A COMPLETE COURSE ON BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION, PART TWO

Consequently, we must take into consideration the bends and curves that come with the humans that wrote the Bible in our study. This will birth our discussion on the human perspective of Biblical interpretation. We will consider a few principles under this section to give you a robust foundation to help you understand the Scriptures better. For easy understanding, we would divide the rules to obey under the human perspective of Bible interpretation into two: before your study and during your study.

Principles of Biblical Interpretation, part two.

In the first part of this series, we began a journey on Biblical interpretation. Therein, we considered the divine perspective to Biblical interpretation. We will proceed to study the human perspective in this part.

The Human perspective will cover everything that entails the human beings involved in the events and writing of the Bible. From the human perspective, we will derive the remaining laws that will help you interpret the Bible with more accuracy and depth.

Be sure to apply these rules, they will help your study of the Bible tremendously! (Click here for a post on how to study your Bible better)

The Human Perspective of Biblical Interpretation

As much as we need the person of the Holy Spirit to be able to interpret the scriptures correctly, we should remember that God used men to write the scriptures.

This brings the human factor into play in our study of the Bible. The fact that human beings like us wrote the Bible brings in some emotions, literary devices, peculiar situations and intentions behind each scripture.

No two books of the Bible are written the same way even when the same human author wrote them. Each book is born out of different contexts, motivated by different reasons and written with different emotions.

Each book of the Bible is born out of different contexts, motivated by different reasons and written with different emotions.

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For example, Jeremiah wrote the book of Jeremiah with a prophetic and narrative perspective while he wrote Lamentations with a rather gloomy emotion. One author, different perspectives.

Consequently, we must take into consideration the bends and curves that come with the humans that wrote the Bible in our study. This will birth our discussion on the human perspective of Biblical interpretation.

We will consider a few principles under this section to give you a robust foundation in helping you understand the Scriptures better. For easy understanding, we would divide the rules to obey under the human perspective of Bible interpretation into two: before your study and during your study.

Rules of Biblical Interpretation to obey before your Study

1. Understand the Human Writer.

God has a culture of telling the world stories of his Almighty power through people. He does this by putting signatures in their daily experiences and journey to show that he is God.

For all of those individuals who wrote the Bible, God told the story practically through their lives not just with their pens. We are all living epistles that men can read (2 Corinthians 3:3).

The Bible is just a compendium of several living epistles whom God inspired to put down their experiences for us to read. That’s why you find the stories of many men meticulously narrated in the Bible. As you read through the story of every man, a dimension of God comes alive to you.

This is why it is important to be familiar with the author who wrote each book of the Bible to effectively comprehend the message they were passing across. The secret of these great men lies in their stories.

Imagine reading all the Pauline epistles in the Bible without knowing about the story of the author of these books; Paul. You would read it through, but will not fully understand the true implication of those epistles until you study the story of Paul in Acts.

Assuming you don’t know Paul, and then made an attempt to read the book of Romans in the Bible. The very first verse of Romans would spark questions in your mind that the book of Acts alone can answer (Romans 1:1).

Questions like: “Who is Paul?”, “How did he get numbered among the Apostles?” would arise in your heart. Those questions will arise because you don’t know the writer of the book.

The writings of David in the Psalms will not make sense to you till you read his story first hand in the account of Kings in the Bible. You may wonder why Solomon wrote many wise sayings in the Bible till you encounter the story of how God anointed him with wisdom like no other person earlier in Scripture (1 Kings 3:12).

Knowing the writer of any scripture will give you a solid foundation in understanding all the scriptures written by them. Before reading any book, conduct a brief research about the writer of that book, their stories and what triggered the books they wrote. This will guarantee you an easy landing as you begin to read the book later on.

2. Understand the Context

This is by far one of the most important laws in Bible interpretation. Every Biblical setting has a context and setting which surrounds the story or letter being written.

Every Bible reader must find out the context of each scripture and then interpret the scripture according to that context. Knowing the context of the scripture helps your thoughts to travel into the time when the scripture was being written. As a result, you will understand the setting of the particular environment that hosted the occurrence being narrated.

In understanding the context of a Scripture, you will need to answer the following questions:

1. What were the prevalent cultural practices that were practised at the time when the scripture was written?
2. What were the cities or towns mentioned in the scripture and their people?
3. What audience was the book written to?
4. What event necessitated the writing of the book or chapter?
5. What are the meanings of significant words used in the passage in its original Greek or Hebrew rendition? (You may need a Bible lexicon for this)

 You just need to do a little digging into the historical and cultural background of scripture before reading it and you will have the necessary information that will give you a deeper meaning of the scripture.

Another method to obey the law of context in studying scripture is to avoid reading a verse or chapter in isolation. The Bible was not written in chapters or verses originally.

The Bible was divided into chapters by a man named Stephen Langton in A.D. 1227. The old testament was divided into verses by a Jewish rabbi named Nathan in A.D 1448 while the verse division of the new testament was done by a French Printer named Robert Stephanus (Stephens) in 1551.

The Bible was only written in chapters and verses to help us reference and understand the Bible better. Each book of the Bible is a single and continuous line of thought by the writer; with no divisions per see.

Therefore, you should not give meaning to a verse or chapter until you have read the preceding and subsequent verses or chapters to have a full picture of what the writer is saying.

A good tool that will help you in understanding the Biblical context is a rich study Bible that contains information about the historical and cultural background that surround the truths of several scriptures.

Conclusion

In the third part of this series, we would move on to the rules to obey during your study of the Bible.

This series has been presented in a systematic, step-by-step approach to help you comprehend it fully.  If you have a question or comment about this series, reach us with the comment section below or send us a mail at unveilingthescriptures@gmail.com. Till then, keep studying your Bible profitably.

God bless you!