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

Memorizing Poetry, Speeches, Books
41

OK, I tried another composed image for book and chapter and found that I didn’t want the item so soon in the image. In fact, it worked better not to have even a subject be the main focus. The terrain, its features and sub-features were by far the best to work with. Many people call this zooming in but use it for associating other images. I’m using it to build a complex image.

Now that I’m done (mostly) working on the Major system toolkit, I can turn my attention to doing a better system for the Bible. I don’t have much done yet, but here’s a sample for you from Matthew (the math building) 4:

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The secondary subject is first introduced for the verse number and in this case probably is associated with Peter combing his hair. 19 is not diva but I’ll fix that. I put the main keywords that should be sufficient to remember the verse there.

We can trade ideas more whenever you want. But eventually, I’ll commit this to memory. I let my other verse images degrade so I could have a fresh start for this round and I like where it’s going now.

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42

Thank you Doug. :+1:

I am going ot have a work on Matthew (and also think ahead in the way that I structure it might affect the other Gospels) over the coming weeks, so hopefully will have something that I can start working with soon(ish).

I do feel that I want to try to keep the system as simple as possible (for example, I don’t have problems learning verses verbatim without any outside assistance as it were, but want to solidly fix these in their right places (book, chapter & verse) for reference etc.).

God bless you and thank you again,
Steve.

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43

@Lots2Learn, you’re very welcome. I do have a problem with verse memorization so my system needs to be more supportive/complex. Keep it simple. And let me know if I can give you anymore feedback. Let me know what you come up with.

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44

Hi Doug,
After we last chatted, I had to do more work on Matthew by ensuring that 1) all of the stories that are only in Matthew (or where Matthew has the fullest rendition of a story) were included and also 2) cross-referencing Matt with the other Gospels to preclude duplication (I have decided not to include the same stories where they are found in each of the Gospels instead choosing (as mentioned just earlier) the best/fullest version in it’s particular Gospel setting).

Having done all that, I decided to work with the word ‘geostationary’ (in relation to satellites) for Matthew (from the Genealogy in Matt 1) and from that, picked the Star Wars saga (which I know well) for the journey.

So, below (from ‘A New Hope’, The Empire Strikes Back’ & ‘Return of the Jedi’, I have the following journey Pins for each of the 28 chapters of Mathew:

  1. Luke in eating area at home with Lars & Beru
  2. Luke with Jawa’s picking R2D2 & C2PO
  3. Luke in his Sandspeeder
  4. Luke with Ben Kenobi at Ben’s home
  5. Luke & Ben in the Cantina
  6. Luke in the Millennium Falcon
  7. Luke in the Death Star
  8. Luke at the Rebel Base
  9. Luke in his X-Wing fighter
  10. Luke at the ceremony receiving his medal
  11. Luke on his Tauntaun on Hoth
  12. Luke in the cave with the wampa
  13. Luke recovering from hyperthermia (in the tube)
  14. Luke on Dagobah in Yoda’s home eating
  15. Luke on Degobah upside down with rocks in the air
  16. Luke arriving on Cloud City (Bespin)
  17. Luke fighting Darth Vader
  18. Luke on the Nebulon-B (getting his new hand)
  19. Luke arriving at Jabba’s Palace
  20. Luke fighting the Rancor
  21. Luke on the skiff
  22. Luke returns to Degobah to finish training (Yoda dies)
  23. Luke surrendering himself to Vader on Endor
  24. Luke with Vader in the emperors throne room
  25. Luke has a lightsabre duel with Vader
  26. Luke in the Death Star’s hanger with Anakin Skywalker
  27. Luke escapes the Death Star in an Imperial Shuttle
  28. Luke rejoins his friends on Endor

So, for the first 3 chapters (just to get your feedback before I carry on / start committing anything to memory) of Matt, what I wanted to learn is:
Matthew 1 [1-17]|The Genealogy of Jesus.
6b|‘…David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.’

Matthew 2 [13-21]|Christ: To & from Egypt.
[16-18]|The Massacre of Infants.
[22-23]|Childhood.

Matthew 3 [11]|‘He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’
13-17|The baptism of Jesus.

So, my journey (linking the book (using Star Wars) Chapter (using the POA system) and verse (linking the P/PO with the verse by action)) is:

Russian Grand Princess Anastasia (01=Of Anastasia) is sitting with Luke in his uncle & aunt’s kitchen waxing lyrical on Jesus’ ancestors.
Oskar Schindler (06) comes and joins them and sits down showing off his new T-shirt which has ‘Bathsheba’ written on it.
Luke goes outside and starts looking over the Jawa’s Droids for sale and sees one called a HAL 9000 (13 (13=Arthur C. Clarke who wrote 2001 & 2010)) talking about travelling to and from Egypt.
Suddenly the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger (16)) walks up and says that he has killed loads of children.
Stunned, they all turn & see Bruce Banner ((22) who was the original Hulk) wishing that he was a child again.
Admiral Ackbar (11) turns up and travels with Luke in his sandspeeder and catches his clothing on fire from one of the speeder’s engines.
The HAL 9000 computer (13) that Luke purchased is also in the sandspeeder and guides them to an oasis to douse the Admiral.

