The art of biblical interpretation: Not just like any book

If you visit GoThereFor then you almost certainly regard reading the Bible as an important activity. You are probably involved in helping other people read and understand it. You think that reading the Bible well matters. This is the first in a series of articles that will look at how we read the Bible well.

It’s common to accuse Bible readers of finding whatever meaning suits them, and to say that understanding the Bible is all just a matter of interpretation. This can be a cheap shot, an easy way to avoid a serious discussion by hiding behind popular relativism, but there’s a truth in it. I’m sure you’ve heard people get a message out of a Bible passage that seems very convenient. You might think of times when you’ve personally been guilty of it.

An important step in making sure that we aren’t just reading the Bible to suit ourselves is to clarify the assumptions we have about the Bible and how to understand it. The big idea for this series is that reading the Bible properly depends on our theology, and especially on our doctrine of Scripture. When you are clear about what the Bible is, you can read it well. So I want to look at some of the most important things that we believe about that Bible, and show the implications for Bible reading.

I won’t be arguing in detail for each claim about the Bible, though I will note something about its basis. The focus will be on the implications of the nature of Scripture for the art of Bible reading. We’ll see that it both encourages and challenges some of the ways we read the Bible.

To make the point negatively, we don’t read the Bible like we read other books. Back in 1826, Benjamin Jowett, an English scholar, made the famous claim about reading the Bible just “like any other book”.¹ He considered much of the biblical interpretation of his time to be needlessly defensive or undisciplined and fanciful. He instead wanted to understand the Bible “by the same rules of evidence and the same canons of criticism”as any other book, and he thought that when it was read that way “the Bible will still remain unlike any other book”.² He supported what was then known as ‘higher criticism’.

Jowett's claim was controversial at the time, but over the years it has become common sense—even among the theological heirs of those who opposed him.

Lots of us have been impressed by the fact that reading the Bible is not some magical process. We don’t understand the Bible by solving a secret code. The idea that the Bible is a puzzle to be decoded goes back at least as far as Origen (185-254 AD), who taught that the real meaning of the Bible was concealed in the literal meaning and had to be prised out by allegorical interpretation.

Like Jowett, many modern evangelicals have found that understanding the language of the Bible, its literary genres and historical context, make it far easier to understand.

I am not denying the place of these methods, or the value of a scholarship that builds on them and investigates the language, rhetoric and context of the Bible. I am insisting that this is not enough to understand the Bible well, and that it is not the most important thing to do when Bible reading.

Christians are convinced that the Bible is not like any other book. It is God’s word to his people. I want to show what it means for reading the Bible when we start with that truth. The next few posts will look at the author of the Bible: God. Then we’ll see that the Bible is God’s covenant book, that it is God’s word to his people, through his people, and it is understood by his Spirit in order to change us. Each of those elements should guide the way we read the Bible. And they provide the framework for applying some of the skills of general reading that we should bring to our Bible reading.

For further reading:
RWL Moberly, ‘“Interpret the Bible Like Any Other Book”? Requiem for an Axiom’, Journal of Theological Interpretation, volume 4, no. 1, 2010, pp. 91-110.

1. B Jowett, ‘On the Interpretation of Scripture’, The Interpretation of Scripture and Other Essays, Routledge & Sons, London, 1860, p. 34.

2. ibid.

Photo credit: khrawlings