In some ways, the most difficult things to interpret in the Bible are the historical narratives.  Not the laws, not the wisdom literature, not the prophecies. No it’s the narratives.  Why?  In part, it is because of the striking honesty of the narratives. We see even the main positive characters sin and have feet of clay, with the notable exception of Jesus of course. This is true of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Joshua, Gideon, and I could go on... Read more

  One of the tendencies of conservative readers of the Bible is to minimize, ignore, misinterpret or whittle off the bits that are difficult or where there are differences in the accounts.  Let’s deal with examples of each mistake, taking the latter example first. As is well known, the four accounts of the three denials of Christ by Peter accompanied by cockcrow or cockcrows differ.  All of the accounts agree that Peter did exactly what Jesus predicted he would do,... Read more

Eschatology is by definition the study of the final or end things, but the term itself has been coupled with the term apocalyptic to refer to a specific kind of eschatology, dealing with a specific kind of prophecy— namely visionary prophecy like one finds in Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, the book of Revelation, and various early Jewish books like 1 Enoch or even 4 Ezra. A word of caution is in order. The last place to start reading and interpreting the... Read more

The Bible is not, overall, a piece of coded literature written in elaborately allegorical manner with all sorts of hidden meanings, which needs to be decoded to be understood.  Thank goodness.  Just to be clear what allegory is– it is a story which has a surface meaning within the story, but in fact those story elements refer primarily to things outside the story. Typical allegories are the Christian example Pilgrim’s Progress or the literary example Spencer’s The Fairy Queen.  One... Read more

The Bible is a wonderful collection of all sorts or genres of literature, and it does not just involve prose and poetry though it has plenty of both of those types of literature. Ideally, the goal of Biblical Interpretation is to interpret the Bible as the inspired authors intended for us to interpret it.  When they are being figurative, let them be figurative, when they are being literal, let them be literal. When they are using symbols let’s not turn... Read more

One of the perennial problems of Biblical Interpretation is figuring out what exactly the Bible is trying to teach us. NOT, what are all the subjects mentioned in passing, but what subjects does the Bible teach us about.  The list of what it doesn’t teach us about is much longer than what it does, for example the Bible is not a scientific textbook of any sort.  It does not teach cosmology, it does not teach evolution, it does not teach... Read more

There is so much false information out there about the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that I thought I would simply print what it actually says and what Constitutional scholars say it meant according to the original intent of the framers of the Constitution.  Here is what it actually says…. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” But what was... Read more

One of the absolutely major problems in the way some conservative Christians read the Bible is that they do not understand the progressive nature not only of the salvation historical narrative in the Bible, but also the progressive nature of God’s revelation of himself and his truth throughout the Bible.  This is sometimes coupled with a mistaken reading about the nature of covenants in the Bible, as if there was just one covenant throughout all human history which was renewed... Read more

    Sometimes I get really frustrated with some Biblical scholars.  They can’t see the forest for the over-analyzed particular trees.  And one such issue is the issue of slavery.  Let’s be clear that slavery as a social practice was part of the world of the OT in the Ancient Near East, and the world of the NT which was the Greco-Roman world.   It is quite true that we have plenty of material that talks about slavery in the OT... Read more

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