Tag: exegesis

Understanding The Bible

What does it take to really understand the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We live in a day and age where most everyone thinks they can pick up a Bible, read it, and be an expert in it. You have the “prophecy experts” who think they can ignore the genre of a text and the historical setting and successfully pontificate on what is going to happen today. You have the fundamentalist atheists who think likewise that they just read the Bible and the “face value” of the text is what the author meant.

Of course, there is some level where the basic message of a text can be understood, but there is a level where it cannot. There are aspects that do require specialized knowledge. When you’re growing up, for some basic illnesses and such, your parents could pick up something over-the-counter and you could trust them with it. For a specialty condition, they would take you to a doctor.

So what are some things you should try to understand in a passage?

For one, what is the genre of the passage itself? If Jesus is telling a parable, you do not want to interpret it as a historical account. It is historical that Jesus told the parable, but the parable itself is not historical. If you were ever told that the story of the Good Samaritan never happened, that should not cause you to panic about the reliability of Scripture.

But then, what is the grander genre of the book itself? The Gospels, for instance, are Greco-Roman biographies and when you realize this, your reading of them will change. The book of Revelation is apocalyptic and so one of the last things you want to do is read it at face-value. The Law in the Old Testament is written not as iron-clad but more of a teaching tool showing the limits of what could be done in a situation, but giving judges freedom to decide. Of course, there are also cases like the first eleven chapters of Genesis that are real hotbeds of debate.

You also need the original languages. It’s better if you know them yourself, but if you do not, then you can use a site like BlueLetterBible and look them up. Even still, there is a limitation here. You can only look in the Bible itself. My wife asked me today about the verse where Paul uses the word Skubalon. If you want to know what that word means, just the New Testament will not help you. It’s only used once. You will need to look at usages outside the NT, if there are any, and then if you can’t do that, look up the work of scholars who know the language and see what they say.

And yet, there’s still more. You will want to know the historical context. What was going on in a book of prophecy? So many people badly misunderstand the prophets because they think everything is about our time instead of about the time of the prophet or his relatively near future. When Jesus does something in the Gospels, is there any particular historical situation that explains His actions more? When Paul wrote about marriage in 1 Corinthians 7, was there anything going on at the time that explains what he said better?

And still there’s even more! What about the social context? We often think the people in the world of the Bible were much like ourselves. In some ways they were, but not in all. We are a guilt-based culture. Were they? We value individualism. Did they? What was marriage like for them? What was the economic status of the people involved? How did they all relate to one another?

It is not being said that you have to understand all of these or you’re completely in the dark, but if you are struggling with a passage, try to understand some of these even more. What definitely needs to be moved past is a simplistic approach that practically assumes that God will make everything easy for us to understand if He wants to. He is under no obligation to do that and those who are seeking truth will not care if it takes work. If you do care, then you are not really seeking.

When someone is reading a passage and you think they could be misunderstanding it or if you think you are misunderstanding it, consider these steps. Look at them and see what all can be learned. Go and check the best scholars in the field and see what they have to say. To understand any ancient text, one must have the humility to be willing to let it speak for itself as it were and work to understand it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Elements of Biblical Exegesis

What do I think of Michael Gorman’s book published by Baker Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Elements of Biblical Exegesis is meant to be a guide for students who are writing exegetical papers, and indeed it will be a helpful one. Gorman works with writers on all levels, including those who know the Biblical languages well and those who have no real knowledge of them. The rules listed in this book can help you if you’re writing an exegetical paper, but they can just as much help you out if you are sitting in a Sunday School class or small group meeting and you’re discussing a passage of Scripture and people are sitting together all talking about what the passage “means to them.”

Of interest from an apologetic nature is the discussion on textual criticism as well as the listing of Bible translations and dealing with the hermeneutic of suspicion where the text is seen as guilty until proven innocent. In fact, Gorman rightly says we should read from all perspectives, not just our own. After all, it is the critics of our position that can often open our eyes the most to the problems that we need to answer for our position. Gorman regularly says that all such reading is going to be beneficial. (Even reading mythicist material as that shows you just how crazy you can go when you don’t really know how to do history.)

