Biblical Interpretation
Reading Scripture in its literary, historical, and linguistic contexts.
-
There are two ways people read the Bible today. One begins with the text. The other ends with the text. Only one of them deserves to be taken seriously. The Prima Facie Reading (At First Glance) A prima facie reading asks a simple question: “What does this appear to say on the surface?” That’s not wrong. It’s…
-
I love exploring the Bible in its original forms—not in search of hidden codes or secret meanings, but for the nuance. For the texture. For the humanity that becomes clearer the closer one listens. What I find there is not a sanitized or flattened book, but something far more honest. Scripture is neither passive nor…
-
People used to cast lots, consult prophets, or visit Delphi. Now they open a chat window. The modern believer has a new oracle—sleek, instant, and eerily confident. Ask it what Paul “really meant,” and it’ll reply in polished prose, quoting Church Fathers it’s never prayed with and parsing Greek it doesn’t understand. The danger isn’t…
-
Recovering the Ancient View We Somehow Forgot Christians today often treat Scripture as if it dropped from heaven leather-bound, gilded, and indexed. Protestants filtered down 66 book version, Orthodox 78-79 books, and Catholic 73. Second Temple Jews and early churches would’ve looked at us with a tilted head, and confused look like a puppy. Because “Scripture” in…
-
Most Christians assume their English Bible is a clear window into God’s Word. It’s not. It’s a stained-glass window — beautiful, meaningful, but shaped by the hands who crafted it. Every believer who says, “I don’t need Hebrew or Greek,” quietly depends on someone else who did. And whether they realize it or not, that blind trust…
-
Every now and then, you hit a moment that reminds you why theologians, scholars, and anyone who studies Scripture beyond the surface often feel like strangers in their own church. I hit that moment recently. I shared a simple Hebrew clarification about Genesis 1:1–2—nothing wild, nothing speculative, just what the earliest readers understood. And the…
-
A Wake-Up Call to Bible Readers Most Christians love their Bible. They quote it, highlight it, underline it, and post verses with sunsets behind them on Instagram. But if we’re honest, most of us read it like it was written directly to us, in English, in the 21st century, and in our denomination’s dialect. We…
-
I disagree with him on plenty, but Dan McClellan wasn’t wrong about this one: there really is no such thing as “the Bible.” There are editions. Traditions. Variations. Families. But no single, pristine, universal copy everything descends from—no more than there is the dictionary or the laptop. In the ancient world, it was even more fluid. Scripture lived as oral…
-
The Word That Shouldn’t Be Special Somewhere along the way, the word theologian became a badge. Not a role of service, not a posture of learning, but a category. A title whispered with either admiration or suspicion. In most modern churches, if someone studies Scripture beyond a surface devotional level—if they mention the Greek, or if they…
-
Somewhere along the way, “Sola Scriptura” stopped meaning Scripture is our highest authority and started meaning I don’t need to listen to anyone, anywhere, ever. Because apparently all it takes to interpret the Bible correctly is: • A leatherbound ESV, • A podcast pastor, • And whatever we feel while sitting in traffic with worship music on. Meanwhile, the early…
Restoring Apostolic Faith 