Sorry that this is so long Doug, but I hope that it makes sense (it does to me​:smile:).

Does this system tick all of the boxes for lack of too much complexity whilst still being solid, workable, efficient and allowing me to realise my goal do you think?

Any ‘tweaks’ / suggestions or is it good to go?

Thank you so much once again and God bless,
Steve.

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45

@Lots2Learn (Steve),
I think you are on the right track. I don’t know my Star Wars so it’s a stretch for me to memorize that. In my system, I would be able to jump to a chapter terrain by number. It looks like you don’t have that capability unless you throw in another object or elaboration of some kind maybe every five chapters or so. Luke & Ben in the Cantina having an ale (5 in the Major system) or used a generic symbol like the Greeks did of a hand of some sort but I like my keywords better.

One recommendation I would make is to make your actions more transitive. You might forget what’s on that T-shirt. Make Oskar kidnap Luke and dunk him in the bathtub that has sheepskin on the outside. He can still wear his t-shirt if you want.

Have HAL not just talk about travelling to Egypt but bat Luke’s hand away from the pod door and say “I’m afraid I can’t let you travel to Egypt, Dave.”

Although rather gruesome, you’ll have to have Arnie actually do the deed instead of just talking about it. It’s more memorable.

I like Admiral Ackbar. The more action that acts on objects the better. The objects can be part of the verses also. Make sure to write down your stories. They make more sense when you take the time to do that. And the more subjects that you have the better. In my system, I have to develop my terrains and subjects out of thin air because I want them to be generic. But for your system, it’s very lively and I think will be a great foundation for attaching the info you want.

Let me know how it goes and after a few weeks if it is sticking well for you. God bless you too!
Doug

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46

Hi Doug,
Thank you for the reply - I can see that the more crazy the story / visual imagery, the more likely that it will be remembered (even if it is silly or unrealistic). :+1: :+1: :+1:

With regard to your point about relating an object to the chapter number. Thus far, I have not used the ‘O’ (Object) of my POA system. Could I use this to jump to the chapter or would this be confusing (since the same object would be used for every chapter 5 (for example) of every book in the Bible (my No. 5 is |05|OE|Olaudah Equiano(Person)|Holding ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’(Object)|Speaking out about slavery to a crowd(Action)|)?
Would the above strengthen the links / association, or confuse things? :thinking:

I think that I will drop the T-shirt…

If I feel that it is going to work, I might expand my Star Wars saga journey & have Star Wars for Matthew, The Empire Strikes Back for Mark, Return of the Jedi for Luke & Solo: a Star Wars Story for John. Then, since there - if I am careful not to replicate (for example) the same people being on the Millennium Falcon (which they are in all 4 of these movies) - are sufficient locations and plot points, I will know that these relate to the Gospels & which book (which was very early on before I decided to use memory learning techniques one of my problems: I was getting confused as to which Gospel a story belonged to).

I very much like you suggestions for Oskar & HAL (not so much Arnold, but I completely get your point that at least will make it stick in my mind which is the purpose!) :ok_hand:

As always thank you for taking the time to read and reply… :innocent:

God bless,
Steve.

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47

My memory coach encouraged me to practice random words outside my long-term project as a basic skills exercise. By mixing in basic skills exercises you can determine which areas of your bigger system might be causing problems if any.

By doing random words daily I have so far discovered I like to preference people over objects when possible and this helped me a bit with my larger project.

One area of my larger project system I have been forgetting is the object “Toys”. Now instead of remembering my original intent of the toy Bop-It I instead remember Woody and Buzz from Toy Story because it sticks way better than the object for me.

If memorizing random words your first association yielded a lot of objects then you potentially would want to consider giving objects a larger role in your main system.

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48

Well, get the narrative of the story solid in your mind first. Then see if a hand, a glove with a special color, a hand-held weapon, or something else that reminds you of an item that is a five marker can be worked in to each scene/locus. The scene is much larger than the subjects or actions around an object and can morph the object into something not remembered as a repeat but as a related marker.

Olaudah Equiano seems like a difficult marker to use wandering in on Star Wars scenes like a Monty Python skit (“I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!”)

Work on that for a week or so and see how it sticks. Good luck!

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Thank you Doug - I will do some further work on these… :ok_hand: :+1:

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50

Hello! Here is a resource for y’all to look into. I’ve found it quite helpful and use a very similar method.

