Understanding The Bible

Guidelines for Understanding the Bible

The Bible is the word of God

1. The Bible makes an astounding claim: it claims to be the word of God – and it is!

a. The Bible has been vindicated by its historical accuracy, hundreds of fulfilled prophecies, and hundreds of thousands of changed lives

2. God delivered his words of Scripture through men called prophets

a. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16-17)

b. “knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from

It is important to realize that the Bible, the whole Bible, represents ancient Jewish or Middle Eastern literature

2. It is not American literature, and it is not modern literature

3. The Bible is a collection of books – there are 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books

4. The Old Testament books are around 2400 to 3500 years old and were mainly written in Hebrew with a few chapters written in Aramaic

5. The New Testament books are a little over 2000 years old and were originally written in Greek

6. Our present day Bibles are translations of copies of inspired manuscripts

7. Bible history not only represents a different culture from a time long ago, but it also represents many cultures from numerous periods of history long ago

Guidelines to understand and interpret the Bible

1. Any attempt to read and understand the Bible involves interpretation

2. Interpretation is not optional; it is necessary – the question is whether it is done well or poorly

3. There are different guidelines for interpreting distinctive types of literature - historical narrative, law, poetry, prophecy, letters as well as others

4. This is not a course on Biblical interpretation, but it is important to be aware of the factors

It is a form of balance with the focus of emphasis at in the center point of the outline rather than at the end

h. This structure of a chiasmus can be present across multiple chapters of Scripture which at times results in a repetition that may seem convoluted and may go against a strict chronology

4. Genealogies are not intended to be a comprehensive record of all descendants

a. It was understood that Biblical genealogies were often abbreviated instead of being all-inclusive and did not list every descendant

b. They provided proof of lineage from certain key people in a genealogical line as well as proving the tribe to which they belonged

c. At times the number of people listed in a genealogy seems to be based on literary purposes – such as intentionally listing only 7 people or 10 people in a family line for numerological or symbolic reasons

d. In ancient cultures, the term “son” could mean a literal son or a descendant, and in some cases, it could refer to a