Is this a solid way to learn 1,000s of Bible verses?

Memorizing Poetry, Speeches, Books
21

Steve,

No bother to wait. I always have something to work with it seems with improving the memory system I use.

For temporary recall I believe that a multi-purpose palace is a good thing because you want something you can clean out between uses and create weak associations to your information. But for long-term recall, one that has relevancy to your subject matter is very important because it will increase your associations to the information providing better links to it.

I call these either a top-down or a bottom-up approach to palace or path creation. (The path is one of four types of linked list storage in my 7711 system.) The Titanic virtual tour video you selected will dictate how your associations are made which will make you struggle with images and force bizarre associations which are good for short-term memory but not so much for long-term memory (at least from the research I’ve read. I’m open to discussion.)

If you were to use the Titanic as your palace, you would need a traversal method to use for finding your way around, as all paths need an ordered way to move from location to location. My way would be to draw out a map and then write a story about why the character you have chosen would be moving from room to room. The room/area itself is the palace location and can be decoded as either another path or an object. Object traversals have quite a few more types and can be split many times over to create a dense storage area if needed.

My Bible system is for long-term storage and uses a kind of bottom-up approach to tailor the information for relevancy. @LynneKelly repurposes her walk around her house for many types of info but I want a permanent single-purpose place for the Bible. The chapter locations are Major system pegs which suggest scenes and relate to the book images I started my system with.

The book of 2 Peter starts off entering a Swiss convent, chosen as a type of church that was in a high spot as opposed to 1 Peter which was in a low elevation.

  • Chapter 1 - Swinging wrought iron gates outside a scenic mountain convent open to a sprawling complex (no peg is used for first chapters and an entrance of some sort is substituted).
  • Chapter 2 - The convent has an attached inn serving muesli for breakfast on wooden table and benches.
  • Chapter 3 - Mother Superior (aka ma) leads the prayer before the breakfast meal for all the youth staying there.

There aren’t enough chapters to create a scene change as there are in other books. I found three to five chapters would create a scene. Then your verse number would be a Major system peg that was easy to recall and link into the story of the chapter. I haven’t memorized a verse from that book yet but I have one to do. It’s 2 Peter 3:9. The story would involve a peg for Mother Superior praying and may be a bee annoying her during her prayer, a boy running in to her, or her standing and falling off of a pew.

If you chose the boy running in to her, you would start your verse story substitutions with him being chased by a rich homeowner (the Lord) not being slow and catching him at a castle (keep) that he has to cross his heart at (the promise). This is sketchy since I haven’t put this one to memory but it shows you the method I use. I use and reuse quite a few custom dictionary substitutions between common words and useful images.

I hope this helps out and feel free to tell me your progress on if this is useful.
Doug

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Analysis of visual memory systems
22

Hi Doug,
Thank you once again for taking the time to give such a full reply. :slight_smile:

I’m gonna be heading away from home for about 3 months soon, so might have to pick this all up and get started when I return, but thank you in advance for letting me get back to you if I need some more help or advice.

God bless you loads,
Steve.

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23

Steve,

Enjoy your time away! I will still be here I think because I enjoy the experiences people have with using their memory. As a teacher, I am slowly putting together info and exercises for a memory training course, mostly because I enjoy organizing and understanding it. Maybe I’ll have it done by the time you get back.

God bless you, Doug

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24

Thank you Doug,
If you do complete the course, I would love to have a read. Actually, I have done quite a bit of proof-reading in the past, so if you want someone to go through it (checking for grammar, sentence structure, spelling mistakes and layout discrepancies) before you go ‘live’, I am happy to go through it. :+1::slight_smile:

God bless you and stay safe,
Steve.

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25

That’s very kind of you Steve. It’s what I would call a first draft stage with 30,000 words so far. I hope you are ready for a challenge! Much of it is my own experiences so there will be “lots to learn.”

God bless you, Doug

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26

Hi Doug,
Just wondered how you are getting on with your 7711 method book?

Let me know…

GBY,
Steve.

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27

Steve,

Good to hear from you again. That was a different vacation this year I’m sure.

The progress on the 7711 is slow but sure. What has happened is that things are being put in perspective as to the necessary curriculum for getting to that point of doing what my goals are for scripture learning. I want a low maintenance system that requires that all the components to be at their most efficient level.

So, I backed off of continuing the evolution of the 7711 system a little to focus on the basics. From there I’ll be sure that the system is sound. So I rewrote much of my material on the github site, primarily the glossary and classification and wrote a few new things.

One of the largest documents I’m halfway done with is a series of exercises for moving through the basics into the advanced mnemonic structures in a systematic way. This week I invited several people to do a weekly or so lesson. I have closed the invitation but if you are interested, read through the topic.

