One of my favorite tools for Bible study is called "Bible Arc," which is an on-line tool created by Bethlehem College and Seminary (affiliated with John Piper's ministry). It's available at http://biblearc.com, and it is designed to help you graphically show the structure of a passage.
To me, the structure of a passage is one of the most important ways to really understand the passage. Whether you look at just the high-level structure or the low-level detailed structure, seeing how the passage fits together is extraordinarily helpful in understanding what the passage means. I've talked about the importance of seeing the structure many times before, including how we can see the Trinity show up in Ephesians 1:3-14 by first seeing the structure. There are just a few tools that really open up the meaning of Scripture for me, and finding the structure is one of them.
The difficulty has been having a convenient tool to show the structure. There's always pen and paper, but that usually leads to a lot of cross-out changes, and then there's the issue of filing away all the paper so that you can retrieve it later. There's word processing, and outlining a passage with multi-level lists shows the structure, but it's hard to "see" the structure. If the passage has a complicated structure, then the lists become even less capable of showing the structure well.
The idea behind Bible Arc is that it allows you to graphically show the structure electronically (which also takes care of all the crossing out and filing hassle). It's basic enough for a beginner to use, but it has enough features for experienced Bible scholars to use.
With Bible Arc, you start by selecting which passage you want to study for a new arc. You can pick from several different Bible translations, including the original languages, also allowing the user to make his own translation. You can have two translations side-by-side, or just one translation. You can also choose for the tool to automatically break up the passage by verses or to start with no automatic breaks at all.
After you create your initial arc, then you choose where the "breaks" are in the passage, such as sentences, phrases, if/then clauses, etc. You select between two words where a break should be (in both translations if using two), and then the tool breaks between then and puts a line. You can do this at a high-level or a very detailed level.
Then, after all the "parts" have been separated, then you "arc" the parts that need to be grouped together. For example, you might have two parts to a sentence, with a break between, but you still want to "arc" the two parts because they go together. Again, this can be pretty general or very detailed.
The third step is to identify what role the different parts play, and this may be a step that many people choose to skip (although it is very helpful). For example, if a part is an "if" clause, then you drag the "if" marker from the legend to right next to that part. (There's a Key that help you understand what all the markers mean.) Basically, you are labeling what function each part plays. You can even make up your own markers.
Some of the labels describe not the part, but how two parts fit together. For example, between a part that says "Bob was happy" and the part that says "and then he threw a big party," you would put the "P" marker, which means "Progression." The second part is a progression from the first part.
There are helpful videos of every step along the way to show you how to do it.
The only way to really get the hang of it is to first look at someone else's arc, and then to play with it on your own. You can see one of my simpler arcs (of 1 Tim 1:18-20) at http://biblearc.com?c2g4. Click on "Key" in order to see what the markers mean. But I recommend just playing with it sometime, if you're into methods of focused Bible study. It takes a little while to get the hang of it, but after that, I find that it actually saves time, because it helps me quickly see the structure of a passage.