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Thank you Gebriell - I will have a good look at the link you posted. :+1: :ok_hand:

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52

Hi Doug,
I have not been idle since we last spoke. I have included major system pegs for each chapter and done some revisiting / tweaking of various compnents of the process. I went to bed last night and was able to remember some parts of the story (and therefore the verses to which they related) without even trying to memorise them (which I think is a good sign). :grinning:

I have just one new question. to cement the chapter, I am using words such as Tie, hoNey, haM, eaR, owL, Shoe, Cow etc. (up to 176 to cover the whole Bible). For each entry that I have on in the same chapter, do I need to use the peg word for every verse story, or need I only use it for that chapter’s first entry and then when I move on (in the story) to the next chapter, introduce the new peg just in the first entry for that next chapter?

So, for example, for chapter’s 1-3 of Matthew, I have the following storyline (which I did list previously):

Chapter 1:
Russian Grand Princess Anastasia is putting a Tie on Luke and chatting with in his uncle & aunt’s kitchen waxing lyrical on Jesus’ ancestors.
Oskar Schindler comes and joins them and then dunks Luke in a bath.
Chapter 2:
Luke goes outside and whilst eating a hoNey sandwich, starts looking over the Jawa’s Droids for sale and comes up to HAL 9000 who pushes hand away from the pod door and says “I’m afriad I can’t let yu travel to Egypt Luke.”
Suddenly they all see The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) killing loads of children.
Stunned, they all turn & see Bruce Banner (the original Hulk) crying and wishing that he was a child again.
Chapter 3:
Admiral Ackbar turns up eating a haM and travels with Luke in his sandspeeder and catches his clothing on fire from one of the speeder’s engines.
The HAL 9000 computer that Luke purchased is also in the sandspeeder and guides them to an oasis to douse the Admiral.

I do hope that my question makes sense - just want to know if I need to include the peg word for every verse entry in every chapter, or whether just on the first one (or others if I just want to?) would be sufficient.

Thank you once again as always for your input Doug. :ok_hand:

God bless,
Steve.

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53

@Lots2Learn, if I understand you correctly, you want to “multiply” your pegs to extend them into verses. Chapter pegs x verse pegs for a story in each chapter. That can be done but I found it tedious. You probably hoped that I wasn’t going to choose that option for you, I’m sure.

What I’ve done is create a space like you have for the chapter as a scene. I’d work on a little more narrative logic between the chapters though. “Suddenly” or “I turned around and saw…” are red flags for a lack of narrative logic and has a common name in opera and literature as “deus ex machina.” When you can’t think of why Arnold would show up, he just does. HAL 9000 was really trying to protect Luke maybe. Hulk was coming to rescue the children, etc.

Suddenly, Doug finds his way back to the primary question. The verse peg is only useful if you are wanting to access the verse randomly. You hear the verse in a sermon, you recall the story that is embedded in the chapter scene. Do you need the verse number? Add it as an elaboration or extra item that is a significant part of the chapter story that then continues with the story about the verse keywords.

I remember chapter scenes/loci and the verses that I remember have my item pegwords (2 = a honey sandwich dripping on your shirt, Noah’s large ark being carved out of wood , a penitent kneeling at the altar) scattered around the terrain. They all have a relationship to the chapter peg but have their own story to tell. Maybe you only need to remember the ones that are important to tie the sections of verses that you can remember together. So that when a set of consecutive verses runs into trouble for getting the next one recollected, maybe because of a new topic, you transform the verse number into a peg with a story related to the chapter.

The more you live in your stories, the more detail will grow and the more you will be able to remember them without trying hard. I think you are going in the right direction. I fall asleep some nights after walking through my stories. I also used different peg words for the same number to fit my story in different chapters. That’s one of the main reasons I ended up creating my Major System Toolkit.

Good luck to you as you continue to store up the scriptures! God bless you.
Doug

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54

Hi Doug,
As always, thank you for taking the time to give such a full reply!

I do need to be able to find the verse number of a random verse.

I was trying to use pegs to give the verses their verse number from within the story so that they were in the correct place within the chapter (I know that a good storyline would be able to do this, but perhaps not as easily as I need to get to the verse randomly (as mentioned above)), so just replying on the story (without pegs) would mean I might have to quickly run through the whole storyline for that chapter to get to the verse I am after finding the number for).

Thank you for the great suggestion about a more intelligent narrative logic (a new concept to me, so I will be learning this too!). :ok_hand:

My spreadsheet currently only has one entry for each Major system peg (and I must say that some numbers are really tricky to find a good peg for): I can definitely expand this out a bit so that I have some numbers with more than 1 peg.

This is all quite a lot of work, BUT, to know that I have these precious words committed to memory - and accessible everywhere and anywhere - makes it so worthwhile: not just for me, but for others that I can share the Bible’s truths with wherever I am!

God bless and thank you again Doug. :innocent:

Steve.

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