Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

J. Scott Duvall (PhD, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Ouachita Baptist University. He is the coauthor of Grasping God’s Word, Journey into God’s Word, Preaching God’s Word, and God’s Relational Presence, and author of The Heart of Revelation and Revelation in the Teach the Text Commentary series. He teaches and preaches frequently in local churches.

J. Daniel Hays (PhD, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is dean of the Pruet School of Christian Studies and professor of Old Testament at Ouachita Baptist University. He is the author of From Every People and Nation, The Message of the Prophets, The Temple and the Tabernacle, and A Christian’s Guide to Evidence for the Bible: 101 Proofs from History and Archaeology. He has coauthored or coedited Grasping God’s Word; Journey into God’s Word; Preaching God’s Word; The Baker Illustrated Bible Background Commentary; Jeremiah and Lamentations; The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology; and God’s Relational Presence: The Cohesive Center of Biblical Theology. He teaches adult Sunday School at his local church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and also speaks both regionally and internationally.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Life is a journey, and like any journey, it requires an accurate, reliable roadmap to get us where we need to go. God has provided such a guide in his Word. But just as a navigator needs to learn how to interpret all the contours and symbols of a map, so also we need to be able to understand how the Bible communicates its directions to us. Journey Into God's Word helps Bible readers acquire these skills and become better at reading, interpreting, and applying the Bible to life.

This abridgment of the bestselling college/seminary textbook Grasping God's Word takes the proven principles from that book and makes them accessible to people in the church. It starts with general principles of interpretation, then moves on to apply those principles to specific genres and contexts. Hands-on exercises guide readers through the interpretation process, with an emphasis on real-life application.

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Journey into God's Word

Zondervan

Contents

Preface.............................................................91. The Interpretive Journey........................................112. Serious Reading.................................................233. Keep Your Eye on the Horizon....................................324. What Do We Bring to the Text?...................................425. Discovering the Historical-Cultural Context.....................506. Discovering the Literary Context................................627. Which Bible Translation Should I Use?...........................758. Meaning and Application.........................................859. New Testament-Letters...........................................9710. New Testament-Gospels..........................................10511. New Testament-Acts.............................................11512. New Testament-Revelation.......................................12413. Old Testament-Law..............................................13014. Old Testament-Prophets.........................................13815. Old Testament-Psalms...........................................147Notes...............................................................155Index...............................................................157

Chapter One

A wrinkled old man in the mountains of Ethiopia sips coffee and peers through weathered, ancient reading glasses at his worn Amharic Bible to read once again the story of David and Goliath. A middle-aged woman is bouncing along on a bus in Buenos Aires, reading and reflecting on Psalm 1. A young Korean executive, on his way home to Seoul from a business trip to Singapore, flies above the clouds at 35,000 feet, reading and pondering the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 5. And in a dorm room in San Diego, California, a young college student polishes off another Mountain Dew and then looks back down at her laptop computer to finish reading Mark's account of how Jesus miraculously calmed a raging storm on the Sea of Galilee.

People all over the world love reading the Bible - and they have loved it for thousands of years. Why? People read the Bible because it is a fascinating book, filled with gripping stories and challenging exhortations. People read it because it is an important book, dealing with the big issues of life-God, eternal life, death, love, sin, and morals. People read it because they believe that in the Bible God speaks to them through written words. The Bible encourages us, lifts our spirits, comforts us, guides us, chides us, builds us up, gives us hope, and brings us close to the living God.

Some parts of the Bible are easy to understand, but much of it is not. Most Christians, however, desire to understand all of God's Word, not just the easy portions. Many of us want to be able to dig deeper into that Word. We want to see more and to understand more of the biblical text. We also want to know that we understand the Bible correctly. That is, we want to be confident that we can pull the actual truth out of a text and not just develop an arbitrary, fanciful, or incorrect interpretation. This book is designed for such people.

The process of interpreting and grasping the Bible is similar to embarking on a journey. Reading the text thoroughly and carefully lies at the beginning of the journey. From this careful reading we become able to determine what the passage meant in the biblical context-that is, what it meant to the biblical audience.

Often, however, when we try to apply this meaning directly to ourselves, we run into problems. We are separated from the biblical audience by culture and customs, language, situation, and a vast expanse of time. These differences form a barrier-a river that separates us from the text and that often prohibits us from grasping the meaning of the text for ourselves.

If that were not enough, the Old Testament widens the river by adding another major interpretive barrier that separates us from the audience. Between the Old Testament biblical audience and Christian readers today lies a change in covenant. We as New Testament believers are under the new covenant, and we approach God through the sacrifice of Christ. The Old Testament people, however, were under the old covenant, and for them the law was central. In other words, the theological situation for the two groups is different. There is a covenant barrier between the Old Testament audience and us because we are under different covenants.

Thus, the river between the Old Testament text and us consists not only of culture, language, situation, and time, but also of covenant. We have much more in common with the New Testament audience; yet even in the New Testament, the different culture, language, and specific situations can present a formidable barrier to our understanding of the meaning of the text. The river is often too deep and too wide simply to wade across.

As a result, today's Christian is often uncertain about how to interpret much of the Bible. How should we understand Leviticus 19:19, which prohibits wearing a garment made of two types of material? Does this mean that obedient Christians should wear only 100 percent cotton clothes? In Judges 6:37 Gideon puts out a fleece in order to confirm what God had told him. Does this mean that we should put out fleeces when we seek God's leading?

Passages in the New Testament are not always much clearer. For example, Peter walks on the water in Matthew 14:29. Does this mean that we should attempt to walk on water in our obedience to Christ? If not, what does it mean and how can we apply that passage to our lives? Even if we cannot walk on water, how do we cross the river that separates us from the text?

Any attempt to interpret and to apply the Bible involves trying to cross the river. While often unconscious of their interpretive method, many Christians today nonetheless frequently employ an intuitive or feels-right approach to interpretation. If the text looks as if it could be applied directly, then they attempt to apply it directly. If not, then they take a spiritualizing approach to the meaning-an approach that borders on allegorizing the biblical text (which shows little or no sensitivity to the biblical context). Or else they simply shrug their shoulders and move onto another passage, ignoring the meaning of the text altogether.

Such approaches will never land us safely on the other side of the river. Those using the intuitive approach blindly wade out into the river, hoping that the water is not more than knee deep. Sometimes they are fortunate and stumble onto a sandbar, but often they step out into deep water, and they end up washed ashore somewhere downstream. Those who spiritualize, by contrast, try to jump the river in one grand leap, but they also end up washed ashore downstream with their intuitive buddies. Shrugging or ignoring a passage is to remain on the far side of the river and simply to gaze across without even attempting to cross.

Many Christians are admittedly uncomfortable with such approaches, recognizing the somewhat willy-nilly methodology and the extreme subjectivity involved, but they continue to use them because they are the only method they know. How do we move from the world of the biblical audience to the world of today?...