These pages are motivated by a process of reading, interpreting, and applying the Bible described in Grasping God’s Word, 4th Edition, A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays. The authors introduce The Interpretive Journey, as a way to “pull the actual truth out of a text and not just develop an arbitrary, fanciful, or incorrect interpretation.”
The Bible is encountered in a couple of ways. Most commonly is in short passages, parts of verses up to a few verses. The interpretation challenge in these cases is to place the passage in its proper context. The Bible is also encountered in much longer sections. Many people routinely read the whole Bible in a year or less. This means reading several chapters at one sitting. The interpretation challenge in this case is quite different. The context is still important, but there isn’t time to delve into the details of the passage.
In these pages, the process is applied to both of these kinds of passages. The shorter passages will be focal texts from the lessons taught in the Adult Bible Fellowship classes at Sugar Land Baptist Church (typically New International Version). The longer passages will be from The One Year Chronological Bible, (New Living Translation).
Other resources are used including, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, Fourth Edition, by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart.