Understand the Historic Context: In order to understand the words we read in the Bible we must
understand the history surrounding the particular document we are reading. This
is the way Bible scholars describe this task: “In speaking through real
persons, in a variety of circumstances, over a 1500-year period, God’s Word was
expressed in the vocabulary and through patterns of those persons and
conditioned by the culture of those times and circumstances. That is to say,
God’s Word to us was first of all his Word to them. If they were going to hear
it, it could only have come through events and in language they could have understood.” We
need to know what the text said to its original readers before we can possibly
understand what it means today. “Thus the task of interpreting involves the
student/reader at two levels. First, one has to hear the Word they heard; he or
she must try to understand what was said to them back then and there. Second, one must learn to
hear that same Word in the here and now.“ (Fee and Stuart, p. 18; emphasis added)
How does someone who is not an archaeologist or
historian get this context? There are a number of standard reference books
which provide this information. They are called commentaries, Bible
encyclopedias and Bible dictionaries. There are also versions of the Bible that
include brief notes about this kind of information as footnotes and
introductions to the Bible documents. These are called “helps” and often have
been authored by well-known evangelists, preachers and scholars.
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