Bible Study Methods || Hermeneutics I

 

    Our churches usually encourages teens and youths to spend time in Bible study but barely they teach interpreting principles. Teens and youths only know how to take anything from the Bible devotionally and often times they apply anything anywhere without knowing what they are even doing! 

    Learning Interpreting principles is very essential. It helps us to avoid twisting of the scripture, resist false teachings, understand the scripture better and help us to apply God's word fruitfully and efficiently. Yes, you may say God's spirit is with us so we don't need them! However, if that was even the case, the Bible itself wouldn't have been necessary today! Let us not be double standard but be honest with the scripture and the fact that how God used people in past to build foundational principles that can help us to understand the scripture better! 

    Here we go!

Note: This series is peer reviewed contents!

Bible Study Methods || Hermeneutics I

 

1) Never read a verse - in isolation! Context determines the verse, not the vice versa. Otherwise you can prove anything using the Bible.

E.g. Reading John 10:30 in isolation proves nothing except confusion.

    1. Was Jesus saying He is the Father? 

(If yes, then that's Oneness Pentecostal's theology which is a heresy)

    2. Was Jesus saying he recognized his inner divine essence? 

(If yes, then that's a new Age thought which is also a heresy! much deeper than above!)

 

But when we take the grab of the context of the whole book and the particular chapter, we can easily know Jesus was talking about perfect unity between him and the Father. Jesus claimed to be God as much as His Father is. Jews leaders considered this blasphemy and were about to stone him!

 

2) Scripture interprets scripture - The Bible is unified from the beginning to end. All are inter-related so We must learn to connect dots! Modern Bibles have cross-references that helps you in connecting dots. Use resources like the Bible project, ESV Study Bible, Biblehub, Sam Shamoun contents, Dr. Michael Heiser, etc. 

 

E.g. In John 15:2, Jesus said the branches that wouldn't produce fruits would be cut off from him and book of Galatians 5:22-23 shows what those fruits are.

When Paul was saying Jerusalem is our mother in Galatians 4:26, we must look up story of Sarah and Hagar and connect the passage of the Galatians with book of Revelation 21:2. Modern cult Mother Jerusalem uses the verse to show existence of Mother God which is demonstrably hilarious!

 

3) Genres - The Bible is a library - books of different kinds. So, one cannot read a particular book in same way as the other. There are narration, poetry, apocalyptic, wisdom, letters and so on.

 

E.g. Psalms and Proverbs are poetry. Book of Revelation is an apocalyptic. 1-3 John are letters. Gospels are narratives. The book of Acts is history. We cannot interpret them in same way. What connects them all is unified view of God, Man, sin and salvation.

 

4) Don't build doctrines on obscure passages - we should not build any firm theological doctrines relying on unclear passages until we are convinced with all related passages

 

E.g. Don't use Paul's statement from 1 Cor. 14 that he desired all to speak in tongues as a doctrine. Paul wasn't even propagating that practice as a normative for all of his audience except for the point he was trying to make that unless one interpret the tongues, it bears no benefit for the church.

 

5) Bible was written for us but not to us - remember that the Bible is rooted in human history and human history keeps progressing. The Bible was written almost over 1500 years from 1440 BC to 1st century AD in three different continents and diverse cultures. We should not expect the Bible speaking with our languages rather we should look up how the original audience understood it.

 

E.g. Don't try to read modern cosmology like galaxies, black hole, solar system etc. into the Bible. The Bible is not calling us to explore science in it. Indeed, the ancient Israelites also shared a common ancient cosmological worldview that viewed earth as a flat disk though it is debated whether it was phenomenological or literal understanding. Meanwhile, even if they had that view of this world, that was their contemporary worldview and they were used for theological communication rather than scientific affirmation.