How come when interpreting the Bible you always have to be told what it "really" says?

Question

This is just my observation, but it seems that whenever someone critically analyzes a portion of the Bible themselves they either come up with the conclusion that God is a tosser or that there is an apparent contradiction. Only after speaking with a pastor, priest, preacher or whatever can they be convinced otherwise.

Has anyone else noticed that?

Answer 1

Yes, apparently I, myself have no ability to interpret anything written in the bible ever. No matter how many times I read it, my interpretation is always wrong. Yet somehow christians who have never even read the bible somehow understand it better than I do. (That would be about 90% of the christians in the R/A section.)

Answer 2

The Bible is completely full of drivel, nonsense and contradictions. When Christians (most of whom never read the entire Bible) are confronted with a difficult question they end up asking a pastor of some kind. It is the job of a pastor (or other religious figure) to make up excuses for all the nonsense in the Bible. They then provide a simple excuse for why the nonsense exists in the Bible.

If the Bible was truly inspired by God and the hand had God had participated in creating the book it would truly be an astounding book noted for its incredible insight and clarity. However, it is not.

Answer 3

1: Most people are stupid. I am sure they have good qualities as well, but lets face the truth here, intelligence is a rare commodity in the gene pool.

2: The bible we read is a translation, therefore sometimes the whole meaning of something does not come across. For example in the case of the field that was purchased with the 30 pieces of silver. In one book it says the pharasees bought the field, in another it says Judas bought it. It seems like a contradiction, until you find out that in the original greek, two different words were translated as bought, one meaning to do the transaction the other meaning to be the reciever of purchased goods.

3: Changing language. The meaning of words sometimes changes. For example, in genesis in the KJV it says God replenished the earth. Some people use this as an argument that there were things before man and God destroyed them and refilled the earth, but when the KJV was made, replenish meant only to fill, not refill.

4: People take verses out of context. For example they take Judas hung himself, and use that to say that God advocates suicide (which is an obviously untrue).

Answer 4

Because you cannot speak nothing else that is not in the word, other wise, you become a lier and a blaphemer of the word of God. You cannot add or take away from it.. You have to speaketh the same way it is written..

It's difficult for us while in the flesh to prevent our own ideas from influencing our understanding. Even when studying a new technical subject, many of our own ideas and experiences help us form a bigger picture of the new subject. This is natural because it's how we were educated in the world, and how we are taught to think. And it can be a hinderance when learning God's Word, because His Ways are not man's ways (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Reading a passage in Scripture, and then applying our own ideas as to what it means, without further study, can be a hinderance to God's Truth. A verse belongs to a Chapter; a Chapter belongs to a Book. It would be silly if we took one paragraph out of a textbook on, let's say, history, and then thought we knew all about the subject.

God's Holy Spirit as Guide is the only way to properly understand our Father's Word, as God wants us to worship Him "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23). The writers of The Bible were inspired through The Holy Spirit, and set God's Truth down in Letter (2 Peter 1:21). So likewise, The Holy Spirit is needed to understand His Word. Believing on Christ Jesus as our Savior, and asking Him for guidance is necessary. There is no other Way of Salvation or towards His Truth.
This means the "spiritual mind", not the "flesh mind", must be open in order to understand God's Word. There is very deep and profound Truth in God's Word which will be missed by the 'flesh thinking'.
At the same time, an ordered and disciplined method of study will allow The Holy Spirit to open up our Father's Word to you. Each person must do this for themselves.
God can lock or unlock The Scriptures to you. Begin your Bible Study with a prayer to our Father asking guidance, always in Christ's Name.

Answer 5

I appreciate my minister telling me what it means. Since I didn't go to seminary I have not studied the social customs back then ( like children were right down there next to animals on the social ladder), I didn't realize the political situation between the Jews and the Romans, I don't speak Hebrew or Greek or Latin, and so on. If I remember right, our ministers are required to have a degree from a liberal arts college and have attended seminary. They have a very good education and if you're fortunate enough to find one that is a good teacher, things about the Bible you didn't understand, now make sense. The Bible can be confusing, but with a good teacher, you get more out of it.

Answer 6

The Protestants believe the Bible is inerrant but the hundreds of sects can't seem to agree on what it means.
The Catholics believe that the Bible is interpreted by the clergy and only that interpretation is valid. The laymen cannot interpret the Bible accurately.
The Mormons believe each individual has the right to direct revelation through God about the meaning of the Bible but that the church leadership provides modern clarification of the meaning.
The Atheists think the Bible is just a bunch of myths.

You decide who is right.

Answer 7

I don't know what a "tosser" is, but I believe The Bible is subject to interpretation, and that's not news. I believe too many people believe the King James version is The Bible exactly as it was written, sadly. And I don't think there is any one clear, distinct and correct answer given on a question from The Bible by any human.

Answer 8

I think that if the bible was really the infallible word of god and inspired by god that god would make sure that everyone could understand it on his own without having to have an interpreter. I believe that god would have had the foresight to know that hundreds of years later there would be controversy if he only wrote it so that people of that time could understand it. What I mean is that he would have avoided using slang or quotations that only made sense a couple of thousand years ago. I think that god would have wanted it to be written so that there would be no question about as to if a person could understand what god wanted from them.

Answer 9

That's a good question.

One reason is that the Bible is a very old book.

It was also written in ancient languages which, in some cases for some words or concepts, don't translate into English very well.

This happens even today with modern languages. There are certain words in the Japanese language, for instance, that do not have a direct English equivalent. I lived in Japan for six years, so trust me, I struggled with this stuff fairly often.

So, if such "lost in translation" problems can occur from one modern language to the next, how much more likely is it to occur from an ancient language (such as Aramaic) to a modern one like our English?

Also, certain phrases and language in the Bible don't "hit us" too well when they're read through the prism of 21st-century society. We have to put ourselves "back in time" so to speak -- to connect the words to the societal realities of the time in order to get at their real meaning.

For instance, in the Gospels Jesus speaks of the need for a disciple to "take up his cross, and follow Me."

To 21st- century people, "take up your cross" doesn't have much of an impact in meaning. But to people living under Roman occupation 2,000 years ago, the very mention of the word "cross' scared the bejabbers out of people!

When we look at it that way, we see (more clearly than the plain words can tell us) what a difficult and challenging thing Jesus was proposing to those who would follow Him.

These are the sorts of things -- there are many others, way too numerous to list here -- that we need the help of people like priests to explain.

Remember that these are people who have gone through several years of full-time, formal theological study. They've studied the Bible and other religious works far more intensely and deeply than most of the rest of us ever could.

In the Acts of the Apostles (in the Bible), an Ethiopian asks, "How can I understand the scripture, if you do not explain it to me?" It's the same with us -- none of us can come up with the meaning of everything in the Bible by ourselves.

We need guidance, which is where for us Catholics, the Church and its teaching authority come in.

Answer 10

Note that it didn't used to be that way...

People are more educated now, than in the past. And these glaring inconsistencies are now hard to conceal. That's why the whole "interpretation" thing got started. It used to be that preachers would say the Bible said black was white, and people believed it, because they didn't know any better.

Now those preachers will say, "We of course know that black isn't white... and that was all part of God's plan when he wrote it. This is just a parable showing the difference between.... blah blah blah"