way by back-reading the New Testament. (This, they say, means that the Old Testament does not itself “support” viewing Satan as a supernatural adversary of God).
The issue with this sort of argument is that you could well say that Isaiah 52:13ff. (the prophecy concerning the suffering servant), the virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14), and Psalm 22 (a Messianic Psalm) are in similar fashion “reading Jesus back into the Old Testament.” Is that an appropriate attitude to take towards God’s truth? Honestly, past a certain point, it is not worth our time debating with people who think it is unreasonable to interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, since both are the Word of God. But in this discussion, we will nonetheless examine the personage of Satan in the Old Testament, and how we can identify the serpent of Genesis 3 with him. Even if it means we quote from the New Testament.
To properly understand the council of Nicea, we must understand the historical, political, and spiritual backdrop surrounding that event. Constantine had come to the throne and unified the empire after the civil wars of the Diocletian era, and likely wanted to promote a unified and undivided Christianity. Heresies related to the doctrine of the Trinity were spreading. With anti-Modalism at its roots, Arius and others were teaching that the Father, Son and Spirit do not share the same essence but have unity of will, describing the Father as the “Unbegotton One” and teaching that the Son is a mere creature. In response to the threat of Arianism, some bishops prevailed upon Constantine to support an ecumenical council, thus giving Arians and Non-Arians a chance to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity. Alexander of Alexandria convinced the other bishops that Arianism violated a plain reading of Scripture and causes problems with soteriology. Those attending the Council of Nicea sought to affirm the unity of God while also affirming the proper division between the Father and the Son, and the Nicene Creed resulted.
2025
While some credit the early Church Councils and Creeds with developing doctrine, they primarily sought to refine the theological terminology used to describe biblical doctrines (doctrines which Christians undoubtedly believed long prior to these formal meetings). Church Councils sought to clarify how the Church discussed theological concepts, often in response to heresy. Modalism (the concept that God is one being, yet shows Himself in three different “modes”) was one of the earliest heresies regarding the relationship between the Father and the Son (and the Spirit). Modalism was rejected by the Church due to its incompatibility with the truth of Scripture. Alternative explanations arose in response, including Arianism, which denies that Christ is co-eternal with the Father. In short, while giving us useful historical background to contextualize theological points, the determinations of Church Councils and Creeds are not the basis for our theological positions; that is a place reserved for the Bible alone.
TODO: Summary
TODO: Summary
In this lesson, we examine many practical matters related to Bible reading, such as discussing the utility in re-reading parts of the Bible we have already read, whether we can trust the accuracy of the English Bible translations available to us, how Bible teachers and the Holy Spirit interact with and enhance our Bible reading, the pros and cons of various English versions (like the KJV, NASB, NIV84, etc.), and various other miscellaneous tips and suggestions.
One of the heresies the Early Church faced came from the gnostics, a group people whose belief system emphasized truth beyond this world (to be attained through mystical experiences), hatred of the material world, and elitist or secret knowledge. The gnostics tended towards a strong form of self-denial and asceticism, and their total shunning of the material world led them to radically different interpretations in some areas, relative to Christianity proper. They were not much concerned with faithfulness to the scriptures, but freely borrowed from other philosophies and religions of their time, and wrote their own sacred texts external to the Bible. Since parts of the Bible clearly contradict their teachings just at first glance, it is no surprise that this group threw it out and went their own way. The gnostics did not pretend to be Christian, but set themselves above and against Christianity. Even today, certain patterns of thought can mirror the problematic beliefs of this long-ago group, so it can be useful to examine the issues with gnostic teachings and how they came about, in order to better understand them and protect against them.
Believers in the early church faced persecution from the Romans. Based upon how some textbooks and such talk about things, you might think believers in the first couple centuries after Christ were very systematically persecuted, but this was actually not the case. Up until around 284 AD (around when the imperial power structure shifted from what historians call the “Principate” to the “Dominate”), Christians faced persecution that was largely sporadic and localized, rather than empire-wide. In this video, we talk about some examples of persecution of early believers (for example, under the Roman emperors Nero and Trajan), as well as going over the concept of source analysis and how we can even know some of these things to begin with.
At the time the gospel spread throughout the Mediterranean in the first century AD, it mostly traveled through parts of the world under Roman control. For this reason, it is beneficial to examine Roman society and culture to help us get a better understanding of this world of the Early Church. Roman society influenced both Jewish and Christian communities and religious expression, and while the New Testament may have ended up written in Greek not Latin, the influence of Roman society and culture can nonetheless be felt all throughout, once you know to look for it.