If you are interested, let me know and I’ll add you to the list of testers. I figure by the time I get done with that, I’ll have a toolbox full of good tools that will help me build the 7711 system better. I just had the feeling that I was making a model of the Albert Hall with toothpicks.

If not, let me know where you’d like to start again.
Doug

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28

Hi Doug,
Great to hear back from you and that you are still working on your system 9there seem to be so many nuanced ways to approach different aspects of memorisation that a solid, proven systematic approach will be a great help to many :ok_hand:)

If I were further down the road, I would like to have been involved, but I am at the place where (metaphorically speaking) I am a toddler - not even walking properly (yet). :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I have been working through the process that I am intending to try (with the Gospels first as they are the ones that are (IMHO) most likely to cause issues due to the (loose) repetition of many of the stories / content / parables. So, aside from the likes of Psalm 119, if I can get a solid system working with these four (and things ironed out there), I should be good to go for the rest of the Bible! :innocent:

So, if I may - and picking up on much of what you have written previously, I’d like to ask a few more questions (anyone else, feel free to jump in too):

  1. You advocate using a Memory Palace style approach in the form of a journey (for each book) and using the Major Phonetic system to associate each point on the journey correctly (for each chapter). This makes sense to me too as one can make the journey inter-related to the subject matter of the book / chapter (if I am even wrong on anything that I have just said, PLEASE correct me). My concern (as I start out with the Gospels (and as mentioned earlier) is the potentially tricky issue of the similar content in various places within the Gospels: is there a way to do journeys for these four that will not cause possible confusion?

  2. For each (unrelated) verse that I wish to learn, would using the Classic Dominic System (a simpler version of the POA system using 2 X 2 digits (so just P & O, or P & A)) work OK?
    So for the number 03 I have Oswald Chambers reading a Bible and number 23 is Bing Crosby singing White Christmas so could:
    John 3:23 be Oswald Chambers singing White Christmas?
    And could:
    Luke 23:3 be Bing Crosby reading a Bible?
    Note: in the above case, if any number goes over 100 (as in the aforementioned case of Psalm 119), then perhaps I could use the following method (the name of which escapes me) for the extra digit:
    |0|O|Sun|
    |1|A|Ice Pick|
    |2|B|Swan|
    |3|C|Tooth|
    |4|D|Cross|
    |5|E|Clothes hanger|
    |6|S|Curtain hook|
    |7|G|Boomerang|
    |8|H|Race track|
    |9|N|Ballon (on stick)|
    |10||Pointing hand & face|
    Or:
    |0|O|Hero|
    |1|A|Bun|
    |2|B|Shoe|
    |3|C|Tea|
    |4|D|Door|
    |5|E|Hive|
    |6|S|Sticks|
    |7|G|Heaven|
    |8|H|Gate|
    |9|N|Wine|
    |10||Pen|

Sorry that this is such a long message! :grin:

Thank you again,
Steve.

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29

@Lots2Learn ,
I just noticed that I hadn’t responded to you. My apologies.

  1. Instead of a journey, I’m now just calling it a system of terrain (location) pegs tied together with a story. But yes, it’s the same idea. The way that I created my story was by using a numeric keyword that created a sentence in the story around a theme tententively based on the Gospel. Matthew is based on the way his name sounds, Mark also, but Luke is a hospital based on a related meaning of his occupation. The rest of the story is but a scaffold that doesn’t pick up much of the meaning of the text so there isn’t much confusion there. That could be good, that may be keeping me from adding some meaning.

  2. You seem to be using just a PA system. You can just convert the numbers with a conversion system, Major or Dominic, to a subject peg system which is what it looks like you are doing. And the shape or rhyme system you use to cover the extra 50 Psalms would work. It does add another item into the image. I resist that kind of thing but don’t have a better answer.

For formatting your tables, don’t forget to put a header row and then seperate it with |dash dash dash|dash dash dash|dash dash dash|.

Your messages are short compared to mine!

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30

Hi Doug,
That’s helpful: I gonna try to pin down an approach to the 4 Gospels. So, I am thinking of the following:

  • Matthew opens with the Genealogy of Jesus. Geology is a very similar sounding word, so perhaps the journey could be through caves (1 for each chapter).
  • Nearly half of the Gospel or Mark is in Jerusalem (chapter 11 onwards), so - just for this book - I could use a map of 1st century Jerusalem as the journey.
  • I’m gonna go with your suggestion for Luke as that makes sense to me to (Dr. Luke).
  • For John, I was going to take the ‘John’ theme (as in both the book and John the Baptist), and try to build a journey around water, or the sea, or perhaps a beach or promenade.

