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

Product Information

It was a great help for me, as it will be for you—particularly if you are accustomed to the all-too-common habit of "proof-texting"—i.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth helps readers of all kinds get the most out of their Bible-reading experience. If God's word about women wearing men's clothing or people having parapets around houses is to speak to us, we first need to know what it said to its original hearers—and why. If you are a dogmatic and rigid Christian unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with examining your belief system, or if you are a dogmatic and rigid atheist who refuses to believe in spite of evidence, then this book will likely irritate you. Still, it is a comprehensive book for most looking for an introduction to the Bible, how it is assembled and how it ought to be read.

Another example takes the plain meaning of the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17–22) as precisely the opposite of "what it actually says" and attributes the "interpretation" to the Holy Spirit.

I knew to read in context, and that many people take a single verse for their purposes without considering what’s around it for interpretation, but yet I was guilty of shallow examination of verses I thought I knew—the “easy” ones that seemed pretty clear-cut. The main purpose of this book is providing the interpreter with a compendium of concepts on how to properly interpret Scripture through the dual concepts of exegesis and hermeneutics. All in all, this has been a deeply valuable reference for learning to read the Bible--and to explain to others how they can better understand it themselves and find relevant life application. I'd long understood that most abuses of biblical quotation and interpretation centered around either proof-texting, or a simple lack of thorough reading (not reading the verse before and after the verse in question, never mind taking the time to read the full paragraph or chapter it's actually found in.We need to read our Bibles in light of the historical-grammatical understanding with which the Bible was written. Its discussion of translations and the translation process is good (though biased because both of them are on the NIV translation board and so, unsurprisingly, they applaud the NIV and downplay its major competitors like the ESV). Something I enjoyed in the reading was that there was not one single Bible translation that was held up as the ONLY valid one to read. This book is a high recommendation for anyone who wants to read the Bible in the way it was meant to be read and interpreted on your own.

How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth is replete with concepts applicable to every believer, regardless of their level of theological acumen. Douglas Stuart is Professor of Old Testament and Chair of the Division of Biblical Studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. We are supposed to read and understand and love the word of God, but it is hard sometimes to do all of those things with a work of literature that was written thousands of years ago and half a world away. Interpretation of the Bible is demanded by the "tension" that exists between its eternal relevance and its historical particularity .He also published a textbook on New Testament interpretation, co-authored two books for lay people on biblical interpretation, as well as scholarly-popular commentaries on 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus and on Galatians, and major commentaries on 1 Corinthians and Philippians. I had to put the book aside for nearly a month and debated the whole time if it was even worth continuing. We cannot claim not to interpret (“it just means what it says so no interpretation is necessary”) because we are all doing it all the time. And their approach to chapter 13 (the Revelation) which seemed to shy away from the fantastical part of the imagery. Given all this diversity, both inside and outside the church, and all the differences even among scholars, who supposedly know "the rules," it is no wonder that some argue for no interpretation, just reading.

An awareness of the intention and influence the law had on ancient Israel will only enhance the understanding of the Biblical narrative; a position which Fee and Stuart repeatedly asseverate. Let it be said at the outset—and repeated throughout—that the aim of good interpretation is not uniqueness; one is not trying to discover what no one else has ever seen before. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. As noted by the Fee and Stuart, "even though the Old Testament laws are not our law, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Law is no longer a valuable part of the Bible.Used all around the world, this Bible resource covers everything from how to choose a good translation to how to understand the different genres of biblical writing. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. But one begins to wonder what the "plain meaning" really is when financial prosperity is argued as the will of God from such a passage as, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth" (3 John 2, KJV)—a text that in fact has nothing at all to do with financial prosperity. They are trying to guard against someone trying to make a text mean whatever they want it to mean through allegorizing it or taking the "what does this mean to you" route.