Dan's Marinations

I'd like to mention now one of the most basic principles of Biblical interpretation:  scripture interprets scripture.  Related passages in the Bible essentially interpret each other.  In particular, we can sometimes use clear passages shed light on the more difficult ones.  Allow me to toss out some examples of using scripture to interpret scripture.  Genesis 2:2-3 provides the foundation for hallowing the sabbath, the seventh day.  More meaning comes from looking elsewhere in the Old Testament.  There are numerous examples of "sabbatical years" in the Old Testament.  Leviticus describes a sabbatical year for the land in which nothing was planted.  The writer then declares that after "seven weeks" of seven years- 7 X 7 years there would be a Year of Jubilee in which existing debts were cancelled.  Turning to Hebrews 4 we find even more about the Sabbath.  Entry into the promised land is portrayed as a kind of sabbath ...

I was recently watching a show on the training required to be a U.S. Marine Corps scout/sniper.  As one would expect, there was lots of grueling physical training and training in marksmanship.  I was struck by one particular drill, however.  The trainees were lined up with spotting scopes and told to look downrange where they were told there was an instructor.  Their job was to focus intently on everything they saw, the slightest movement, the slightest unnatural color, the slightest unnatural silhouette.  The well-concealed instructor couldn't be spotted until he had fired his own weapon twice because the trainees weren't careful enough.  The difference in combat would have been the difference between life and death. The same diligence in carefully looking at what really is and isn't there is vital in reading and interpreting the Bible.  Assumed knowledge leads us to skim over passages that we think we know, and also to read things in...

This second post on how to interpret scripture could be called "it can't mean what it never meant."  All the Biblical books were originally written to ancient cultures and in two very different languages.  Interpreting the Bible correctly requires bridging the enormous gaps between the world to which the books were written and our own.  Failure to build this bridge causes all sorts of problems for us as we read the Bible.  The Bible was not originally written to us, but to someone else.  When we read it only through our modern lens then we are, in fact, saying that the scriptural books have had little to no meaning to anyone else in history but us.  That doesn't mean that one has to be a scholar to interpret the Bible, but that one at least should be sensitive to the differences between the world that received these books originally and our own. Let me give some examples.  In looking at the first chapters of Genesis some today read ch....

I learned to read in the first years of the 1970s using Ginn reading textbooks.  That was the era of phonics in reading before it fell badly out of favor in the 1980s, and then came back into favor in the last few years.  The very fact that you the reader can interpret these symbols we know as letters and translate them into thought is an indication that you too learned to read.  Unfortunately, many of us today don't know how to read the most important book of all.  Some do know how and don't realize it.  Even worse, some think they do but really don't.  My goal over the next several posts is to give some rules of thumb for how to read and interpret scripture. Right off the bat, this is something that doesn't come instantaneously.  I once had a book called "Thirty Days to Understanding the Bible."  Reading and understanding scripture can't be rushed.  We can't "microwave" it.  The more you read the better you get at reading i...