Recap of "How to Read the Bible" Session 1

On Wednesday October 23, 2019 we met for our first of four sessions to study "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth." This meeting focused on answering the following questions:

• What is the Bible?
• How Is The Bible Translated Into English?
• How Should We Interpret?
• Intro to the Epistles

A written recap of the main points that we discussed is provided below. 

To set the stage for this study I briefly described my reasons for offering this study and my goals. I want us, as the church, to be able to handle God's word well so that we understand it and apply it appropriately. The desire is that we have a deep hunger to know God's word in the Bible and are equipped to know Him more through careful reading of His word.

What is the Bible?

• A library - it is a collection of 66 books of varying types all compiled together into one volume
• Dozens of authors - the books in the Bible were written by a bunch of different people at different times in different places
• Long timeline - the books were written over hundreds of years spanning from hundreds of years BC to the first century AD
• Varying genres - the Bible contains many different types of books
• A unified story - the collection of writings in the Bible were codified together because they all tell about a grand story of God’s work in human history, to redeem his people for his glory
• God’s word to us - it is a special revelation from God to us.

How is the Bible Translated Into English?

Every English Bible is a translation. The methods that scholars use to translate the original Hebrew or Greek into English varies along a spectrum shown here.

Word-for-word or formal equivalence translation methods look for the English word that best matches the original Greek or Hebrew. 

Paraphrase or Free translation methods are looking to repackage main point into a way that is easily understood by the reader, not necessarily looking to translate word for word.

This is not to say that any one translation is 'wrong' but we ought to be aware of the underlying translation methods that brought about the versions that we are reading so that we can do our best o understand the original words and content as best as possible.

How Should We Interpret?

The single goal of interpretation is to know the plain meaning of the text. But sometimes that can be difficult to discern due to at least two main challenges.

The reader as an interpreter is one challenge. We all read a text with our own biases based on our unique life experiences. 

The nature of Scripture is a second challenge. God chose to communicate his word in varying genres from different authors in different cultures across centuries of time.

The steps to achieve the goal of interpretation, to know the plain meaning of the text, are simply two:

1. Exegesis - Understand the original intent
2. Hermeneutics - Apply the text to our life but within the context of its original intent

An overarching principle that we ought to keep in mind is this:

Never Read A Bible Verse

The "A" is underlined to emphasize the point that we should never isolate a single verse, we need to read a bit before and after a given verse in order to know the context. Context is critical!

Intro to the Epistles 

We briefly introduced the Epistles because we will look at them first and do a study of them, particularly Colossians, in order to model the interpretive steps of Exegesis then Hermeneutics. THe Epistles are letters written for a certain reason to a church group, e.g., Colossians, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, etc. 

To study these well it is recommended that we do a few things:

1. Research - consult a Bible dictionary to know about the recipients, the culture, the history, etc.
2. Read...read...read - we need to read and reread a given epistle, preferably in one sitting per read through and even speak it out loud. The original recipients would have heard it out loud in one sitting so we ought to do the same.
3. Outline - paraphrase the author's main points paragraph-by-paragraph to see the flow of thought of the epistle
4. Notes - take notes as you read an epistle on the recipients (who are they?), the author's attitude towards them (encouraging? convicting? pastoral?), the reason for the letter, and how the letter is divided/organized.

Finally, for homework, I asked that folks paraphrase the book of Colossians paragraph-by-paragraph so that we can construct our own paraphrased, abridged version of Colossians for next week. We'll use that to then do a case study of solid exegesis and hermeneutics of Colossians.

Next Week

Our next meeting will be next Wednesday, October 30th, 2019 - 6:30 to 8pm in rooms 13-15 of the education building of Mt. Zion UMC. Hope to see you there!