Tag Archives: Gordon Fee

Bible Interpretation

What Are Nine Common Errors When Interpreting Biblical Narratives?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Our local church, Cornerstone, has embarked on a year-long study of the Book of Joshua.  Our pastor, Dr. Byrd, is going to prepare detailed sermon notes each week, which will then be translated by the other pastors into lessons for Sunday school classes.

As we kick off this series in Joshua, I have been drawn back to one of my favorite books on biblical interpretation, Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.  In the past I shared ten principles for interpreting Old Testament narratives from their book, but this time I want to highlight nine errors that are commonly made when interpreting biblical narratives, also from their book.

Allegorizing.  “Instead of concentrating on the clear meaning of the narrative, people relegate the text to merely reflecting another meaning beyond the text.”

Decontextualizing.  “Ignoring the full historical and literary contexts, and often the individual narrative, people concentrate on small units only and thus miss interpretational clues.  If you take things out of context enough, you can make almost any part of Scripture say anything you want it to” (emphasis added).

Selectivity.  “It involves picking and choosing specific words and phrases to concentrate on while ignoring the others and ignoring the overall sweep of the narrative being studied.”

Moralizing.  “This is the assumption that principles for living can be derived from all passages.  The moralizing reader, in effect, asks the question , ‘What is the moral of this story?’ at the end of every individual narrative.  An example would be, ‘What can we learn about handling adversity from how the Israelites endured their years as slaves in Egypt?’  The fallacy in this approach is that the narratives were written to show the progress of God’s history of redemption, not to illustrate principles.”

Personalizing.  “Also known as individualizing, this refers to reading Scripture in the way suggested above, supposing that any or all parts apply to you or your group in a way that they do not apply to everyone else.  This is, in fact, a self-centered reading of the Bible.  Examples of personalizing would be, ‘The story of Balaam’s talking donkey reminds me that I talk too much.’  Or, ‘The story of the building of the temple is God’s way of telling us that we have to construct a new church building.'”

Misappropriation.  “It is to appropriate the text for purposes that are quite foreign to the biblical narrative.  This is what is happening when, on the basis of Judges 6:36-40, people ‘fleece’ God as a way of finding God’s will!  This, of course, is both misappropriation and decontextualizing, since the narrator is pointing out that God saved Israel through Gideon despite his lack of trust in God’s word.'”

False appropriation.  “It is to read into a biblical narrative suggestions or ideas that come from contemporary culture that are simultaneously foreign to the narrator’s purpose and contradictory to his point of view.”

False combination.  “This approach combines elements from here and there in a passage and makes a point out of their combination, even though the elements themselves are not directly connected in the passage itself.”

Redefinition.  “When the plain meaning of the text leaves people cold, producing no immediate spiritual delight or saying something other than what they wish it said, they are often tempted to redefine it to mean something else.”  Fee and Stuart use the example of 2 Chronicles 7:14-15: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.”  Christians today want to apply this promise to their own land, but as Fee and Stuart point out, this promise was only directed toward the ancient land of Israel.

As our church moves through the Book of Joshua, I hope we can avoid these common errors.  The most important step in interpreting any biblical text is to first work very hard to discover what the original author was trying to communicate to the original audience.  Only after we have done the hard work of finding the original meaning can we then apply the text to our contemporary world.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Do We Interpret the Old Testament Narratives?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some Christians and many skeptics of Christianity take a simple approach to reading the Bible.  They treat the entire Bible and all of its contents as a moral command textbook.  In other words, every single sentence is to be read with an eye toward what moral behavior the author is sanctioning or condemning, regardless of the literary genre.  Certainly some parts of the Bible are directly teaching us moral standards, but not all.

As an example, I recently discussed the issue of polygamy with a skeptic.  The skeptic’s viewpoint was basically this: the Old Testament narratives describe polygamous relationships  frequently and they never seem to expressly condemn it, so, therefore, the Bible teaches that polygamy is acceptable.

The skeptic seemed to be saying that if a certain behavior is found in the Old Testament narratives, and that behavior is not specifically condemned in those same narratives, then the narratives are teaching that this behavior is morally acceptable.

Is that how we should understand the narratives in the OT?  No, not according to Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart in their popular book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.  Following are ten principles for interpreting OT narratives that Fee and Stuart recommend:

  1. An OT narrative usually does not directly teach a doctrine.
  2. An OT narrative usually illustrates a doctrine or doctrines taught propositionally elsewhere.
  3. OT narratives record what happened – not necessarily what should have happened or what ought to happen every time.  Therefore, not every narrative has an individual identifiable moral application.
  4. What people do in narratives is not necessarily a good example for us.  Frequently, it is just the opposite.
  5. Most of the characters in OT narratives are far from perfect – as are their actions as well.
  6. We are not always told at the end of an OT narrative whether what happened was good or bad.  We are expected to be able to judge this on the basis of what God has taught us directly and categorically elsewhere in Scripture.
  7. All OT narratives are selective and incomplete.  Not all the relevant details are always given (cf. John 21:25).  What does appear in the narrative is everything that the inspired author thought important for us to know.
  8. OT narratives are not written to answer all of our theological questions.  They have particular, specific, limited purposes and deal with certain issues, leaving others to be dealt with elsewhere in other ways.
  9. OT narratives may teach either explicitly (by clearly stating something) or implicitly (by clearly implying something without actually stating it).
  10. In the final analysis, God is the hero of all biblical narratives.

With regard to polygamy, the Bible clearly illustrates and explains the ideal for marriage in Genesis 2, and the author of subsequent OT narratives (in Genesis, Exodus, and so on) would expect his readers to know what Genesis 2 taught.  God did not create two women for Adam, or three or four, but one.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).