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HOW TO UNDERSTAND AND INTERPRET THE BIBLE

What are your understandings about the Bible, as there are many concepts that may be not be easy for the reader to understand. How might you understand what is read in the Bible, and interpret it into your own terms?

Steps
 1. Find a mentor, or a willing and qualified teacher.
You should be able to consult someone with experience in exegesis (clear explanation or searching interpretation) of the Bible to help you. For example, a pastor, a youth minister or deacon in your church; a rabbi or a rabbinic scholar-in-residence in your community. When discussing the Bible with your mentor or teacher, remember that his or her interpretation may not be complete. Resolve and document which mode of interpretation he or she may be employing.

2.Decide and pick one or more of the following attitudes towards apprehending the Bible.
You decide how much time you wish to invest.
Understanding and interpreting the Bible is a life-time journey. It will start by offering a sincere prayer to the heavenly Father, and ask Him what topic you want to know more about, being specific in the words you say. This will help you to get a testimony and help you develop the Christlike attribute to distinguish things spiritually.

Accept that you can catch some ideas skimming the surface of the reading, but there are lots of other understandings at deeper levels, by cross references to related scriptures.
Reading and understanding the Bible may be a form of prayer and devotion. The intensity with which one studies the Bible is a communication to the Author of the intensity and sincerity of prayers and the intensity and sincerity of revelation and answers one expects from the Author.
You may delve into the original languages and even archaeological comparisons of the Bible sometime in your life.

Gems in scriptures that you dig from the Bible are valuable inheritances to be passed on from one generation to the next. The intensity to invest in understanding the Bible limits the value of the inheritance. The limits and capacity to be a mentor is defined by the investment you're willing to make.
The authority of the Bible stands on its own and explains itself through revelation but to dive deeper in for the answers, prayer is needed to have the confirmation of the holy ghost that what you are learning are true principles of the gospel.

Read, ponder and pray to get the spiritual confirmation that your interpretation is true, remembering the writings in the Bible are not to be "private interpretation" (for you alone).
You may choose to limit your understanding of the Bible to your language.
The Bible is like a telephone directory where one may expect a complete interpretation in whatever passage you happen to lay eyes. (This attitude may be known as employing "hit and run" or guerrilla tactics towards understanding the Bible; try comparing related scriptures.)
Though the Divine Author of the Bible is very enthusiastic in making revelation to us, don't expect all the gems of a passage to be immediately clear and gathered by a quick reading of a passage in the English language.

Ones understanding of the Bible would not be the same yesterday, today and forever, but you can be inspired to be a preacher, prophet, or to teach under authority of the church, based on the scriptural Gospel.
 
3. Set realistic goals and milestones you wish to achieve according to the attitudes you have chosen to take throughout your life time. An example of goal planning is:
One year from now - complete reading the whole Bible in English collecting as many surface flotsam as possible, following the same routine: read, ponder and prayer to consider whether it's true or not.
  • 2nd year - study many of the cross-reference relationships that are established by renowned scholars plus a little of my own cross-references.
  • 3rd year - start an archaeological comparison.
  • 5th year - start studying Greek or Latin in the Bible.
  • 10th year - start on the Bible in Hebrew and Aramaic.
4. Determine a regimen of studies that is best suited for you.

5. Divide the the Bible into 52 consecutive portions and each portion is allotted to a week of the year. Or, read and study the Bible on your own throughout the year according to a weekly calendar:
Follow an established calendar which assigns portions to each week of the year. For example, Orthodox Jews follow a one year cycle. Whereas, Reform and Conservative Jews follow a three year cycle. A calendar available to Christians is one planned by "The Daily Bread". Search the web for the key phrase "Bible reading calendars".

Devise and plan a calendar and time frame suitable for your personal goals. An effective way is to emulate the Jewish Bible reading calendar in how they combine related passages in the Torah and Haftarah into one reading, but using your own time frame. Christians may follow the same model, but with an additional time portioned-out for the New Testament. This would prevent myopic interpretation of the Bible.
 
