Welcome to the Ready Answers Bible Memorization Curriculum. Unofficial Study Guides for the PBE 2020.
The Ready Answers Bible Memorization Program is designed to help you
memorize Bible passages easily and quickly. It is based on many
well-proven strategies for memorizing. From this page you can get our material designed to
help prepare for tests on the Biblical books of Ezera, Nehemiah, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, and Micah. This should be helpful for tests such as the 2020 Pathfinder
Bible Experience or Bible Bowl events. It is also helpful for any study
of these books. On other web pages at this site, we also have memorization guides for other books of the Bible.
We learned on April 7, 2019 that the 2020 PBE will now not only cover Ezra and Nehemiah, but also cover Hosea, Amos, Jonah, and Micah. We also learned
that Pathfinders will not be responsible for the following portions of Ezra and Nehemiah:
Ezra 2, 8:1-14, 10:18-44, Nehemiah 7:7-63, 10:1-27, 11:3-12:26.
As in previous years, we intend to supply study guides and questions again this year.
Official PBE Information
We supply unofficial study guides. For the official rules and instructions to register a team, please go the the official PBE site: https://www.pathfindersonline.org/pbe
Fund Raising
Some teams plan for success by raising the funds early to ensure they will be able to go the the final NAD testing level. One very successful fund-raising idea is to have a 30-day verse memorizing event. Students can ask sponsors to contribute $1 per verse for 30 verses that they learn within those 30 days. Some people even pledge to give $2 per verse if they learn 60 verses. This not only funds the trips, it also can be a great incentive to get ready for the tests.
Team Organization
You will probably want to consider carefully who on the team should be responsible for which portions of this year’s material. Since some books are smaller than others, and some verses have more unfamiliar names than other verses, assigning students to each learn a different book or even an equal number of verses might not be the best strategy. The tables below show our recommended assignments. The goals we had were:
Each assignment should be about the same size as the other assignments. This is to help spread the effort equally across the team members.
We consider if the content of two verses is similar. We try to assign these verses to different team members, because many people have difficulty memorizing two passages that are nearly identical.
Each verse should be assigned to one student as a primary responsibility and to a second student as a secondary responsibility. This enables the students to consult with each other during the tests and help each other remember the details required to answer the questions. Also, if one student unexpectedly is unable to participate, the remaining team members are prepared to answer the questions.
Each student should have a study partner that leverages the primary and secondary responsibilities. This way, if the full team can't get together for every practice session, pairs of students can meet and study effectively.
To simplify remembering who is responsible for which verse, each student should generally be responsible for as few blocks of verses as possible. This is often in conflict with the other goals and is considered a lower priority.
Suppose the team members are Alex, Adam, Lexi, Jordan, Jeffrey, and Noah. Also suppose that
Adam and Jordan
will be partners,
Jeffrey and Noah
will be partners, and that
Alex and Lexi
will be partners. The table below shows that Alex has the primary responsibility for Ezra chapter 1 as well as other verses, and Lexi has secondary responsibility for these same verses.
Nehemiah 3:1-10, Hos 14, Amos 1:11-7:4, Amos 7:9-9:15
151
Jeffrey's Primary
Noah's Secondary
Nehemiah 8:4,7, Jonah, Micah
155
Jeffrey' Secondary
Noah's Primary
Primary Verses
160
154
151
156
151
155
Secondary Verses
151
156
160
154
155
151
Total
311
310
311
310
306
306
Reasoning
The table above looks fairly complicated, but it might be easier to think about the assignments this way:
Alex is generally responsible for Ezra 1-9, except that the test will not cover Ezra chapter 2. To give him his share of names, Nehemiah 9:4-5 and Nehemiah 12:42-43 were added. Then Amos 7:5-8 was added to help Geoffery and Noah because these verses are similar to Amos 7:2-3, 8:2, and 9:5.
Adam is generally responsible for Ezra 10 - Nehemiah 7 except that the test will not cover Ezra 10:18-44 or Nehemiah 7:7-63. Adam also doesn't need to learn Nehemiah 3:14, because it has been assigned to Lexi since it is similar to Nehemiah 3:13 and 15. To reduce the number of names he needs to learn, Nehemiah 3:1-9 is assigned to Geoffery, and Nehemiah 3:23-32 is assigned to Jordan. To give Adam sufficient verses, Hosea 13:9-16 and Amos 1:1-10 are added. These verses in Amos also help Geoffery, because these verses are similar to other ones in Amos.
Lexi is generally responsible for Nehemiah 8 to the end of the book and Hosea 1-2, except that the test will not cover Nehemiah 10:1-27 or 11:3-12:26. Even with these verses excluded, this block includes a significant number of names. The greatest concentration of names is in Nehemiah 8:4,7; 9:4-5; and 12:42-43. These are assigned to Noah and Alex. Nehemiah 3:14 was added to help Adam, because this verse is similar to Nehemiah 3:13 and 15.
Jordan is generally responsible for Hosea 3 - Hosea 13, but doesn't need to learn the final 8 verses, because they are assigned to Adam. Nehemiah 3:23-32 were added to give him his share of names to learn.
Geoffery is generally responsible for Hosea 14 and the book of Amos, except that Adam is responsible for the first 10 verses of Amos to give him enough verses and Alex has Amos 7:5-8 because they are similar to Amos 7:2-3, 8:2, and 9:5. Nehemiah 3:1-9 was added; so, Goeffery would have his share of names to learn.
Noah is responsible for Jonah and Micah, To give Noah his share of names, Nehemiah 8:4 and 7 were added.
These files have several tabs (also called worksheets). There are 2 tabs for
each language: one that presents the questions in Biblical order and another
tab that presents the same questions in random order. If you are only seeing
tabs for English, try clearing your browser's cache or try downloading the file
again later.
If you don't have Microsoft Excel, you can get Libre Office Calc without any
costs. It opens these files. Alternatively, you can open the PDF versions:
Please contact us if you have any questions on how to get these materials on your device. Please let us know if you find any errors so we can correct them and notify our mailing list.
