Five essentials of Biblical Interpretation 1: canon

It is incommunicable to read the Bible without 'interpreting' information technology, whether we realise it or not. To read is to translate; to translate is to interpret. This is because we live in a different cultural and historical context from those who wrote the Bible, simply also considering

The Christ result is an human activity of interpretation.

Then if we are going to interpret, how do we do it well? In these posts I want to offering what I call up are five essential elements of a responsible interpretive strategy. These are not and so much techniques or methods equally dimensions to responsible reading. As a bonus, they all begin with the same sound!

The first essential in interpretation is toread the Bible canonically. By this I mean to read any particular text we have in front end of us in the lite of its place in the immediately surrounding texts, within the book of the Bible information technology occurs, and most broadly within the whole sweep of whole of the Bible.

Our word 'catechism' comes from the Greek word for 'reed', and came to hateful the deed of measurement for which the reed was used. Applied to the Bible, the term first meant the way in which Scripture functions to 'measure' our lives, a standard to live by, just also came to hateful the 'mensurate' of what constitutes the books of the Bible. So the 'germination of the canon' relates to the process by which Christians discerned what should be included betwixt the covers of the Bible.

If you lookout the Telly programme Time Squad, you lot will see the archaeologists on the footing exploring the details of a feature. But they only make full sense of information technology when they pull back, usually in an aerial shot, to encounter how this detail fits in with the bigger picture. That is what nosotros are doing when we readcanonically; nosotros are standing back to run into this text in the context of the bigger moving picture of a passage, a book or the whole of Scripture. To read canonically is to ask the question:

What does this meanhere, in this part of the story of Scripture?

Asking this question immediately opens up important problems, deepens our agreement and can transform our estimation. Here are some examples that spring to mind.

Last Dominicus I was preaching on 2 Tim 1.vii 'For God has not given u.s. a Spirit of fearfulness, only of power, love and a sound mind.' Reading this canonically meant seeing where the structure 'not…just' comes elsewhere in the letter of the alphabet (it comes once again in verse ix) and in Paul (Romans eight.15), where power and love are associated with the Spirit in Paul and elsewhere, and the importance and function of ability (dunamis) in Jesus' ministry.

In Luke 4.17, Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth and reads from Isaiah 61. But Luke's quotation of the passage misses out an of import office. Compare the texts and yous volition meet something significant!

In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25.31–46), the sheep are those who have given aid to '1 of the least of these my brothers.' About contemporary interpretations read the 'brothers' equally the poor in full general, and some have even mounted relief campaigns on the basis of this. But Matthew consistently uses the give-and-take 'brother' (which nosotros might now want to translate 'blood brother or sis') to refer to swain believers; come across Matt v.23, 5.47, eighteen.15, 18.21, and especially Matt 12.48-49 and 28.10. Jesus' brothers are the disciples and anyone else who joins them in post-obit Jesus. Nosotros demand to read Matthew 25 quite differently!

We need to read the word about justification in Romans 3.28 and James 2.14 in the light of each other. At that place is a long tradition of setting them against 1 another—just several generations of Christians clearly thought they were both true.

The debates near same-sex activity unions ofttimes founder on the failure to read this issue (and other issues where the church has supposedly 'changed its mind') beyond the whole canon of Scripture. In relation to food laws, all of cosmos was first declared 'good' by God, and the Levitical restrictions were understood by Mark to have been repudiated in Jesus' education (Marking 7.19). Slavery was not part of the creation of humanity, who were all as created in the epitome of God; God's fundamental act in the OT (the exodus) was understood as liberation from slavery; and NT teaching such every bit Gal three.28 and Eph six.9, seriously undermine the distinction between slave and master. Merely the Levitical text prohibiting same-sex unions (Lev 18.22) echoes quite strongly the language of cosmos in Gen 1.27, and Paul coins a new give-and-take in 1 Cor half dozen.9 and 1 Tim i.10 equally a reference back to the Leviticus text. So there is a consistent approved connection between these verses—in marked contrast to the other two problems.

How can nosotros develop our skills in seeing the bigger picture?

• I've offered a range of resources in my earlier post Seeing the Big Picture show.
• You might like to write your own summary of What the Bible's All About to assist you understand the whole story of the Bible.
• Practice makes perfect!

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