Of course, internet atheists I regularly encounter will want nothing to do with a work like this, and sadly too many Christians won’t either who just have this idea that the text should be plain and clear to them. One of the great problems we have in the church is that people no longer work at the text. We go to seminars to learn how to improve our marriage and work at that, and we should! We go to seminars to learn how to be better parents and work on that, and we should! We go to seminars to learn how to better manage our money and work on that, and we should! We go to all of these and while we think we should work at every other area of our life, when it comes to understanding what we say is the greatest facet of our lives (Or we should say it is), we think all the answers should be handed to us.

Also, towards the end of the book, Gorman gives a long list of recommended resources. I am sure that the list is helpful, but if you go straight through a book like I do, then it can be a bit tedious in reading. Still, if you just pop open the book and want to know if a resource is a good one, then that is a helpful tool to have.

Finally, the book concludes with three exegetical papers, two on a NT passage and one on an OT passage. These are helpful examples to have nearby and the reader of the book will be pleased with how simple the final product looks and even without thorough knowledge of the original languages.

This will be a helpful guide to those who really do want to study the text for all that it’s worth.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Do Not Be Afraid!

What do I think of Rabbi Schneider’s book? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

My wife has a lot of issues with fear being diagnosed with PTSD, and so when she saw this book, she wanted to get a copy of it. I always try to get a book for her so I complied and I think it has helped her out greatly. For that, I am grateful. She also wanted me to read it then. I have a constant fear of water which really affects us when we go to the pool where she’s swimming to be healthy. I never learned to swim and I think it’s due to going to the beach as a small child and being introduced to the undertow by surprise. A great fear of water came in then.

I decided to honor my wife’s request and go through the book then. I am thankful it helped her out, but for me, I just didn’t have the same result. While I appreciate Rabbi Schneider’s constant admonitions to not be afraid and that we need to put our trust in God, I found where this was being explained, that there was much that was lacking.

The problem for me is that so much of it was experience-oriented. I don’t mean in the sense of the idea that Schneider tried such and such technique specifically in response to a fear, but rather that he talked about his own personal experiences that could in no way be shared or experienced by most other people.

Namely, this happened in the accounts of dreams. I always get cautious when people seek to make a lot of dreams and it looks like Rabbi Schneider quite regularly thinks he has dreams that have a great symbolic meaning. Many of these dreams and their interpretations I found extremely lacking. I think a better look could have been given by leaving many of these dreams out.

One other reason is a great danger in that when Christians too often treat experiences like these as events that seem common, then baby Christians who do not have such experiences are prone to wonder “What is wrong with me?” A great mistake in the church is that we often promise blessings that Jesus Himself never promised us.

I also get cautious when people talk about wanting to experience God. The reason is that too often it can look like in the church that people are seeking after a feeling and if that feeling is there, well then God is there, and if the counter feeling is there, then God is not there.

I often think of that church sign that I have seen on some churches that says “If you feel far from God, guess who moved!” I hate a sign like that. For someone who might not feel something for whatever reason, they get added on to that a nice helping of guilt as well which makes the problem even worse. Have we considered the book of Job? Who was closer to the heart of God in that book? Job or his friends? Who got the blessing of God in the end? Job or his friends?

Sometimes in the Christian walk one will have a strong awareness and feeling of God. When that happens, wonderful! Enjoy it! Celebrate it! Sometimes, one will not. When that happens, your duty is to serve. Service to God does not depend on how you feel but rather an act of will. Anyone can serve God when life is going well and you feel great. It’s serving God when life is hard and you feel terrible and want to know if He’s even there that is the greatest service.

Also, I found some of the Scriptural exegesis lacking. For instance, the Jeremiah 29 passage of “I know the plans I have for you” is not about you. It is about Israel going into a seventy year exile period and God saying He is not done with them yet and will rescue them from the hand of the enemy so they can continue to fulfill the covenant. Too often we take promises that were made for Israel in a specific situation and generalize them and make them personal to us today.

While at the end, he does give a good collection of Bible verses, though some of these I think are out of context, I wish there had been more focus and detailed looking at various passages on fear. I was under the impression I was getting a little snippet here and there and not really going deep.

I don’t doubt this book will be helpful to some, but for me, the negatives were really too distracting over the positives.

In Christ,
Nick Peters