Understand the Literary Context: In order to understand a specific statement or verse in the Bible,
it is essential to see all of the other Bible verses related to that topic as
well as to understand the reason the particular statement is included in the
document or “book” of the Bible in which you are reading. “One of the most
important aspects of the human side of the Bible is that to communicate His
Word to all human conditions, God chose to use almost every available kind of
cultural communication: narrative history, genealogies, chronicles, laws of all
kinds, poetry of all kinds, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama,
biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses. To
interpret properly the ‘then and there’ of the biblical texts, one must not
only know some general rules that apply to all the words of the Bible, but one
needs to learn the special rules that apply to each of these literary forms
(genres). And the way God communicates His Word to us in the ‘here and now’
will often differ from one form to another. For example, we need to know how a psalm, a form that was
often addressed to God, functions as God’s Word to us, and how psalms differ from ‘laws,’ which were often addressed to
people in cultural situations no longer in existence. How do such ‘laws’ speak to us,
and how do they differ from the moral ‘laws’ which are always valid in
all circumstances?” (Fee and Stuart, p. 20) These are the questions Bible
scholars have puzzled over for centuries and they are essential to interpreting
Scripture.
Again, the way you get all the right kind of
information about the texts and stories of Scripture is by utilizing the
standard tools of Bible study: a good Bible dictionary (that defines the many
different words in the Bible), a good Bible handbook (that gives much of the
cultural context of the stories), a good translation of the Bible, and good
Bible commentaries (verse-by-verse descriptions of the best scholarship
relating to each Bible passage).
And there’s also no substitute for the
discipline of simply asking good questions as you read the Bible. Two kinds of
questions: who wrote this, when was it written, where was it written, what kind
of document is it, and why was it written? These questions are attempting to
get at the original meaning and setting. Literary
context refers to the principle that words only have
meaning in sentences and sentences only have meaning in relation to preceding
and following sentences and paragraphs. How does the material before and after
explain this statement? A good question to ask as your read the Bible: What’s
the point? Careful observation is crucial; the choice and meaning of words, the
grammatical relationships in sentences, why this particular description. What
was the author trying to communicate?
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