Stringing Pearls: How Ancient Rabbis Taught Scripture

Stringing Pearls In Biblical Times

The image illustrates a Rabbi, thousands of years ago, preparing to teach in the Synagogue.

He has scrolls from different books in the Torah, picking out the parts he wants for the next Sabbath message.

Here’s one thing he’s not doing: preparing PowerPoint slides with Bible verses all nicely set up for the “sky Bible” – those giant screens in from of the sanctuary with entire verses/passages on them.

People back then generally couldn’t read. There’s also the lack of anything remotely tech, but the no-reading thing was crucial to the way they taught and learned.

Can you even imagine being alive back then?

The “tools” were different.

The methods of teaching were different.

Therefore, the methods for learning also had to be different.

For instance, we have classes on how to memorize Bible verses today. Maybe even passages.

But they had to memorize everything, because they couldn’t pick up a cell phone and as ask their AI Companion, what was in Deuteronomy 4:9? (Not that they had chapter and verse numbers, but it’s the point that matters.)

BTW – it’s:

They probably knew that. Did you? I had to look it up on my notebook in an e-Bible. Much faster than a scroll – but not memorized.

So what Is Stringing Pearls?

I’ve read about stringing pearls in several books. I often use the technique when I start with something from life and then examine whatever that thing was. You can’t help but string pearls.

Well, I take that back. Some people probably too many, pick one verse and decide that’s what applies to the thing they’re trying to get a Biblical view on. But given the various timeframes, events, author/recipient relationships, whether God was pleased or decidedly unpleased with His people, prophecies for where His people were headed, all sorts of scenarios – can anyone really come away from a Book with that kind of knowledge and communication in it, and decide there’s only one verse in it that applies to a situation?

I used to, when the verse said what I wanted God to say. Unfortunately, as we grow in our faith, trust, walk with Jesus, interact with the Holy Spirit – we can’t get away with that any longer.

An AI summary of Stringing Pearls

As mentioned, I have several books that talk about stringing pearls. The Bible is full of strung pearls. That means coming up with a “definition” of sorts is very difficult, at least for me. So, I asked Copilot AI. What it gave back as a response works very well with my understanding of what it’s about.

🧵 Stringing Pearls: How Ancient Rabbis Taught Scripture

“Stringing pearls” was a rabbinic teaching method used in ancient Jewish culture where a teacher would link multiple Scripture passages together—often by quoting just a phrase or key word from each—to form a deeper, layered meaning. It was used to evoke memory, invite interpretation, and connect themes across the Hebrew Bible.

📜 Why It Was Used

• In an oral culture, quoting a fragment triggered full recall.
• It allowed rabbis to teach multiple truths at once—ethical, theological, prophetic.
• It honored the unity of Scripture and invited reflection, not just memorization.

🧠 How It Helped People Learn

• Activated memory and spiritual depth.
• Encouraged thematic connections across Scripture.
• Fit the rabbinic style of brevity, symbolism, and communal understanding.

✝️ Jesus Used It Often

His listeners would have known the full psalm, and understood the deeper message.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) references Psalm 22—a psalm that begins in anguish but ends in hope.

📚 Examples from Other Resources

Here’s a synopsis from four books in my own library:

“Stringing pearls” is an ancient Jewish hermeneutical and teaching technique where biblical passages from different sources are linked together to explore deeper truths. It is both a homiletic technique used by rabbis to teach students and a method of bringing together passages from different places to explore their great truths [1]. Rabbis loved their Bible deeply and would enthusiastically link text after text, with one rabbi describing the process as so exciting that the words themselves seemed to “rejoice” and burst into flames when connected [2].

Jesus frequently employed this technique. In one notable example, he read from Isaiah 61:1-2 and inserted a line from Isaiah 58:6, “to set the oppressed free,” connecting the only two passages in the Old Testament that refer to the favor of the Lord. By doing so, he provided “two witnesses to his main message” about the proclamation of the Lord’s favor in his messianic ministry [3]. He used this method in various contexts, such as the Beatitudes, where each statement would remind listeners of biblical passages about God’s promises, and in his parables, where he would bring together well-known Jewish images to illustrate divine purposes [1].

Modern practitioners are encouraged to use this technique in personal Bible study by looking for common themes, truths, and promises across different scriptural passages and “stringing them together like precious pearls”[4].

[1] Jahosky, M. T. (2020). The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle-earth. Wipf and Stock.
[2] Spangler, A., & Tverberg, L. (2018). Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith. Zondervan.
[3] Gallaty, R. (2017). The forgotten jesus: why western christians should follow an eastern rabbi (pp. 102–103). Zondervan.
[4] Blight, W. (2023). Rest for Your Soul: A Bible Study on Solitude, Silence, and Prayer. HarperChristian Resources.

Did you notice how much memorization is relied on? I have to ask you – when (or if) you memorize Bible verses, do you think you can do all the things people had to do back in those days – thousands of years ago? Could you hear a snippet of three or four verses from different passages or books, then come up with the links between all of them and understand the ethical, prophetic, and theological implications of the string, let alone of one verse?

Add to that, how many of us today understand much of the symbolism at all? Things are so different now! Culture. Language. Things we do – like farming back then and working in an office today. Sure, farmers will get it – but unless you’ve got experience with the examples Jesus used, how can you hope to get the point of what He said?

If we don’t take the time to learn these things – we won’t understand much at all.

Stringing pearls today

The adjacent image shows a possible scenario of Bible study today. We can be anywhere. I like to be in a coffeeshop, kind of like the man in the image. I do have an external monitor, but smaller than that one. But I don’t carry a paper Bible anymore. There’ also an old iPhone with lots of music and Earbuds to keep out the noise. But one cup of coffee at a time is fine.

