Our Way of Reading Scripture

 

The Bible is made up of many books, and the manuscripts behind them are ancient.  The languages of the Bible are Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.  It is not trivial for us to go back and read those ancient documents.  But we must!  And we are not lost in a world of uncertainty simply because we are so far removed from the events of the Bible and the recording of those events. 

We keep in mind the following as we read:

 

a. Scripture is Inerrant (i.e. without error)

 

b. Know Thyself…

             We are not blank slates without bias

             We have ideas we bring to the text of the Bible

             We have presuppositions that we

                          must discover so that we

                          can account for our own biases

 

c. Reason and History help us in reading scripture and they help us sift through various interpretations

1. We are not confused post-modernists

2. We are not without authority

· Reason is a valid tool for interpreting words

· We can use solid research,

· We have access to ongoing Biblical education (through the seminaries and proven scholarship)

· Archaeology and Biblical Commentaries are not to be ignored or dismissed

 

Church fathers and old commentaries are useful, but they do not trump reason, history and valid research.

 

d. Reading with Archaeology

                          Archaeology is the historian’s professor

                          For example, we use archaeology to understand

                                       1. Solomon’s temple and

                                                    the ancient Near East

                                       2. The Judaism found in Qumran

                                                    and “2nd Temple Judaism”

 

e. The Relation of the Christian to Israel’s Torah

When we read the Bible, we must read so as to account for the fact that the Church is not under the Sinai Covenant. We have to keep track of which stage of the Kingdom of God we find ourselves.

 

Some sample test cases/scriptures are useful in testing our way of reading the Bible.  Those include the following:

 

                          1) Sabbath Laws and Sabbath keeping? 

What do we do with them and the related commandments?

2) Stoning rebellious children in the Torah?

                                       What’s that about!?

                          3) Ezra commands divorce? 

                                       Is that for us?

                          4) Malachi commands Levitical tithing?

How are we to integrate that into our thinking?

 

f. Reading the Gospels as narratives from the first century

             When reading one of the four gospel:

1. Read the entire Gospel from start to end!

2. Don’t think of the Gospels as collections, but as unified wholes.

3. Read the gospel’s in context of all of Scripture.

 

g. Covenant Theology compared to Dispensational Theology

Like it or not, these two categories predominate in the church. Even if you are not familiar with these terms, you fit within one stream of thought — a way of reading the Bible. There are two big ways that Bible-believing, Jesus-loving theologians read the Bible:

 

                          Dispensational vs. Covenantal

 

Q. Which way do we read the Bible within these two options?

A. We are mostly Covenantal, though we do account for major discontinuities between the covenants. 

 

h. Story-Arc: God’s Image and New Exodus

From Genesis to Revelation, there is a story of God’s Image, and the story of what God is like, and how he is imaged in someone being like him.  The Bible is a story about God — following off the five stages discussed earlier.  His image is developed in the story of Exodus and New Exodus.  Jesus enacted a New Exodus in his flesh (cf. Luke 9, and the Mt. of Transfiguration event).

 

i. God’s Passion for his own Glory

Defending his justice, being God in the world.

 

 

Louisburg, Kansas

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Eastside Church of the Cross