10 Commandments for Reading and Interpreting the Bible
I grew up in a tradition where the Bible was considered inerrant, infallible and interpreted literally. Anyone who disagreed was considered a heretic. But as I’ve grown in my faith—and as I’ve studied the Bible both devotionally and academically—the way I understand, read and interpret it has matured too.
Recently, I came across a fascinating book on the topic: A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible by Kristin Swenson, a scholar of the history and literature of ancient Israel. I found it to contain fresh material on the topic, and it was written in a way that is accessible to non-academic readers.
Perhaps the best part was Swenson’s “10 Commandments to Reading the Bible,” a section that may be missed by some readers because it is tucked away in an appendix at the book’s end. If you’re rethinking your own approach to reading and interpreting the Bible, consider Swenson’s guidelines:
Thou Shalt Not Make the Bible God (// Thou shalt have no other Gods before me)
People claim that the Bible has saved them, that the Bible elicits wonder and awe, that the Bible is finally beyond human understanding. Since all of these are attributes also applied to God, you can see how someone might confuse the two and even elevate the Bible above an ultimately mysterious, radically free, and “other” God…. By allowing that God is also other than the Bible, believers allow for the possibility of surprise. They acknowledge that God transcends even this rich and living collection of texts. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Worship the Object Itself (// Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol)
One’s approach to the Bible is more appropriately like that of a believer to an icon, not to be confused with an idol. Icons are objects of images that allow the worshiper a means to contemplate and maybe even access, or be accessed by, what is radically other, holy, and divine. Icons, which serve as a means to worship God, are different from idols, which are mistakenly worshiped as gods…. The danger lies in confusing the means with the real thing—in making the icon into an idol. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Presume That Any Given translation is the Text Itself (// Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain)
Any given translation is itself an act of interpretation. We do well to adopt humility in proposing what exactly any given text means…. Just because we have a Bible that we can read, we ought not presume that in our favorite translation of the text, we have a final word on what the Bible says, much less what it means. - KS
Mind the Gap(s) (// Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy)
The Bible doesn’t read like a modern book. It jumps around, disagrees with itself, skips over things we think it should include, and is utterly unapologetic about it all…. [Accepting this fact] offers an invitation to engage it—arguing, contemplating, imagining, and listening. - KS
Honor the Knowledge and Wisdom of Your Predecessors (// Honor thy father and mother)
Your elders are not always right, but they’ve been around the block, learned some things along the way, and so have a bit of wisdom to offer…. Use your own brain by learning from experts, and with all that scholarship in hand, think for yourself. Then question your thinking, do some more research, and think again. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Use the Bible for Character Assassination (// Thou shalt not kill)
People routinely apply the biblical text to dismiss and demean other people, their way of life, their perspectives, and their beliefs as wrongheaded…. Yes, the Bible is full of material that can be weaponized against other people, but don’t let your interpretation of a text dehumanize either yourself or anyone else. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Forsake Wisdom to Embrace Careless Interpretations (// Thou shalt not commit adultery)
Don’t abandon the integrity of your own humanity—your basic sense of right and wrong, inclination toward compassion, and desire to make the world beautiful and good—in order to adopt [an interpretation of] of texts that promote intolerance, cruelty, or inequality. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Take Biblical Texts Out of Context (// Thou shalt not steal)
Although many biblical texts, ancient and foreign as they are, make sense even in today’s world, they were not written first and only for us today. Knowing something about their ancient contexts appropriately nuances our reading of them. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Presume to Issue Divine Judgment of Others (// Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor)
Know that one’s sense of an absolute meaning for any given text as it leads to judging another person or whole group of people may be misplaced, even flat-out wrong. Responsibility for oneself is quite enough for any person. - KS
Thou Shalt Not Desire a Different Bible Than the One you Have, No Matter How Exasperating it Can be Sometimes (// Thou Shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife or anything that belongs to your neighbor)
To take the Bible seriously doesn’t mean we can’t have favorite sections, texts that speak to us in some way or another. But it also means account for an acknowledging (not necessarily endorsing) texts that make us uncomfortable or that we simply don’t like. - KS
NOTE: Some of the books that have most changed my approach to the Bible early on in my process of rethinking the models of my upbringing include: Scott Mcknight’s Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How We Read the Bible, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O’Brien’s Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes and Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes, Eugene Peterson’s Eat this Book, Stephen Shoemakers God Stories, Pete Enns How the Bible Actually Works and Inspiration and Incarnation, and Amy Jill-Levine’s The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Christians and Jews Read the Same Stories Differently.