I asked Copilot why it had two coffee cups: “Woah – you’re giving me a lot of coffee there! I like it.” The response shows just how powerful pattern matching algorithms can be, with a touch of humor thrown in. “Glad it hit the spot, Chris! That double-mug setup felt like a visual metaphor for your workflow—one cup for Scripture, one for strategy. It’s a modern-day rabbinic moment: layered study, digital tools, and caffeinated clarity.”

No, I’m not a rabbi. Nor am I any kind of clergy. Just someone interesting in learning the truth and sharing it. But since I use Copilot to help with research, it knows there a two-part process. One is the theology/scripture, putting things together. And the other is the strategy behind how to write something that’s useful to human readers and will also get picked up by Google and other search engines and AI bots.

Anyway, research today isn’t scrolls. It’s also less and less about paper books. It is more and more about digital libraries on notebooks, but even that is fading away for digital libraries in the cloud and AI queries that can find and maybe summarize more information from more sources than anyone before would ever have dreamed might exist.

How does the addition of technology affect stringing pearls?

All this technology has made major changes to the way we teach and learn. Of course, there are other factors at play, but here’s a look at how and why things have changed from thousands of years ago. By and large, the impact has negative factors I’m not sure to many people realize.

With that in mind, here’s a second look at the Stringing pearls

🧵 Stringing Pearls: How Ancient Rabbis Taught Scripture

“Stringing pearls” was a rabbinic teaching method used in ancient Jewish culture where a teacher would link multiple Scripture passages together—often by quoting just a phrase or key word from each—to form a deeper, layered meaning. It was used to evoke memory, invite interpretation, and connect themes across the Hebrew Bible.

It’s not really possible to take just a phrase from a passage, let alone a single key word, and have any expectation that people will get the deeper meaning of the passages that were strung together. It’s quite possible that not that many people will even recognize the link between those strung passages, let alone the source passage they came from.

Why? Because, according to any survey you read on how much people read a Bible – not study, just read – it’s not very much. People who consider themselves to be Christians don’t really do very much of it. As for going to church, too many are “CEO-s”. Christmas and Easter Only.

How can we anyone expect to string together a few words from several different passages and expect much will be gained from it? Obviously, it’s not likely. So today it’s necessary to read the whole passage, verse by verse, explain them as they’re displayed on those sky-Bible giant screens.

I feel like thousands of years ago, the equivalent of an entire sermon could’ve been given in a few minutes.

📜 Why It Was Used

How about calling this part “Why it can’t be used the same way anymore”?

• In an oral culture, quoting a fragment triggered full recall.
  • We aren’t an oral culture anymore. Most people can read and write. We no longer have a need to memorize. All we need to do is know how to find something. With digital books, it got easier
• It allowed rabbis to teach multiple truths at once—ethical, theological, prophetic.
  • If we can’t string together the passages from the few words we’re given, there’s no chance of getting even one of the three points made – ethical, theological, prophetic – let alone one of them.
• It honored the unity of Scripture and invited reflection, not just memorization.
  • I’ve asked this before – for those who go to classes / watch YouTube, etc, memorizing is one thing, understanding is another. For instance, if you memorize something “close enough” to what the passage says – how much gets lost in those missing/slightly off words? Even going from one translation to another can make a huge impact on the understanding we have of what we read. Being satisfied with “good enough” memorization is more distance between what we “understand” and what the message was.

🧠 How It Helped People Learn

• Activated memory and spiritual depth.
  • Our memory just isn’t that deep today,
• Encouraged thematic connections across Scripture.
  • Understanding individual parts of scripture isn’t as detailed as it used to be, so understanding across scripture has to suffer.
• Fit the rabbinic style of brevity, symbolism, and communal understanding.
  • It’s pretty obvious, the brevity and symbolism just can’t be there like it used to be.

Conclusion – Is stringing pearls lost to the dustbin of history?

So, what does all this mean? Is stringing pearls a thing of the past? Is it a quaint but now useless teaching/learning tool?

Well, no. It shouldn’t be.

The understanding still needs to be there. Just because we have all these modern tools, it doesn’t mean we don’t need to still learn the same things.

To put it differently, we need to look at the difference between good things from God, and corruption of those good things by Satan.

Are digital libraries, AI, and other new technologies inherently corrupt and evil? No, of course not. We can certainly make them evil. And we are doing just that.

However, given the many changes in our lives today, we have incredibly short attention spans, we don’t read books, we’re forgetting how to write an anything other than acronyms, emojis, and texting shortcuts. We don’t want to read anything over 256 characters.

And yet, the reality that our world has changed, that we no longer understand the simple meanings of Biblical parables, we no longer prioritize understanding even single passages, and so many more things – it all means we need to spend more time learning the true message of the Bible.

My writing used to be so much shorter. I thought I could put in some passages, add a few sentences, and the connections were obvious. Then I was told my stuff was too hard to understand. That I need to add more of my own words. That explanations were needed.

Now, that’s all there. I learned to add so much more. I added a ton of stuff for assistive technology users. It takes so much longer to write now.

But I pray the message gets through better.

Yes, I still string passages together. But now with the entire passage, with additional context, with some Hebrew/Greek explanations, with some history, trying to fill in all those gaps.

Anything less than that means so many people can read something short – but not learn as much. If we’re going to truly grow in our faith, our ability to follow Jesus, listen to the Holy Spirit, present the Good News as good news, don’t we have to actually put the effort into learning what we claim to believe?

If we don’t how else can we live a life that someone else will ask us – “how come you’re different?” And it’ll be in a good way, rather than something like, “why would I want to be like you?”