The Bible On The Bible
2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB)
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
Hebrews 4:12 (NASB)
12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
1 Thessalonians 2:13
13 Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.
Ephesians 6:17
17 Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
James 1:22 (NASB)
22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
John 5:39
39 “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!”
Jesus says this
Matthew 4:4
4 But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Romans 15:4
4 For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
1 Peter 1:20-21
20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days, he has been revealed for your sake. 21 Through Christ, you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.
Open Up The Word
As we are building a personal relationship with God it’s important that we study or read God’s revealed word to mankind (The Bible). The Bible is his message to humanity; it gives us instruction and direction for our lives. It gives us God’s law which is the basis for morality and his instruction which for how to live a fruitful and joyful life. Interwoven throughout the whole book is the history of God working through his people (the Israelites) and eventually him reconciling the whole world through Jesus Christ His Son. The Old Testament looks forward to Christ through the prophecies about Jesus and the covenants that he makes with the Jews. The New Testament looks at Jesus’ life/death/resurrection and the implications that it has for the followers of God. There is so much content and so much to learn; 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all scripture is useful for teaching, so we can learn something God wanted to communicate through all of His word.
I think we study the Bible for two purposes; one is to fill ourselves with the word as to fuel our personal relationship with God and to continue to hear from him, and the second is to build our cumulative knowledge of God’s message to humanity. When we get into His word we interact with Him and get refreshed by His guidance.
Everybody approaches reading the Bible a little bit differently; some people like having reading plans, some do an in-depth study of a book, while others just read the text and try to apply it to their lives. The most important thing is that we choose to interact with God’s word on a regular basis. How we read or what we read is secondary to hearing from God. It can be refreshing to try different ways to read or study the Bible and the way some people like to study is going to be very different from how others choose to do so. We are unique people who learn differently and come from different spots in our lives. One of my friends took 8 months to study the book of Hebrews (something I would never do), and now years later he is able to recollect verses from that book when he connects Hebrews with other books of the Bible. This methodology worked well for him but is not something everyone is suited for.
If you’re just starting to read the Bible it’s important to read an amount that is attainable. If you can just read 5 verses before losing your attention span, then you should just try to read 5 verses daily. As you develop the habit of getting in the word you can challenge yourself to read more and to try different ways to study the Bible. Everyone should read the Bible at a reasonable pace for themselves, as they develop the habit.
When we develop a consistent habit of getting into God’s word we build a cumulative knowledge of what he is communicating. I would argue our knowledge is never complete, but we do begin to see how different things connect. One example would be the character of Melchizedek who is mentioned in Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 5 and 7. When we connect all of the passages about him we see that God had a plan to make Jesus a priest in the order of Melchizedek who was a king during the time of Abraham. As our cumulative knowledge grows we get a better picture of God’s plan for mankind.
While we read God’s word it’s important that we learn how to appropriately interpret what he is communicating through the passages we are reading. It may take a little bit of effort and study to interpret His Word accurately, but it is vitally important. The resources and tools we need are very accessible, so for most of this chapter we will go over helpful points and help you know where to look in order to find the resources you might need to interpret His Word accurately.
Basic Rules of Comprehending the Bible
- If the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense
If everything about a passage seems clear and makes sense, then take it at face value.
- Context
Having an understanding of the passages around the one you are studying can illuminate what the author is getting at.
- Interpret the unclear in light of the clear
Passages that are hard to understand or obscure should be interpreted while keeping the clear emphases’ of scripture in mind.
- Listen for The Holy Spirit
God has given you His Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit can give you insight and understanding in the Word when you are willing to listen to Him.
- Read the Spirit of the Passage
Keep in mind the Bible has multiple literary genres and quite a few literary devices. Read trying to understand what the author is trying to communicate rather than taking everything literalistically. Jesus’ parables were not stories that we should take as true events, but they were stories he told to communicate a teaching.
- Harmonize
We should harmonize passages with other relevant passages in scripture to get a clearer understanding.
Author and Audience
When we interpret the Bible it’s important that we look for the author’s intended meaning rather than the meaning we ascribe to the text. When we look at a painting we can give meanings to different aspects or elements of a painting, one could say “I think the blue river represents the cold heart of humanity.” The painter himself creates and knows the intended meaning that he is trying to communicate to his audience. The intended meaning may not be the only meaning that is interpreted, but it’s directly linked to the purpose and design of the piece that’s interpreted.
When we read the Bible as Christians we believe that scripture is inspired by God or “God Breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). He is involved in the authorship of every book, at the same time each book has a human author whom God used. Many of these books also have specific intended audiences, for example, Philippians was written to the church in the city of Philippi. When we understand who the author and audience of a text are we can look further into the context in which they are communicating in order to have a deeper understanding of the intended meaning of the passage.
Finding the author and audience for a book of the Bible is normally pretty easy, often they will have the author and audience listed on the title page of the book in your Bible. On occasion, it is unclear who the human author of a book is; in this case, it’s good to see who the author could be and what we learn about the author from the text itself. It can also be helpful to look at a commentary on the book of the Bible that you are studying to learn more context and have a better understanding of the authorship of a book.
