When the Bible “Clearly” Says Something

Interpreting Scripture is a wonderfully complicated endeavor because the Bible is a complex compilation of literature. Interpretation is art and science. It’s a craft that takes many years to learn and is never mastered. Beware those who claim to have mastered it. It’s rarely biblical scholars who make such...

Right Field Bible Reading

Right field. On every baseball team there was always a kid who had a hard time judging fly balls. This was the guy who was so fixated on where the ball was that he never could figure out where the ball was going to be. So the coach stuck him out in right field, where few balls are hit. (Right-handed batters...

Using the Bible Online

The Bible can be difficult to understand. Books have been written about how to study the Bible. Invariably they say that you should start by trying to understand what a passage meant to its original audience, to understand their culture, their history. There are literary questions to ask: what kind of...

“Why Is Esther in the Bible?”

“Why is Esther in the Bible?” I teach a Bible study for young adults in my church. Someone had asked me what it means to say that the Bible is inspired, and before I could reply another student chimed in with that question. It kind of saved me, because how do you even begin to answer a question on...

There’s No “ME” in “Scripture”

Do you read the Bible egocentrically? You probably do, but in many ways it’s not your fault. Most of us were taught to read it that way. By egocentric I don’t mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, or selfish. I mean it in the purest sense of the word, that we regard the I and the me as central to the...

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