How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: Fourth Edition

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Fee and Stuart make no illusions that establishing generally accepted guidelines for interpretation is difficult and unlikely. F. Bruce's The Canon of Scripture or Norman Geisler's From God to Us for additional insight on the history and purpose of translations. This still keeps good constraints on interpretation because it does not allow us to make the text mean whatever we want, but it also allows for the OT to be read in light of the NT and to see the mysteries God hid there but now fully revealed in Christ (Col. They are best understood as a collective outpouring of communication with God much akin to that found in a diary. On Sunday nights, our little group has started taking a book of the Bible each week and discussing it.

Prior to delving into the intricacies of hermeneutics proper, Fee and Stuart provide copious reasons for the pursuit of the interpretation of Scripture.This is unfortunate, as the books of the Law possess considerable relevance to the holistic study and understanding of Scripture. It may very well be that directing the study of Scripture can’t be done without directing some of the outcomes. Good thing in this book is its consistency in going through text and context for the main types of Books in the Bible. At a few points I worried their wording choice was on the needlessly convoluted side—yet, it's hard to argue with the voice and perspective of theological professors who certainly know this material better than I could hope to.

Interpretation that aims at, or thrives on, uniqueness can usually be attributed to pride (an attempt to "outclever" the rest of the world), a false understanding of spirituality (wherein the Bible is full of deeply buried truths waiting to be mined by the spiritually sensitive person with special insight), or vested interests (the need to support a theological bias, especially in dealing with texts that seem to go against that bias).This evinces the overall pattern and approach for interpreting Scripture that should be utilized by all interpreters. But because God chose to speak his word through human words in history , every book in the Bible also has historical particularity ; each document is conditioned by the language, time, and culture in which it was originally written (and in some cases also by the oral history it had before it was written down). For a more technical presentation of the exegetical method taught here, see "old testament exegesis" and "new testament exegesis" by these two authors respectively. It really breaks things down, and it explains things in a way that makes sense to someone even if you aren’t a bible scholar who knows a lot.