Historical-Grammatical Interpretation
Historical-Grammatical Interpretation is a methodology of interpretation that tries to get to the intended meaning of the passage. This method of interpretation focuses on understanding the historical context of each book, as well as understanding grammatically and in terms of literary devices what the author is trying to communicate. This method furthers the ideas I presented above in the Author and Audience section.
Historical context can give us a greater understanding of the intended meaning of a passage. Part of understanding the historical context would be understanding the historical setting. The historical setting would be the time of the events as well as the location. So, for example, the historical setting for Jesus’ crucifixion would be the year 33 A.D. on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem.
Once we have an understanding of the historical setting, we can try to learn about the culture that these events would be taking place in. Let’s take the city of Corinth for example, Corinth was a Grecian city with a church that Paul wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians to. The city of Corinth was located near an isthmus (a small section of land between two inlets) on the Mediterranean Sea, this made it a major port city. Corinth was known for its worship of Aphrodite, Poseidon, and Demeter. The city had temples dedicated to some of these gods and at the temples, they would have priests or priestesses who would prostitute themselves for the worship of these gods. The culture of idol worship and prostitution in this city had an impact on the church Paul was writing to. Paul addresses whether or not they should eat food that was sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8:1-11:1), and the problem of promiscuity inside the church (1 Corinthians 5:11-13 and 6:12-20). We can see that having an understanding of the historical cultures can give us a better understanding of the Word.
The Bible was originally written in two languages; the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament around 1445 B.C.E and the Old Testament continued to be written until Malachi was finished around 450 B.C.E.. During this time the prophets wrote these books in ancient Hebrew. The books of the New Testament were written between 50 and 100 A.D. and were written in Greek. When we read the modern english translations of the Bible the translators are taking the text from our oldest copies in the original languages and translating them to our modern English. The different translations of the Bible are different because they use different translation methods. Below is a list of the most common translations and the method that was used for their translation of the Bible.
Greek and Hebrew have different grammar structures from our modern English. The metaphors and vernacular of these languages are also different. This means when we are trying to understand what the author intended to communicate it may be beneficial to have the ability to look at these languages and see what he could be saying in the context of his own language.
To get the best possible understanding of what the authors are trying to communicate it would be beneficial to learn Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew. However, most people don’t want to go through all of the work involved in learning another language. Even if you elect not to learn these languages, you can still look into the lexicon of those languages and find direct definitions of the original words in the original texts. I often use a free website (blueletterbible.org) to look at the Greek or Hebrew words that were originally used. There is a software (Logos) that a lot of people like to use in order to look into the original text.
Genres of Literature in The Bible
The books of the Bible branch into a number of genres of literature. As we read the Bible it’s important that we understand how the author is trying to communicate to his audience and what we can take away from the Word. There are books of poetry, law, history, prophecy, and teaching/wisdom throughout the Bible. Some books interweave different genres into the same book; for example, Daniel is a book that looks at a section of history while having a number of prophecies.
God uses these different literary genres to communicate different aspects of what he wants to teach us. The Law was given to show us our inadequacy and our need for God; the history in scripture shows us how God has operated his plan over the course of humanity; His prophecies validate His words and give us a glimpse into what the future holds; the poetry throughout the Bible was a way for us to see how we can emotionally interact with God; and His teaching and wisdom gives us guidance in our lives. He intentionally made the bible diverse in genre to communicate different aspects of the relationship he has with us.
There are a few more defined subgenres that it can be helpful to know. One of the important books to look at is the book of Proverbs, each proverb is a statement of wisdom or advice that is generally applicable but doesn’t always hold to be true. Proverbs 10:4 says “Lazy people are soon poor; hard workers get rich.” This doesn’t always hold true (Paris Hilton is rich and lazy), but the point is that hard work is often rewarded.
Resources for Studying The Bible
https://www.blueletterbible.org/
This is a website you can use to look at each individual word in the bible from its original language and look at the definitions.
http://www.evidenceunseen.com/
James Rochford has a cool site where he has brief commentaries for most of the books of the Bible, and he has articles about most of the difficult passages.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/
You can use this website to find a number of different commentaries that break down each book verse by verse.
https://www.bestcommentaries.com/
This website will give you ratings for the best commentaries on each book of the bible.
https://www.xenos.org/teachings/
This website has audio teachings on most books of the Bible.
This is where you can purchase Logos (Bible Reading Software). This software gives you the ability look in depth at the original language and compare translations.
Work Cited
DeLashmutt, Gary, and Dennis McCallum. “Grammatical-Historical Hermeneutics for Lay Readers.” Grammatical-Historical Hermeneutics for Lay Readers | Xenos Christian Fellowship, http://www.xenos.org/essays/grammatical-historical-hermeneutics-lay-readers.
Cartwright, Mark. “Corinth.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2 Sept. 2009, http://www.ancient.eu/corinth/.
Stewart, Don. “When Did Moses Write, or Compile, the Book of Genesis?” Blue Letter Bible, 2018, http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_678.cfm.
Blaising, Craig. “The Bible Knowledge Commentary Old Testament.” The Bible Knowledge Commentary Old Testament, by John F ed. Walvoord and Roy B ed. Zuck, Victor Books, 1985, pp. 1573–1573.
Frankly Put 
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