A 2 Yr Old Memorized the Book of James!? (w/ the Wittenmyers)

Is it possible for kids to memorize ENTIRE books of the Bible? This week we’re joined by Rose, Catherine, Andrew and Herbert from By the Book the Bible, an online resource for those who want a fun and creative way to memorize Scripture. Hear their story and methodology for turning entire books of the Bible into songs so memorable that even 2 years old can memorize.

Resources from this interview:

• Visit the website: https://www.bythebookthebible.com
• Join the community: https://www.biblememorygoal.com/join/

Interview Transcript with the Wittenmyers

Catherine:

In 2016, our mom was in a amazing homeschool Mom, very biblical and just did a spectacular job of you know every time there’s a tiny little twitch with our siblings that most people would just sweep under the rug or not even notice she knew us better than we knew ourselves and would bring the Bible into every single moment of everyday life and then in 2016 she very suddenly out of the blue got brain cancer and so she lost her ability to walk and talk and move and remember my name and things like that but she started to re-learn how to talk and said that she wanted to memorize Proverbs chapter 31 which is pretty crazy considering that she couldn’t remember my name as her daughter um yeah but we remembered just from some previous Bible memory stuff that when you put it to music sometimes you’re able to memorize things that you can’t memorize normally and so we put it to a song and mom was able to memorize Proverbs chapter 31 to a song um and then after that just realized it could be a huge blessing to the people in our church started asking if we could do that more and brought us to today when we’re yeah.

Josh:

and that’s great and she she uh I’m only saying this because I want to make sure that the story wraps on you know she she passed away at what point.

Catherine:

yeah she passed away in 2017 um and that was really the instigation of so many like God God just brought so much good out of that that’s what made our character what it needed to be in order to do this and um yeah God just brought so much good out of it even through her death.

Josh:

we were talking about this prior to recording where I think there’s there’s something about these defining moments in our life that are usually marked by some kind of suffering right and it’s the kind of suffering that I feel like in the church we often try to avoid as much as we can and yet it’s that suffering that really develops our character it’s the suffering and the and the kind of the challenges that you know push us to seek after God in a more focused way I mean it’s kind of like lifting weights where if you lift no weight at all you’re the the benefit isn’t as good as if you were to try to actually lift something that that is a challenge that’s pushing back on you you know what I mean.

Rose:

yeah before you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness unless it passes how it’s full effect that we may be perfect in complete lacking in nothing and so.

Josh:

yeah, James chapter one that’s awesome yeah well one of the things that you guys say on your website that I thought was really fascinating and I hadn’t heard this before but that each of us and that includes people that are watching or listening this right now I’ve likely memorized the equivalent of seven percent of the whole Bible explain what that means what do you mean by that somebody that is that feels like wait a second what do you mean seven percent six point eight three percent exactly.

Rose:

yeah well basically you know you think of how many songs we accidentally have memorized that we don’t even try to memorize just from whether it’s hearing them and on the radio or in the store and they’re just on our playlist and a lot of the times those songs can be just oh yeah whatever either whether they’re not necessarily bad but they’re just content words that have been memorized but what if we use that same concept of our brains accidentally memorizing big passages of texts but actually do that to memorize the word of God and so where that comes in if you do the math I think the math is on the site there but if the average American you know memorizes on average this amount of songs you do the number of words it adds up to a ridiculously large amount of text that we memorize and that just goes to show that a lot of people say oh I’m not smart enough to memorize or that’s really hard to memorize it’s, it’s a challenge but if we think about oh how much have we actually memorized maybe more of us are auditory memorizers than we think so.