For the chapter and verse, in Luke 11 29-32 (the sign of Jonah), Admiral Ackbar would be speaking in his office (11 = Admiral Ackbar shouting ‘It’s a trap’; 23 is Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in his office).

Could I have him holding a sign (to make the link) with that passage? How could (can I) I use the peg system to link the numbers (in this case 11:29-32) to ‘Sign of Jonah’?

Thank you again and my apology if I’m displaying some ignorance of the purview of some of the concepts. :upside_down_face:

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31

Steve,

Those are excellent ideas. I tied the background idea of Matthew to a math building because of his tax collection profession also. If you can, try to avoid the related by sound type of association if you can find a related by meaning association.

My background association with John took on some meaning through the Beatles “All you need is love” with John Lennon and a similar sound from Ron Jon surf products that ended up as a hippie bookstore on a beach.

My location pegs (terrains) were developed after seeing all the options for keywords and developing a full story. So for Luke 11, the Admiral should be interacting with others in a distinct part of the hospital as a locus or location peg.

I use visual sentences to structure my images so I can have a consistent way of ordering the book, chapter and verse. In order of scope, they should be developed from terrain (background for pegs), to subjects (pegs), to items (pegs acting on objects or other people which then act as a peg) . That sets up the visual sentence and you can tie what you like to them. So in the case of the verse, the sentence would tie to the cue for the verse of either a meaning (Jonah carrying a sign “The end is near”) or the first keywords of the verbatim text.

I’m afraid that I did quite a bit of work that wasn’t exactly in that format and I’m letting my memory images dissapate so that I can return and revise the system.

After using up the subject and the terrain, you should move into items as smaller granular pieces so that the Admiral has something to act on. So for the sign of Jonah verse, I start at 29 and might use my favorite keyword of honeybee. The Admiral opens a door saying “Free honey!” in the hospital (the location peg will give context here) disturbing honeybees who fly out attacking him (“It’s a trap!”) and poor Jonah who tries to swat them all with his sign.

The only part I’ve left out is the Luke 11 scene/locus/location where your Admiral is to make sense of why he is in the hospital in the first place. Maybe he’s seeing the eye doctor there relevant to his primary facial features. My subject would be based on the Major system and might end up as Tony the Tiger or Adolf Hitler.

I think you would really enjoy the detailed discussion of visual sentences and the use of pegs I have in my exercises. I’ve just summarized a little here. If you are interested in seeing them, possibly doing them, giving me a little feedback on them, and applying them to Bible scripture memorization, I think it would fun. Just send me an private message with your email and I’ll send the one on pegs to you.

Just by talking with you and doing my exercises, I’ve gotten some more inspiration and a clearer way to develop my scripture memorization system. Thanks for doing that. I’ve taken down my public documents on the 7711 system for now until I am happier with the results.

Also, you’ve given me a great idea to develop additional exercises based on my general exercises focused on Bible students! They would be done in tandem with the general ones.

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32

Thank you Doug,
I’ve just sent you a PM. :+1:

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33

Hi Doug,
I am wondering whether using PO rather than PA might be better as this would leave me being able to use an ‘action’ elsewhere to strengthen the verse association (perhaps by making sure that (in the case of Luke) each action in some way revolves around something medical so that I will always know that the verse belongs to Luke & not (in the case of repeated stories) with one of the other Gospels.
Does that sound a slightly more useful approach? :thinking:

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34

@Lots2Learn, you have good instincts, Steve. You know I work with visual sentences as a way to collect pieces of data into a memorable image. The person keyword (Subject in my SEA-IT schema) has the most flexibility for imagery. That’s always my first keyword. Elaborations and Actions are natural companions so they provide the narrative logic that keeps things less crazy, a positive lesson I see in psychology.

Objects (Items) are usually secondary keywords and adapt with non-keyword Actions and Elaborations as well. I notice that when I need a Subject and it’s an Item that I’m presented with, I find a Subject that is related. Window? Use a window cleaner. Wheel? Use a driver.

My 7711 system is organized as:

  • Book - a Terrain by substitute word (Luke = doctor = hospital, Matthew = Math U = old school building)
  • Chapter # - a Subject using the theme of the Terrain (Luke 2 = knees bumping the revolving door of patient, Luke 3 = womb = pregnant woman)
  • Verse number - an Item using the theme of the Subject if possible.

I’ve done the entire NT that way with each chapter being unique keywords so if I know the story that threads the chapters together, I know all of the keywords that relate to the book.

I have my document in Excel but still want to add the Subjects when needed and possibly topical keywords.

I agree that Actions are the hardest to keep isolated in a mental image as they tend to combine with Subjects and Items so easily so they make better binding pieces than keywords. Most of the PAO problems I hear about usually are about actions.

