Just started to read the book, How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. It has sold a lot of copies over the years, a classic primer to aid in the understanding and interpretation of scripture and to see each verse/passage/book in in it's proper context.
Based on solid mainstream bible scholarship, the authors help the reader to appreciate the different genres of the bible and to read them accordingly. Here's one example early in the book as to why we need outside sources such as this book if we want to understand scripture in the way it was intended.
When Paul says, "Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts" (Romans 13:14), people in most English-speaking cultures are apt to think that "flesh" means the "body" and therefore that Paul is speaking of "bodily appetites." But the word "flesh" as Paul uses it, seldom refers to the body - and in this text it almost certainly did not - but to a spiritual malady sometimes called "the sinful nature," denoting totally self-centered existence. Therefore, without intending to do so, the reader is interpreting as he or she reads, and unfortunately all too often interprets incorrectly.
I'm also reading a couple of other books, but I do want to have future posts on some other examples of being aware of the biases we often bring to the scriptures and how we can interpret it more accurately.
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