Catherine:

or I remember when actually just right around the time when mom was sick and just after she passed away I tried memorizing the book of Ephesians and for me it was honestly really discouraging because I put so much effort into memorizing it and I got it barely but then a few weeks a few months later and I’ve forgotten it all and I’m like what was the point and yeah there was a lot of spiritual benefit that was gained from it but it was kind of discouraging um and so actually halfway through memorizing Ephesians I tried to put the second half of Ephesians to a song and so I memorized the first half just wrote memory and the second half to a song and to this day I mean it’s it’s been six years now the first half I can say a few phrases here and there a few words I recognize I understand the concepts but I couldn’t recite it to you but the second half even after almost no review I could still recite that word perfect and that’s just the power that a song has because when you memorize wrote your brain has to remember every single word in the order that it comes in but when you memorize something to music you memorize the first word and the rest comes as a big long string and it goes straight into long-term memory which is such a blessing and I know you’ve talked about that in some of your previous episodes.

Josh:

well one of my favorite lines was oh go ahead oh sorry oh.

Rose:

I was just saying your college almost had a challenge to credit if anyone could recite to me to an entire you know big chunk of of history from scripture and no one has ever taken him up on this offer and then Catherine came up and she I think she ran it through once in her head act seven that she you hadn’t reviewed for many four or five years and then she just recited it and it was great and it it’s just the power of you know long-term memorization is so much more easy and efficient for review when memorizing to music versus when we’re memorizing wrote it it can be.

Josh:

yeah I think it’s one of my favorite lines that a gentleman that I met that I had interviewed a couple weeks back called named Anthony said he’s like wrote memory is hoping believing praying that by saying it over and over and over and over and over again that you’re going to make scripture Memory fun it’s not that you’re not gonna I mean he said you’ll memorize it it will get memorized like we’ve proven that time and again but it’s it’s not necessarily going to be fun and then you know the retention of what you’ve memorized may not be as strong as you hope it is whereas there are a lot of different techniques obviously song being one of them where we are we are accessing different parts and different um ways of of attaching a strength to a memory you know by adding Melody by adding uh just Rhythm all of these things that that help us to to memorize a song and we’ve talked about this on this channel a number of times before using songs but you guys have done something slightly different than I thought was just fascinating because I went on your website and I looked at some of the videos and I think I saw what was either a three-year-old or a four-year-old kid reciting an entire was it book of the Bible what did I see

[Playing Music]

Catherine:

the youngest uh on record that we’ve had so far is we’ve had I think three now different two-year-olds who have memorized the whole book of James so two-year-olds memorizing book of James and we also had a two-year-old memorize The Sermon on the Mount and other big check sections like that

Rose:

yeah the record was a 14 year old who memorized James in four weeks and I think the particular video that you’re referring to was there were three kids one was I believe I believe um she had seven six and three she just turned three and they’re reciting through the whole book of James and they are having so much fun with it usually it’s hard to get a what two three-year-old to sit still for you know 20 minutes but if you look at how long the video is they are reciting word for word the entire book of James for 20 minutes and having so much fun with it and it’s quite a remarkable thing to see a child that can barely speak but when you do understand what they’re saying they’re saying the inspired words of God and it’s like they’re playing with their toy train and you can barely hear them mumbling and you’re like wait what what are you singing can you say that louder and then you realize oh they’re spewing out words that people write their doctrinal dissertations on like do you have any idea the genius words that are coming out of your mouth oh two-year-old’s it’s just such an encouragement so oh.

Josh:

that is really cool so explain to me one of you kind of go through the process of all right you guys are taking a passage obviously you’re by the book so it’s not just a short passage you’re taking chapters and or books and you’re putting the entire thing is it to one song and who’s composing it what what um translation are you using can you kind of walk us through a little bit of that process for you guys.