6. You might need to further discipline yourself (since you probably have a daytime job) by assigning the days of the week of your calendar to:
  • A day devoted to reading and meditating on the Bible passages alone.
  • A day for searching cross-references and concordances.
  • A day for reading commentaries and searching the web.
  • The rest of the week to consolidate your interpretation to update your blog.
  • A day for reading and writing arguments to comments accumulated in your blog.
 7. Realise that there are a number of modes of interpretation.
Decide and reason on which combination of modes you wish to have. Debate and argue with your peers or religious leaders on the appropriate modes.

All scripture verses are somehow applicable. None supersedes another, and unless a scriptural portion is specifically voided by a later revelation, every book, chapter and verse is applicable now as it has been and as it will be forever. Later revelations reinforce but do not void the truth of earlier ones.
All scripture verses are equal but some are more thought provoking. Divine revelation is progressive. The later revelations clarify earlier revelations.

Scripture is not always contextual to its era and culture. All scripture is applicable today though it is not possible to relive the cultural context of the era which had been the basis of a scriptural portion, but the principles taught can be made relevant and instructional.

Scripture is divinely inspired but humanly interpreted and humanely implemented. Rules of humanity never supersede scripture. It reflects the moral attitudes pro and con on which we can meditate and which we should learn to apply or to avoid.

Scripture is divinely inspired and those portions that touch on science are not meant as a science text, and those that archaeologists have disputed are not inaccurate but are still buried under modern cities. Some tunneling under cities in Israel is done and may reveal astonishing relics at any time.

Scripture is historically authoritative, and if any portion is questioned by science and archeology, it shows that science and archeology should not make conclusive statements, on inadequate data and on speculation.
Scripture should be interpreted by spiritual persons and authorities who then release their various interpretations to the public.

The interpreter may listen to the Holy Spirit who can inspire the interpreter on which of the above modes are more applicable to which portion. However, it is not justified to emphasize one portion of scripture, if such interpretation is in conflict with other portions of scripture.
 
8. Visit a bookstore or online store.
Find books about the Bible, and/or Bible studies, with insights that might help you understand what you read. The following are helpful tools:
A concordance like Strong's concordance, which classifies every word of the Bible in the original language and defines the meaning.

A lay person's cultural, archaeological and paleontological guide to regions of the Bible. Many of these books are written by atheists or agnostics. You do not need to subscribe to their atheistic views, but their cultural and archaeological insights could be helpful to see the opposite points. Those like Isaac Asimov's guide may try to be very persuasive in attempting to convert you to be an a doubter; so, you have to be careful in separating truth from falsifiable facts of unbelievers, possibly, purposely weighted and shaded personal or even collective interpretations.

9. Book mark the web sites you find helpful.

10. Keep a blog of each of your scriptural reading, your interpretations, other people's interpretations and use tags to classify each interpretation with these modes.
  • Use one blog page per interpretation to facilitate tagging and rating. Each blog page should be sectioned into:
  • The scripture reading
  • The interpretation narrative
  • Scripture cross references
  • And very important - Classify each scripture cross-reference with whether this interpretation reinforces, duplicates, voids, supersedes or has conflict with.
  • Source of interpretation
  • Notable adherents or people who agree with that interpretation
 11. Using your blog as a tool, meditate and discuss with peers and mentors to find out why you are unable to classify interpretations along consistent modes.
 
12. Either rate the blog pages yourself or get your peers involved to rate them.
Ask them to leave comments.
 
13. Get your peers to contribute to your blog and publish your blog as a Bible study group blog.
 
14. Distribute tasks in your group for each person to focus on. For example:
  • Hebrew language expertise
  • Aramaic language expertise
  • Greek language expertise
  • Latin language expertise
  • Archaeology and paleo-cultural expertise

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