(a) Its Origin and Nature. He must have a definite idea of how the sixty-six books of Scripture were composed, written, and preserved; and, as far as may be known, who were their authors.
(b) Its History. The Bible is, more than anything else, a book of history, containing the record of a people who received the divine revelation and preserved it. The divine revelation cannot be taught nor comprehended unless the annals of that remarkable people, the Israelites, be first read and understood. Therefore biblical history should be the first subject to be studied by the teacher in the Sunday school. The leading facts and underlying principles of that unique history must be understood; not in an outline of minute details, but as a general landscape, in which each lesson of the Bible will take its place.
(c) Its Geographical Background. The Bible brings before us a world of natural features which remain--seas, mountains, valleys, and plains; a world of political divisions which has passed away; its empires, kingdoms, and tribal relations; and cities and towns, some of them now desolate, others in poverty and in ruin. The teacher who is to instruct his pupils must be able to see those abiding elements, and by the aid of his historical imagination to reconstruct those that have changed. He must make that ancient world of the Bible roll like a panorama before the eyes of his mind.
(d) Its Institutions. Upon every page of the Bible are stamped pictures of manners, customs, institutions, forms of worship, that are unfamiliar to our Christian, Anglo-Saxon, modern world. The teacher must become familiar with this local color of another civilization, and enable his class to see it through his eyes.
(e) Its Ethical and Religious Teaching. In the past, and until a generation ago, the Bible was studied only for its doctrines. It was generally treated as one book, all written at once and by one author; its history, biography, institutions, were passed over as unimportant; while every sentence was searched for some light upon theology. From the Bible, by assorting and grouping its texts out of every book, a system of doctrine was constructed; and the mastery of this system with its proof-texts was regarded as the principal work of the Bible student. That method of Bible study has justly fallen into disuse among modern scholars. The Bible is now looked upon as a record of life rather than as a treasury of texts. Yet its stream of ethical, religious, and spiritual teaching must be found and followed by the student who is to teach the truth; and the doctrines revealed through the Bible should be regarded as a necessary part of his training.