Herbert:

yeah so the process of taking a large chunk of text and setting it to music it it has so many different nuances especially with attacks like the Bible that isn’t symmetric or poetic or has all these different rhyme schemes that Aid with your setting it to music and scansion and it really just starts off with what is the most natural way that the text of scripture is said and that and putting that to music and that being digested by ourselves as we hear it audibly and orally and so we take a text of scripture like James chapter one and we say James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ and you say it out loud and then you pay attention to what was the natural Rhythm I said that James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ or James a Servants of Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes and there’s starts to be some type of Rhythm and Tempo that you start to gravitate towards and then you also notice well there’s inflection while I’m saying it and there’s different ways that my voice goes up and down and that kind of like the shape of a melody and it’s kind of very natural to how I’m singing something so you say James,

James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ and you pay attention where the melody and inflection goes up and down and eventually you you just listen well enough and and make it tuneful in a way that it turns out to something like James a servant of God and not the Lord Jesus Christ and and the way you sing and the way you say along text is all natural to how you would say it and and you don’t have the benefits of oh that rhymed or that was poetic and how many syllables it had but it’s it’s totally something natural that when you listen to it in a musical format it’s like I’m hearing it as it feels spoken and it’s so normal for me but I digest it as if it was Musical and remember terrible.

Josh:

but then you guys are taking it even to the next level because I’ve seen a lot of people that put and I’ve talked with a lot of people who have put Psalms or different passages to music and you know some of them kind of play around with the words a little bit in order to make it rhyme in some places or to make it fit but I’ve what I’ve seen you guys do that’s slightly different is now you’re filming little kids that are singing this along as well right and like making it more of a um I don’t want to say a big production but but something where a kid will sit and watch and consume this and without realizing it start memorizing that passage is that right what are you guys doing there.

Rose:

yeah because ultimately what the goal is the song is only a new Monica Aid only in as far as it helps you memorize the passage a lot of people make scripture songs for the purpose of being scripture and a song how can we make a better song let’s make it scripture and let’s you know let’s make it rhyme let’s pull different translations and let’s make an awesome kind of musical artistic piece that can be a beautiful fun song whether it’s a church or for worship but for us what’s kind of unique is doing the song so that when you actually just recite the lyrics You’re Just reciting word for word straight scripture through the whole thing.

Catherine:

yeah a lot of how we talk about it is the music is really just the glue it’s it wants to be invisible the purpose of it is just to get the words in our brain and then the goal honestly is to forget the music music is not the end it’s a means to the end we want to have the music there just to stick the words in your brain but then the goal is like Herbert was saying if you memorize James’s servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ after a while when you’ve never rise it to a song the song is what’s playing in your head but then you can just recite it normally and naturally kind of our core verse is Deuteronomy 31 where um Moses just had this whole long speech giving the law saying the blessings for obedience the curse is for Disobedience and then it comes to a point when God had something that was so important for his people to memorize to know for generations and generations and what does God say to Moses he says now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel and when they’re grown old and they’ve gone into the land and they’ve grown up and they’ve disobeyed me this song will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring and will be a witness for them and that’s kind of our goal here is to put scripture to music as an outlet so that even you know years down the road a lot of these children are unbelievers they may be in a believing household but these you know five and be Believers themselves but 20 years down the road five years down the road 10 years down the road when their teenagers going through their rebellious phase they’re you know wanting to idolize money but then the first just that song gets stuck in the head you cannot serve both God and money and they get this whole Matthew 6 stuck in their head and they’re like ah this song confronts them as a witness just like it did in deuteronomy’s time.

Josh:

yeah I think you bring up a great Point Catherine about something that I’ve kind of wrestled with living out in Asia and that is this idea that you know the the the the Israelites or even just most people at that time when Deuteronomy was written for example it was more of an oral culture it wasn’t a written culture as much as we have nowadays and that still exists I think sometimes when we live in our you know American bubble or Western bubble in general we kind of fo get that there are still cultures around the world that are primarily oral right so they communicate orally they communicate most information orally uh I would even I’ve heard it said a lot of times for the people that I’m you know live among here in Thailand that most of them don’t read more than the equivalent of two two sentences a week like in a book like it’s just not part of their culture it’s not because they’re dumb it has nothing to do with their intelligence it’s just it’s not as much as part of their culture and so I’ve talked about Dr Larry Dinkins in the past you guys have probably seen that interview where he he is super passionate about stories with uh with these type of oral learners but what I haven’t seen a lot of yet is marrying this idea of music and an oral culture learning where that can be done almost from like you said on a book basis because the the idea with orality and oral learning sometimes is hey we can get this you know 10 verse bite-sized story that’s usable into their into their mind and and kind of have that repeated um how if if any have you seen music being used in that way can you share some examples of that okay.

