Principles of scripture interpretation

One should rigorously test all one's conclusions drawn from Scripture by looking through these principles. Although not exhaustive, in our experience they are sufficient to provide a reasonable degree of certainty and peace of mind that the knowledge achieved is correct.

Helping you practice this skill is one of the goals of this section of the website.

Unambiguity

Luke 10:25 And behold, one learned in the Law stood up and wanted to test him: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 26 Jesus said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?"

Jesus calls on the questioner not only to know the Law, but also to be able to interpret, explain and interpret the Law. The study of God's Word is essentially an art of interpretation, or skill"read between the lines". At the beginning there is a reasoning based on "common sense".

QUESTION:

It is necessary to decide whether a certain child is boy or girl.

The following data (arguments, evidence) are available - the child has:

1. Pink clothes //2. Coral //3. Earrings //4. Bracelets //5. Bows in hair //6. Guts //7. Skirt //8. Long hair

But (!) - There is a male genital organ in the incriminated place on the body!

ANSWER:

It's a baby boy. (Probably at a masquerade ball, dressed as a princess)

CONCLUSION:

Eight arguments pointed to a little girl, one single argument with a higher value "beat" all the previous eight. What is the difference between these arguments?

The eight were argumentsINDIRECT, or notMULTIPLE SIGNIFICANT! (They can mean either one or the other...)

That one is an argumentDIRECT, or notCLEAR! (It can only mean one thing...)

Context

It is written in Scripture:

Matthew 19:6 ...And because what God has joined together, do not separate!

If we take this text as a single sentence, we can come to the most reasonable conclusions. If our good Lord God does not wish us to divide anything that He has joined together, a long list of all sorts of natural materials will jump out at us, the use of which would be a grievous sin, for it is inevitably connected with the necessity of dividing these materials. It would be unacceptable, therefore, to break stone into blocks in order to pave pavements; anyone who wished to chop wood, even for a stove, would have to do so in complete secrecy, Otherwise, he would be cursed and excommunicated from the assembly of God's people, and the theological committees would have to judge whether the spinning of threads for the production of textiles was not also a violation of this principle, since, at least in the case of flax and cotton, it is preceded by a very suspicious combing. It is only with the context in which this verse is set that relief comes and all of the above activities take on the status of lagal activities pleasing to the Lord.

Matthew 19:3 Then the Pharisees came to him and tempted him: “Is it lawful to put away a wife for any reason?” 4 He answered them: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female'? 5 And he said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh;' 6 so that they are no longer two, but one. And because what God has joined together, do not put asunder!"

The context of Jesus's answer is the question of the Pharisees, which was about marriage. That is why not separating what God has joined is only related to the theme of marriage. The Lord God does not want a person to dissolve a marriage into which he entered on the basis of God's principles given to this world.

Compliance with the total

The Bible is so inspired by the Lord God that only a knowledge of the Scriptures in their entirety will make the mosaic of knowledge of the things revealed by God complete.

The story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness tells us that to pick out one verse and explain it without considering the total of the scripture is "tricky and deceitful". When the Tempter saw that Jesus's only defense began with the phrase "It is written...", he began to abuse that phrase to his own advantage.

Matthew 4:5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on top of the temple. 6 "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down! For it is written, 'He will command His angels concerning you, and they will bear you up on their hands, lest your foot strike a stone.'" 7 Jesus said to him: "It is also written, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'"

We can see that it is not enough to know "what is written", we need to know "what is also written".

This places certain demands on the student to be able to find, if possible, all the places in the Bible that speak on the subject. There are many aids for this purpose. First of all, there are Bible concordances which arrange Bible verses by individual words, arranged in alphabetical order. So, for example, all the verses that contain the word "sea" will be found together in a concordance.

A very good modern aid for computer users are the many Bible programs that can search the Bible for a verse by the word searched for, and sort it if the student wishes. One of these (in my opinion the best so far) is downloadable here, along with instructions on how to install everything.

Interpretation of the text

So far we have covered that we have:

1. Asked the question and...
2. searched for appropriate Bible verses with answers.

In a systematic, or EXPLORATORY, Bible study, we need the opposite approach:

1. We have verse and
2. we look for the question to which this verse OBVIOUSLY gives an answers

James 1:2 Rejoice only in this, my brothers, whenever you fall into various trials.

QUESTION:

Should we be happy about trials?

This is the basic information we can get from the verse James 1:2 find out. We should not even look for anything else in this verse. If we process the entire Bible in this way, we will receive the information that God wanted to convey to us.

List of Wikipasswords

LIST OF PASSWORDS WITHIN THE WIKIPEDIA project

This is a list of passwords created by the author* or significantly supplemented within the project of the Internet encyclopedia - Wikipedia. All these passwords are processed in their founding version based on the principles stated on this website.

BARK, SWIMMING POOL, BENJAMIN, DEBORAH, EHÚD, ESAU, Gehazi, HERODIADES, GREED, JAPHET, CAIN, KALEB, NEVER, MIRIAM, RACHAB, SARAH, TENT, TERACH, ANXIETY, GRIEF

Principles of scripture interpretation

List of Wikipasswords

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