The Bible isn’t always an easy book to read and understand.

Some parts are straightforward. Read the story Jesus told about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the message is very clear. I think the most important parts of the Bible are like that.

But trying to understand some of the laws in Leviticus or Paul’s argument in Romans takes a little more work.

Worst of all is when we think we understand, but actually it’s different or more complex than we think.

So how can we read the Bible sensibly?

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Some principles for reading

The Bible was written over a period of about a millennium, some of it based on stories handed down from even earlier times. So a different culture, a different time and a different language from most of us.

So, keeping that origin in mind, here are some principles to help us read more sensibly – several of them taken from John Walton’s excellent book, Wisdom for Faithful Reading.

1. Understand context

Since the Bible was written in ancient languages foreign to most of us, and into cultures we are unfamiliar with and not part of, there is a danger we will bring foreign perspectives to our reading.

We need to do our best to have a good translation and to understand the culture, while recognising that we will always have knowledge gaps. But even being aware of our foreign-ness will help us avoid being over confident of our understanding of what we read.

2. Genre

Most literary works belong to a genre with its own literary conventions of style and content.

It is easy to think of contemporary examples. A comic strip will use different language to a legal judgment. The same story will sound very different when told by a comedian, a lawyer or a novelist, because each is using a different genre for a different purpose.

It is the same in the Bible.

Genres in the Bible

The Bible includes many different genres of writing – narrative, poetry, parable, prophecy, apocalyptic, letters, etc. Parables and apocalyptic are different in aim and language to historical chronicles. Letters must be understood as writings to a particular person or group and a particular situation, which make them different to historical narratives.

Writing about the past

We might like to think that history is objective, but this is rarely so even today, and certainly not in ancient times. HIstory is told for a purpose, and ancient literature might use various literary processes:

• Exaggeration was often used to convey strong feelings and to promote a viewpoint – e.g. conquest accounts were typically highly exaggerated to convey a tribe or nation’s superiority.
• Authors would find patterns in events and frame how they are described to make a point – in several places in the Old Testament repeated phrases are used almost like a formula.
• Reported speech is rarely verbatim (how could this have been recorded?) but represents the gist of what was said or thought, put into words by the author.

The narrative books of the Old Testament (e.g. Joshua, 1 & 2 Kings) show many of these characteristics and need to be read with them in mind.

Prophecy & apocalyptic

Prophetic and apocalyptic writings have language conventions that must be recognised to understand them properly. For example:

• Prophecy (e.g. Isaiah, Jeremiah) isn’t so much prediction of the future as giving an insight into God’s character and intentions. Hyperbole and colourful language might be used to warn the hearer so they might respond.
• Apocalyptic literature (Revelation and parts of Daniel in the Bible) seeks to present hidden spiritual realities behind the present world. Certain numbers have symbolic significance (e.g. 7 signified completeness) and mythical bests might signify evil forces. Taking symbols literally or understanding them wrongly can lead us to wrong conclusions.

Gospels

Scholars have investigated the genre of the gospels, and concluded they are “historical biography”, a genre that has its own conventions. This genre commonly starts by establishing the origins and ancestry of the subject, then focusing on their great deeds and words, and drawing lessons on how we should admire and imitate them. Authors would select and present events in ways that would help achieve these goals while omitting other material that we might wish was included. Again, speech may not be verbatim, but summarised and then put into words by the author.

3. Understanding authorship

Ancient Israel had an oral or hearing culture. Few people were literate, and most stories, traditions and teaching were handed on orally from generation to generation for some time before being written down.

This process was more reliable than we might expect, for there were procedures and traditions that kept the essence of the information intact. Nevertheless, stories and traditions were shaped and altered as they were passed down, so that they remained relevant to the changing circumstances.

So we need to reconsider modern concepts of “authorship”. Some Biblical books (e.g. Paul’s letters) had a clear author (though even here, a scribe might have considerable freedom in writing). But most books as we have them today, especially in the Old Testament, and even the New Testament gospels, had no single identifiable author, but rather were the result of an original author, many tradents (those who were responsible for preserving and handing on the oral tradition) and the final editors or compilers.

Of course making things relevant to new situations can lead to anachronisms, which does occur in some Old Testament accounts (e.g. in the use of names of locations that didn’t exist at the time of the original events). This doesn’t necessarily make the original stories fictitious, but it does mean that layers have been added to the original account.