Catherine:

yeah so we’ve had some opportunities in the past working with some people from Rwanda and from the Congo and from different nations around who have different cultures including sometimes more that oral culture and just being able to put scripture we had a chance with a group of Congolese refugees who were living in Kansas to put Ephesians chapter 6 the armor of God into Swahili and then I actually have counter melody in English which was really fun and putting it like you’re saying into their into their their culture both musically and just the oral culture and music is a wonderful opportunity for those cultures that understand better by listening to enable them to listen to whole books of the Bible in a way that doesn’t require someone who knows how to read.

Rose:

and I think too it’s interesting to think about again depending on where God wants us to go I could see that being a blessing especially even in persecuted countries where bibles are literally illegal you know how how beautiful is that when the body of Christ and again ideally we still you know have have Bibles so we can have everything because you know I mean Lord willing we’ll be able to memorize the entire Bible um but at some point to be able to have books and books and books just lodged in your memory and then you have that memorized and you can sneak over to your you know other believer and recite and teach them to memorize it very in a very very catchy song and they can and it can kind of spread in that way so that would be so interesting to see how that plays out among persecuted Believers and just that blessing that that can be.

Josh:

yeah Rose or any of you I guess um if you if somebody’s listening to this and they’re saying okay you guys that’s really cute you’re you’re I love what you’re you think you you’ve got going here uh but you don’t understand I my brain just cannot like I can’t barely memorize one verse much less an entire book where would you have them start based on the resources that you guys have to say no actually you can why don’t you start here and see how it goes.

Rose:

yeah so right now we have the and and first John and then a couple different um various Psalms and Proverbs around and we you’ll notice on there that we’ve played with a bunch of different kind of styles so for instance Malachi so so James Sermon on the Mount first John have been more very targeted towards children there’s a lot of kind of funny playful Charming things in there there’s Malachi we started branching out and saying okay what would this look like if it was targeted towards more an older age range and so you’ll see kind of a difference there.

Catherine:

yeah and so for anyone that thinks that they can’t memorize I would encourage us to honestly give music a try I definitely is someone then even more so Rose memory can be hard and it can be discouraging um for me definitely Bible memory was very discouraging but uh God designed our brains to work in different ways and if you haven’t tried doing it to music I’d say give it a try it might turn out to be an encouragement and just a tool that God can can use so yeah give it a try .

Josh:

yeah is there anything that I haven’t covered or any part of this that you would want to you wish you could have said you had something written down you’re like ah this is this is something?

Rose:

I really wanted to say well yeah I was just gonna say it’s just the power of the word of God like you know and we all know that I mean this is Bible memory podcast we know the power of the word of God but just actually seeing that transformation and not just like James says but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourself if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer he’s like a man who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror he looks at himself and goes away and once forgets what he was like but the one who looks into the perfect law the law of Liberty and perseveres being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts he will be blessed in his doing and I think in this Christian culture especially among people who are memorizers and enjoy memorizing and our Avid memorizers who memorize a lot and that’s their Joy it’s easy to just be memorizers and just have it in your brain but not have it in your heart and it’s our responsibility and Duty the reason why we memorize is because we just love our God so much and we want to know as much as there is to know about our God so that we can fall more madly in love with him and be more obedient and serve him better and so that would kind of be my main encouragement to people who are memorizing is don’t just be a hearer.

More Bible Memory Resources

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