If you want me to post my NT design, I’ll do that. Let me know.

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35

Hi Doug,
Yes, please do post your NT design (it will help me to decide what will work best for my verse learning by seeing how you approach it). :slightly_smiling_face: :+1:

36

@RonaldJohnson

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@Lots2Learn (Steve), I’ll send it to you privately tomorrow or so. I don’t think it’s quite ready for publication yet.

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38

Hi Doug,
I decided that trying to find a cave that I could use as a palace for Matthew was a bit tricky in that there was a danger that each cave (within a group of caves) could all look the same! Still trying to take a play on the word Genealogy, but rather than geology, I thought that I would try Geo (from the Greek for Earth) and use one for the Solar System.
I was wondering if doing the following (for Matthew) would work, or do you think that it would be too abstract for a journey (not easy to ground etc.)?

1 Sun
2 Mercury
3 Venus
4 Earth
5 Moon
6 Mars
7 Phobos (Moon of Mars)
8 Deimos (Moon of Mars)
9 Asteriod belt
10 Ceres (largest asteroid)
11 Jupiter
12 Io (Moon of Jupiter:79)
13 Europa (Moon of Jupiter)
14 Ganymede (Moon of Jupiter)
15 Calisto (Moon of Jupiter)
16 Saturn
17 Titan (Moon of Saturn:82)
18 Enceladus (Moon of Saturn)
19 Iapetus (Moon of Saturn)
20 Mimas (Moon of Saturn)
21 Hyperion (Moon of Saturn)
22 Uranus
23 Miranda (Closest moon of Uranus:5)
24 Neptune
25 Triton (Largest moon of Neptune:14)
26 Kuiper Belt
27 Pluto
28 Charon (Largest moon of Pluto:5)

Please do let me know your thoughts…

Many thanks,
Steve.

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39

Steve,

I’m thinking it’s too abstract. Associations are king. What you have made is a list of peg values but no way to remember them. To make a peg system out of a set of sorted values (your heavenly bodies are sorted by distance from the sun), you need to be able to easily remember them. I prefer a direct image of Matthew if it was distinctly visual in your mind, and as a fall-back method, using a substitute word conversion.

The tax collector apostle is not visually exciting so I chose the substitute words “Math U” to remind me of a mathematics building on a university campus of which I have experience. Maybe the traditional emblem of a purse was based on that money collector role.

The next big thing to consider is the role of the image that you choose for the largest scope data item that you will be dealing with. That should be a terrain with multiple familiar and unique options for places/loci to choose from and will give all of the containing images a theme to work with. Unless you know the moons of Jupiter and Saturn well, they will all end up looking like a rock and the images based on them will be easily confused.

The heirarchy rule of scale for composing a image to a layered type of set of data that I’ve deduced is that the order should be

  • terrain
  • the same terrain but in a unique area which qualifies as a locus and with a consistent subject
  • an item unless it doesn’t fit the theme and then another subject

That then translates to

  • book name
  • book chapter group (optional)
  • book chapter

Then over the last several years I tied the scripture to that image but it didn’t seem to persist long enough for fast recall. I introduced a chapter set of themes as elaborations and additional short stories around the image and I found that the scriptures were easier to remember and required less review. But it certainly creates more work to create all the associations.

These are my experiences. And you should try out your ideas before shelving them just to make sure they are not really something that works for you. Can you recite the 28 solar system bodies in your list easily with unique characteristics for each? Do you see yourself being able to connect Titan with the coin in the fish’s mouth, the demon-possessed boy, and the transfiguration?

Let me know how you are doing and if you need some examples. The Bible certainly is not a beginner’s set of data to memorize. I understand why all the books I’ve been purchasing about how to remember scripture have given up using mnemonics and pushed brute force review as the way to do it.

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40

One again thank you Doug. :+1:

I did try the planet/moon experiment and didn’t think that it would work, but wanted to run it by you…

I think that what I will try is an imaginary journey that I will try to get to fit in an aspect of each chapter - so terrain & also a more specific terrain locus for the chapter (one issue here that springs to mind is that many of the Gospel stories are told in different Gospels (so are in different chapters of the different books), so I will need to make sure that the terrain is sufficiently unique to each of the Gospels (I believe that this issue will be far less pronounced with the other Bible books - it is just that there is (in some sense) repetition in the various different accounts of the same story etc.

Then, use PO for the various verses and an ‘action’ linking in the PO with the chapters specific terrain locus (to strengthen the association).

I’ll have to work through and generate all of this for Matthew (with one eye on the other Gospels simply to make sure that I keep as far away from confusion as mentioned above on repeated Gospel stories).

Does this sound like a good approach to you? :thinking:

Thank you once again for your time & input Doug. :clap:

Steve.

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