Failing to take account of this process can lead us into poor conclusions. I have heard people argue that the gospels cannot be regarded as good history because they weren’t written by eyewitnesses and their authors weren’t named. This is an anachronistic view.

It is quite possible (in fact almost certain) that the original stories and teachings about Jesus were repeated by eyewitnesses, passed on by a generation or two of tradents before being written down. Luke 1:1-4 outlines just such a process. Whether the outcome was an accurate biography still requires assessment, but the process which produced it isn’t necessarily a reason to reject the account.

4. Take account of the author’s intentions

This follows from all we have discussed so far. If we assume modern day approaches we may misunderstand the genre and the authorship. A “proper” reading will take account of the authors’ intentions via literary, linguistic and cultural aspects.

Perhaps the most obvious example here is figures of speech.

• Did Jesus really mean us to gouge out eyes (Matthew 5:29) or transplant fig trees and mountains (Matthew 21:21), or was he using hyperbole?
• God isn’t really a rock (Psalm 18:2) nor Jesus a sheep (John 1:29); these are metaphors.
• So is it a metaphor that the streets of the new Jerusalem will be paved with gold (Revelation 21:21) – or is even the idea of a new Jerusalem a metaphor?

There are more difficult examples.

• Did the authors of Job intend it to be understood as a biographical account of a real person, or is the book an imaginative philosphical look at the problem of good people suffering?
• Were the writers and compilers of the books of Genesis and Joshua (for example) intending to write objective history (as we understand that genre), or are these books as much theology as history?
• Does the book of Psalms give us accurate theology, or were the authors often expressing their emotions rather than their beliefs?
• When a Biblical author uses the word “all”, does he mean literally everyone, or is it a hyperbolic way of saying “many” (e.g. Matthew 3:5)?

Believers and unbelievers alike can assume answers to these questions that fit their beliefs about the Bible. But if we want to really understand what the author was saying, we will need to do some homework to try to understand the authors’ culture and intention.

5. Be wary of assumptions & presuppositions

We all have worldviews that predispose us to certain conclusions, and this can affect how we read the Bible (or any other book).

So if one person believes in God and the supernatural and another doesn’t, they are going to interpret the miracle stories in the gospels differently. They can each learn from the other but they will have to make judgments on matters where they disagree – is there good evidence for this viewpoint or is it just their presumption of theism or atheism?

It is therefore helpful to understand the viewpoint of any writer, so we can take account of any bias they may have – I’ll look at this in the next post.

It is also helpful if we understand our own biases.

6. Don’t start at the beginning!

The 66 books in the Bible are arranged in approximate chronological order, but it isn’t really necessary to read the Bible from start to finish. I’ve heard of many people who tried to read it that way and got stuck somewhere in Leviticus (the third book and notoriously uninteresting for most people).

If you are reading it to learn more about Christianity, then it makes sense to start at the New Testament with the 4 biographies of Jesus and the book of Acts. I’d suggest treating the Old Testament as more of a prologue or background to the New Testament, and delve into it judiciously once you’ve read the New Testament.

If you want to learn about Judaism, then starting at the beginning with the book of Genesis makes sense.

(The Old Testament covers Jewish or Israelite history, mythology and writings from creation until about 300 BCE. The New Testament outlines the life and teachings of Jesus and the actions and writings of his first followers, pretty much all contained within the first century CE.)

7. Get good information

There will always be things we don’t understand – the culture and language issue again. So it makes sense to get information from someone reliable who has studied whatever it is you are interested in. Some of my favourite sources of information are listed below.

Good reading

• The Bible Project. Short videos and other material on just about everything you’d want to know about the Bible. Highly recommended. You won’t go far wrong with Tim and Jon.
• Understanding Jesus:
  • Jesus: A very short introduction. Richard Bauckham. Written by an eminent historian, this book may be the best and shortest book you’ll read about the life of Jesus.
  • Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. Kenneth E. Bailey. Insights into middle eastern culture that we might easily miss, by a scholar who spent 60 years living in the middle east.
• Old Testament
  • Wisdom for Faithful Reading. John H. Walton. The book that gave me a lot of the ideas in this post. An experienced scholar helps us understand an ancient culture.
  • How the Bible Actually Works. Peter Enns. A realistic book about the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular, presenting a slightly different viewpoint to Christian apologists.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko.

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