Reflection by Pastor Shawn:
Lately I’ve been in several different discussions about the Bible with several different types of people. It’s been enjoyable, and these are important conversations.
Recently I’ve put together a short introduction about how we should interpret the Bible. Generally I think it’s better to *show* how to interpret the Bible than it is to talk about doing it. You don’t learn to ride a bicycle by discussing centrifugal force and ball bearings. You watch people do it, and then you try it yourself. But sometimes it’s worth talking about the principles of interpreting the Bible. So here goes.
There are two steps to interpreting the Bible: exegesis and contextualization. Let’s start with exegesis. The term literally means “to lead out”—it’s about bringing the meaning out of the text of the Bible (rather than reading meaning into the text). But the term isn’t important; the idea is. Exegesis is about what a Bible passage meant “there and then.” In exegesis, we carefully study Scripture and try to understand the original meaning the author intended. To do this, we must understand their history, language, and culture.
But here’s the thing: that’s hard. So we need the help of experts. There are Christians who have devoted their lives to studying the original languages of the Bible. Some are experts in the ancient cultures and societies of the Bible. Now, you don’t have to become an expert yourself in order to understand (who has time for that?!?). But we should listen to other Christians who are experts. They produce helpful books, articles, and lectures. My point is that God has given these scholars to us, the church, as a gift. I’m one of these scholars and I’ve made some modest contributions. I can tell you that these scholars work very hard to help us all understand the Bible. So we should use their work—Bible commentaries and theology books.
Ok, so we enlist experts to help us. But then how do we do exegesis? Well, perhaps the most important thing is to recognize that different parts of Scripture are written in different genres: narrative history, genealogies, laws of all different kinds, poetry of all different kinds, proverbs, prophecies, riddles, drama, biographies of different figures, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalyptic writings. Interpreting each of these genres means we must understand the rules of that genre. Unfortunately, unpacking those details is too much for this reflection.
Apart from the details of each genre, we can discuss some general principles. The main principle is to read the text carefully and ask the right questions. Sometimes you might be able to answer those questions, sometimes you might need to turn to the experts. There are two basic kinds of questions you can ask: questions about context and questions about content.
First, let’s consider questions about the context. This divides into two parts: the historical context and the literary context. The historical context, of course, is different for different parts of the Bible. This is about the time and culture of the author and his original readers. This can include geography, political events and powers at the time, the reason why that part of the Bible was first written, and other factors. For example, think of the book of Amos. Amos is about how God cares about justice in society. During Amos’ time, the Israelites were engaged in all sorts of unjust practices. Their society had become oppressive and abusive to the poor and the weak. Unless we understand that historical context, we won’t understand what Amos is saying. For another example, think of Jesus’ parable of the lost son in Luke chapter 15. The father runs to his lost son who has returned. In that time and culture, a respected man did not run. But the father runs, and that is really important to understanding the point of the parable. To answer most of the questions about historical context, we need outside help. We are not experts. So, use a Bible dictionary. Get some good commentaries. They really help a lot.
The literary context is about understanding how the part fits into the whole. How does the verse your reading fit into the context around it? This is the most important task in exegesis. You do not need the help of experts to do this. Sometimes they are helpful with this, but you can learn to do it yourself, too. Here’s how it works: words only have meanings in a sentence, and usually a sentence in the Bible only has clear meaning in relation to the sentences before and after it. We can understand the context when we trace the author’s train of thought. What is the author saying and why does the author say that right here? What did the author say before this? What did the author say after this? How does all that determine what this sentence means? This is how we can try to find out what the original author intended to say. This is a skill we develop.
Next, let’s consider questions about the content. “Content” is about what words mean and how they are being used in each verse. It is about grammar and how the words fit together in sentences. The questions about content are questions we often ask about a passage of the Bible. For example, who is the passage talking about? What are they doing? These questions are much easier to answer when you have understood the context.
The second step in interpreting is called contextualization. In this step, we seek the relevance of the Bible for today. What does it mean “here and now”? We can’t do contextualization without first doing exegesis. We first must figure out what it meant “then and there” before we can see what it means “here and now”. We take the original meaning and bring it into our context. We contextualize it to us.
Contextualization is a very complicated process. We must understand the details of the passage we are reading. We must also understand the whole of the Bible, how the big story goes, and how that one passage fits into the big story. We must understand how all the ideas and concepts in the Bible fit together—that is what theology is.
When we do contextualization, we must also understand our culture. We must be good readers of culture and we must be good readers of the Bible. A famous theologian named Karl Barth once said, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” What he means is that we should do both exegesis and contextualization, but we should take the meaning of our Bible and apply it to our context. We should not do it the other way around.