Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0268: Reprise: How do I remember author, date, and topic facts about books of the Bible?

Episode Date: March 18, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question of how to remember author, date, and topic facts about the books of the Bible, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Hey everyone, this is Timothy from Master of Memory, and welcome to episode 268. Today we're doing a reprise episode. When we release the episode, it's going to be during my sabbatical for some extended overseas travel. So basically, we're representing an old Master of Memory episode that I think is worth a refresher, but also with some new commentary from me based on my more experienced perspective. Today we're revisiting episode 27, when I talked about memorizing general facts about books of the Bible, like the author, the date, and topics, and things like that. And I like the way the episode was originally presented. One thing I might add is that it can

be helpful not only to remember the dates in connection with the books themselves, but also to place those dates along a separate memory palace for the timeline. So you have actually a single timeline for all your historical dates as I've talked about in recent episodes with Gretchen's questions. And then you'll relate those back to the book because you can actually place the characters for your books in that other memory palace. So you have multiple memory palaces that are related to each other. But here's the episode as it was originally delivered last April. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day

and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Today's question is from Vic, who asked in an email about remembering what each book of the Bible is about. For example, the theme of the book, the authors, the date, and the key verses, and things like that. To start with, I think that this is a great way to start with this kind of memory. You're starting from the top down. Instead of thinking about individual verses, you're actually thinking about the context of the book, you're thinking about the overall picture, and you're thinking about the general basics for each book before actually diving in. And while it is, you know, a good idea to memorize some verses

and quotes here and there, I think it's great to start from the top down, especially if you're interested in memorizing big sections of the Bible. So to begin, what I recommend first of all is to come up with some sort of memorable character that you associate with each different book of the Bible. There are only 66 total books in the Bible, and if you start with the New Testament, that's just 27 to begin with. So what you're going to do is come up with a memorable character, whether it's somebody that you know or a famous figure or a cartoon character or something like that. And the way that you tie it to the book isn't a big deal. It can be completely arbitrary just so that whenever you think of that character, you think of that book of the Bible and vice versa.

I personally have a different character, a different memorable character for each different book of the Bible. I find that cartoon characters tend to be fairly memorable, but you can use whatever works for you. Just make sure to keep testing yourself and making sure that anytime you think of that book of the Bible, that character comes to mind so that it's really memorable. Now to remember authors, what you'll want to do is imagine that this character is standing next to the author or that they're good friends. You know, maybe if it's an animal, the animal is sitting in the author's lap or something like that. Paul wrote 13 of the epistles in the New Testament. So you could imagine that those 13 characters are all at a party with him or something like that. So

if somebody asked you, which of the epistles did Paul write? All you'd have to do is think of that party that Paul is in. And then you would, you know, look around in the room and see what characters are in there. Or if someone asked you, you know, who wrote Philippians? You would just have to think of the character that's associated with that and then think, whom is this character with? And then you remember that that character is at the party with Paul. So that would be the technique for authors. For topics, it's going to be a little bit more involved.

It kind of depends on how global or specific you want to be. Personally, I like remembering specific topics within chapters. So what I've done is I've listed out all the chapters of the New Testament and what topics are covered in each of those chapters. Then for each chapter, I have an object that your character is holding. So for example, the Gospel of John, my character is Gonzo from the Muppets. And in the third chapter of John, the object is an English horn. So when I think of John 3, I think of Gonzo holding an English horn, and he's playing a song sitting next to Nicodemus, and the song is about being born again. Then as he walks away from Nicodemus, he starts playing a song about how God loved the world, which is where we get John 3.16,

and then he puts the English horn down, and one person climbs up one side of the English horn while somebody else is climbing down the English horn. That represents John the Baptist's quote, he must increase and I must decrease, which is what the last part of that chapter is about. So the point is, all I have to do when somebody says John 3 is that makes me think gonzo, English horn, and then all of those topics come to mind. So I can tell them what topics are in that chapter. Now, the last thing that I would mention is dates. This can be a lot trickier if you don't happen to have number mnemonics down. And I would go to masterofmemory.com slash advanced to get some solid number memory or number memory tactics that you can use to remember numbers. But if you are really interested in memorizing dates, this is what I'd recommend. Start by creating a memory palace that has enough regions to cover the different general areas of where the books were written.

So throughout the Old Testament, you would place different things in different places. We aren't really sure when each of the books was written, but you can place them along the memory palace and generally close to each other. So you could say when a book was, you know, this book was written around the same time this book was written, which is somewhere between 300 BC and 1000 BC. And that would apply to a lot of the books of prophecy. And then as far as the New Testament books go, you could be more specific, maybe have just about four rooms and you would have your memorable characters standing in those rooms based on, you know, maybe regions closer to five-year spans or something like that.

So all the books that were probably written around AD 40 are here, and the books written around AD 45 are in here, etc. But again, if you want to memorize specific dates, I recommend going into some more advanced numbered mnemonics. Now here's your inspiration for today. I've memorized the topics covered by all the chapters of the New Testament such that anyone could name any chapter of any book of the New Testament and I could tell them what topics are generally covered by those chapters. Now unfortunately, I'm actually kind of starting over with that because I've decided that I want to use a different tactic. And this kind of happens in the realm of memory where we decide to use a different tactic when we start over.

But the reason I'm doing that is because I want to choose mnemonics that will apply to anyone, not just to me specifically. I mean, not everybody knows who Gonzo is in the Muppets. So I think it'd be more portable if I came up with mnemonic characters that anybody could learn and use. So if you're interested in using scripture mnemonics that are already laid out for you so you don't have to come up with your own mnemonics, go to masterofmemory.com slash James and we'll keep you updated on the new things that we're doing in scripture memory. I'm really excited about the new things that we're developing, the new books that we're going to be memorizing, and things

like that. So if you want to be in the loop, masterofmemory.com slash James is the right place to sign up right now. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the States in May. Meanwhile, if you want to support the show, please check out our Spanish course at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish. Or if you want to follow my adventures in Argentina or wherever else I might happen to be, you can do that at TimothyMoser.com.