EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

By George Card

Experiential knowledge is gotten outside of books.  It is knowledge acquired by using the five senses. This is an indirect way to study the scriptures, and it's very useful to help us understand them more clearly.  There are many ways to get it.

Travelling: Visiting the Holy land and other places mentioned in the Bible, can give one a better understanding of how events happened.  If you can't travel, perhaps you can see videos or pictures about those places. The library has plenty of videos about those places.

Touching: Have you ever handled sackcloth or other items mentioned in the Bible?  Some of them can be found around your own house or in stores. Next time you read a Bible story try to find the items mentioned in the story by looking what you have in your house, feel their texture.

Taste: Have you ever eaten some figs or a pomegranate? How about some honeycomb? Have you ever eat lentils the way Jacob cooked them? How about some unleavened bread? Go ahead and eat some biblical foods.

Smell: Do you know what myrrh, frankincense, or brimstone smell like?  How about the flowers mentioned in the Bible? What would the temple smell like? What other smells would you smell in the land of Israel?

Sound: do you know how the harp or the shofar (Long horn) sounds like? Ever heard the turtledove sing? How about a flock of sheep, or the hoofs of the cattle? What about the sounds in the night? What other sounds do you hear in the Bible?

Sight: Have you ever gone to the ant and see it working?  How about a lamb or a ram? Go to a Zoo and see biblical animals. Go and see a camel up close and then you will understand better when the bible mentions the camel. Or a botanical garden and find the biblical plants.

Events: Perhaps you can go to a Jewish celebration like a Bar Mitzvah, a wedding or a Passover feast. What do they eat? What do they sing? Do they dance? You can also go to a Middle Eastern restaurant and soak up a little of the Middle East flavor and culture.

There are stores where you can actually buy kosher foods and Jewish items; you can even buy replicas of menorahs and other biblical items. Of course you can just go in and take a look around, after all stores don’t charge for just looking.

If you read a hundredth books, about unleavened bread, you still wouldn't know how it tasted, until you actually ate some.  You can never fully understand something until you actually experience it.

Try to find ways to experience biblical events by experiencing those things mentioned there.

Experiential knowledge does not mean you have to extremes and become a shepherd to understand psalm 23, or that you have to go into a war to know what the biblical battles felt like, or that you must live like John the baptism and eat only locusts and wild honey and dress weird. There is no need to take things too far or make them too realistic to get a good idea of their experiences.