"Herme- what?" How to Understand the Bible

There are many ways to interpret (understand the meaning of, not translate) Scripture; however, the first place one must start is an evaluation of exactly what it is. Is the Bible a revelation from God or is it a collection of stories by various authors? Is it fact or fiction? Is it accurate or faulty? Where one stands on questions like that will have great impact on how the Bible is understood.

I believe that the Bible is the revelation of God by God through man (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21). This was accomplished as God-breathed it to human authors (the meaning of the underlying Greek word in 2 Tim. 3:16). The mechanics of exactly how this happened were not revealed, but the Holy Spirit used human authors, not as robots, to record the Word of God to be preserved for mankind. The Bible is totally without error and is positively true in all aspects as originally written. It has been preserved as a manuscript better than any other in history through thousands of fragments, complete books, and translations. If one does not understand the Bible as God's accurate revelation, there is little basis for faith or religion. At that point, it has become at best a collection of human moral teachings mixed with some crazy ones. Why put your hope for eternal destiny in a flawed book or one that is just an allegory? How could you?

Now having established this, the way to interpret the Bible is a field called "hermeneutics." There are many means of interpreting it, from the allegorical hermeneutic that takes everything as an allegory to be used for moral living to the normal, literal hermeneutic that accepts what the Bible says in the most literal way as intended for the original/intended audience unless the text itself says otherwise. Because of my belief in the Bible as the Word of God, I feel compelled to go with a normal, literal hermeneutic.

Let's look at how that fleshes out in practice. Prophecy and parables are introduced as such within their context and often contain figurative language. Figurative language is interpreted figuratively and as it would have meant to the intended, original audience in their culture. Idioms are expressions that mean more than the sum of their words ("tongue in cheek," "smell a rat," etc.), and so one has to understand what they meant to the author and original audience within their historical, cultural setting. Basically, I interpret the Bible like it was meant to be given my belief that it is the Word of God. If Jesus told His 1st Century Jewish disciples to look at a group of spiritually hungry people as being "white unto harvest," I need to understand 1st Century agriculture in Palestine to get a really accurate picture of what He meant. Genesis tells us that the world was created by an omnipotent God in 6 consecutive days, so I interpret that as 6 literal, consecutive days, unlike others who see them as representative of epochs of time or separated by millions of years. Am I making this picture clear here?

To interpret the Bible fully and properly, one has to look at individual words, context, writing style, genre, linguistic history, culture, geography, science, political history, philosophy, and really everything that went into writing and understanding it with the original author and original audience. Isn't that exactly what we do whenever we read something written today? While we probably don't do it consciously, all these things happen. That is why this hermeneutic is called a "normal" hermeneutic, because it interprets the Bible as it would normally be interpreted. Sounds like a daunting task? It is, but that shouldn't discourage anyone from just reading it and thinking it through. There are study aids, pastors, and the most importantly the Holy Spirit to help you understand. Also, it is a lifelong learning progression, so that doesn't happen overnight.

This post is only intended to be an introduction to the topic, and by no means does it explain things to their end. If you would like to study some more about how to interpret the Bible, I would suggest reading Basic Bible Interpretation by Roy Zuck.