Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction
1 What the Bible is and how we should approach it
2 The Author’s Purpose tool
3 The Context tool
4 The Structure tool
5 The Linking Words tool
6 The Parallels tool
7 The Narrator’s Comment tool
8 The Vocabulary tool
9 The Translations tool
10 The Tone and Feel tool
11 The Repetition tool
12 The Quotation/Allusion tool
13 The Genre tool
14 The Copycat tool
15 The Bible Timeline tool
16 The ‘Who Am I?’ tool
17 The ‘So What?’ tool
Conclusion: Pulling it all together

Appendix: It really works!

‘It’s all a matter of interpretation’

Most conversations I’ve had with non-Christians about the Bible end up there sooner or later. It’s all a matter of interpretation. Sure, you say it means that Jesus is God and that sex outside marriage is wrong and that heaven is only for Christians, but maybe for me it means that Jesus was just a good teacher and sex with anyone is OK as long as you both want it and heaven is for everybody. It’s all just a matter of interpretation.

Actually, we’ve all been conditioned to think like that. It’s part of the whole philosophical movement called ‘postmodernism’, and over the last few decades it has infiltrated the TV shows that we watch and the classrooms that we sit in. Postmodernism teaches that when I come to a piece of literature such as the Bible, what matters is not what it means, but what it means for me. And that might be different from what it means for you. And that’s OK.

I wonder if you’ve ever been in a Bible study like this:

Leader Does anyone have any thoughts about verse 1 ?
Person A I think it’s talking about X, and . . . (blah, blah) . . .
Person B Yes, I see what you’re saying, Person A, and I totally respect you. For me though it means Y, the opposite of X.
Leader Mmmm. Thank you both. Let’s move on to verse 2.

That’s postmodernism in action. The text means one thing for one person and the complete opposite for another, but both interpretations are to be respected and treated as equally valid.

But the apostle Paul doesn’t see it like that. He thinks that there is a right and a wrong way to understand the Bible. He writes to a young church leader:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (Timothy 2:15)

Here are some of the joys of understanding the Bible correctly:

• You hear the voice of your heavenly Father speaking to you.
• You learn what he is really like from his own lips (and often God’s true character turns out to be a surprise because we’re so used to second-hand caricatures).
• You discover the wonderful truth of salvation, and how to be sure of heaven.
• You find out the things that are on God’s heart, what really matters to him about this world and his will for your life.
• The truth actually changes you - get this, it doesn’t just inform you of things, it does things in you.

On the flip side, the consequences of misunderstanding the Bible can be devastating:

He Paul writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)

I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. (Acts 20:29-31)

Many of the world’s leading cults = Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science - all claim to place the Bible at the centre of their religion. They just interpret it ‘differently’. But even mainstream Christians can end up in a real mess because they think that the Bible is saying or promising something that it isn’t. I think of a Christian I knew at university who was young but dying of cancer. Some well-meaning Christians told her mum that she would be healed if only they had ‘enough faith’. It was a desperately cruel error; they added the agonizing guilt of ‘maybe I haven’t believed enough’ to the grief of losing a daughter. But they had verses in the Bible - tragically misunderstood verses - to back it up.

The truth is that without some care in your interpretation, you can make the Bible say almost anything. It may shock you, for example, to discover that the Bible says twice that ‘there is no God’. Check it out - Psalms 14:1 and 53:1. Seriously, have a look. Or if you’re a single bloke and wondering whether you should get married, then the Old Testament has clear guidance for you: ‘you shall go out with Joy’ (Isaiah 55:12, New King James Version).

I (Andrew) don’t know any girls by that name, so maybe that’s why I’m still unattached! In our work with university students in London, we’ve seen people get the Bible right and watched their eyes light up with excitement at new truths and seen their lives changed by the Word of God. It’s been a privilege to witness that. But we’ve also seen people get the Bible wrong and end in trouble or even losing their faith altogether. And that breaks our hearts. That’s why we’ve written this book.

This is a book to help you to understand the Bible correctly. We don’t claim that we will always get it perfectly right. But nearly right is more valuable than half right and much better than wholly wrong.

We want to help you to dig deeper to find hidden riches in the Bible. We hope that parts of the Bible that previously have seemed like gobbledegook will begin to make sense, and that bits that were clear already will become even more vivid and gripping.

Most of all, we want to help you to do all this for yourself. You may go to a church where the pastor is a gifted teacher of the Bible, and each week he brings it alive for you. Certainly there are many useful commentaries written by scholars who understand the Bible very well, and explain it verse by verse (e.g. the very good Tyndale Commentaries, published by IVP). These people are a gift from God, and we should be grateful for their help. But we shouldn’t be content to leave it entirely to the ‘experts’. The Bereans in the book of Acts are an example to us, because even though they were taught by the great apostle Paul himself, they nonetheless ‘examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true’ (Acts 17:11).

The book is based on the idea of a ‘toolkit’. Sorry if that conjures up painful memories of failed DIY projects, or hours waiting for a mechanic on the hard shoulder of the motorway. There aren’t any spanners or screwdrivers here, but a set of practical tools to help you get to the bottom of any Bible passage. We’ll look at things like context, repetition, linking words, different translations and more.

A science and an art

Reading the Bible is both a science and an art. By calling it a science, we mean that as a discipline it is rigorous and structured: there are certain principles to follow in order to understand the Bible correctly. Those are what we hope to teach in the following pages.

However, we don’t want you to get the idea that understanding the Bible is an automatic and mechanical process - as though you just apply the tools and out pops the answer. It’s not like that!

Understanding the Bible is also an art. It is something you learn by doing, something you ‘catch’ as well as get taught, something intuitive as much as logical. That is why we have called the following chapters ‘tools’ rather than ‘rules’ - like a master craftsman, you will need to exercise judgment and skill in the way that you use them.
Bear the following points in mind:

• You won’t need every tool for every passage you read.
• Some tools will be crucial for some passages, others secondary.
• Sometimes the tools will work only when used together, one tool enabling you to use another.

Rather like learning to ride a bike, after a while you will forget the tools because the principles behind them have become second nature.

The format of this book

Each chapter introduces you to a separate tool and explains how it works. Although there are illustrations from the Bible throughout, we’ll sometimes spend a bit longer on a ‘Worked example’ to show you how that particular tool really can help us discover something exciting and relevant that the Bible is saying. Finally, the ‘Dig deeper!’ boxes give you a chance to practise using the tools for yourself.

At the end we’ve included a brief appendix with a suggestion of how you might use the ‘toolkit’ concept in your small group. ...