How to read a letter

"Read a letter, I thought this course was about the Bible?" The New Testament epistles are, for the most part, letters written by an apostle to a church or individual. They are what we call "occasional documents" in that they were written at a particular time to particular people to meet specific needs in the community. It is a bit like playing "Jeopardy!" from our perspective in that the letter is the answer, and as we read it carefully, in order to understand it properly, we need to discern the question (s) that occasioned its writing. We are at a distinct disadvantage from the original readers: they understood their own historical situation, the relationship they had with the writer, and the challenges and struggles of the community. They also did not have the same cultural distance that we have with the writer. As 21st century readers we face some challenges in understanding the first century letters, but they are not insurmountable. We need to read the epistles as letters and ask questions about what is being said and what is being presupposed. We need to be students of the historical context and culture. Once we understand what the writer said to his readers (and why he said it) we can better ask what God is saying to us in these writings. As you read Romans this week, and Philemon for the final project, remember you are reading a letter, and see what windows of understanding that opens for you.

Who needs interpretation?

Since the last part of our course is about interpreting the Bible, you might anticipate my answer to the title for this post: we all do! The thing is, we are all interpreting all the time, whether or not we are conscious of the fact. We hear what someone says, or we read what they have written, and based on our common experience and understanding of language we determine what they "mean" by the symbols they have used. Most of the time we do a pretty good job of understanding what we are saying to each other. But what happens when we speak to someone from a radically different culture, say a foreign student from a central asian country about which we know little? The cultural, geographical, and linguistic distance between us can sometimes make understanding one another challenging, especially when we try to communicate abstract concepts. Think about reading the Bible as a cross-cultural experience. Most of the biblical documents were written over a 1500 year period, by writers coming from a very different historical and cultural setting. Things that would have been self evident to the writer, and to his readers, may be harder to discern for us. What was his purpose in writing? What were the needs of his community that prompted the communication? What could he presuppose about their understanding of the images and language he used? We need to be students of the biblical world, trying to understand as much as we can about the writers and their audiences, in order to "hear" more fully and correctly what the biblical documents have to say to us! Fee and Stuart will be a guide to get us started on a lifetime of learning and deepening our understanding of "How to read the Bible for all its worth"!
Dr. Nash