The Forbidden Fruit

What is bible interpretation/hermeneutics?

Seeing that the bible is a collection of books, it becomes essential to know how to interpret the written texts. More importantly, the diction and styles of writing vary among different authors from different generations, so one must learn how to interpret their writings.

The act of studying to unravel the intention of the author of a written text is called interpretation. This is technically called hermeneutics. The process of studying the bible to understand its meaning is called hermeneutics. You should not forget that every literary text has some background knowledge that must be understood. This knowledge makes it easier to interpret the written texts, even without being present.

There are personalities present in the process of bible interpretation. These are the code, the encoder and the decoder. The code is the written text, itself. The encoder is the author of the text while the decoder is the person that is interpreting the text. Although there are controversies about which is most important, it is important to note that the goal is not to prove the best but in tracing what the author intended to say. In practice, it means that both the encoder and decoder are subject to the code itself. However, the code is actually given through the encoder. In other words, nobody will know what is being said without the author. Invariably, nobody will be able to understand what is written without the interpreter.

The things that are interpreted include the text and context. The text of the bible is the written words. To know what a bible text is saying, one needs to understand the meaning of each word in it. After this, part of understanding is knowing the context surrounding the text. The context could be historical or immediate. An immediate context is what precedes and what comes before the text to be interpreted. The pretexts are the verses before the text and the post texts are the verses after the text. In picking this immediate context, one needs to understand and pin out the characters in the whole chapters.

On the other hand, the historical context is the time or age of writing. This concerns the time of civilization for the author. Also, this contains knowing the style of a given author. The diction in the book could be determined by the type of occupation of the author. Overall, the way the author conveys ideas is subject to the way he perceives things.

The spatial attributes of where the author is at a given time could also determine the way the author uses words.

The Use of Greek, Hebrew And Aramaic Words

The Bible, like every other book, is a literature material. The message it contains makes it stand out – the message of the messiah. Being a book, it was written in human languages by humans who were inspired by God. These people documented the message they received in languages they communicated in, of which are the Koine Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic.

It is important to note that the languages selected are of wider communication. This is a sequel to the fact that the world ruling power then was the Roman Empire. As concerning the stages in the languages of the bible, the Aramaic, Koine Greek and Latin are found in the translation phases. Without delving into issues concerning why translation happens, it is seen that the two main languages in which the bible is written are Hebrew and Koine Greek. At some point, the two languages were translated into Latin because of political, economic and other influences. However, generally, the languages found in the bible are Hebrew, Aramaic, Koine Greek and Latin (an influence from the translation phase).

What is the strong's bible?

The Strong's Bible is a bible that contains the parallel translation of the original written text and translated languages. In other words, it has the Greek or Hebrew equivalent of the English or other languages. The translation sense that is mostly found in this bible is word-for-word. This means that the meaning of the sentences are the combined meanings of the words. Many times, using the strong bible has been helpful for contextual bible study.

The reason for Strong's contribution to bible study is that it is almost impossible to translate between languages the exact meaning of a word. This is because words are a fusion of both cultural and behavioral expressions. This suggests that, to be able to accurately translate from Hebrew/Greek to English, English must share both behavioral and cultural values with the languages. To understand the bible, one needs to know the people or characters that are involved in some set of actions. The people within some ages and cultures will be influenced by many factors that are peculiar to them. Thus, to understand the whole text, geographical and cultural contexts are important. And since it is not possible for two different cultures to fuse, except in a civilized sense, Strong Bible remains essential in bible study.

Though Strong's texts are important, they are not to be slotted in bible interpretation without regards for the meaning of the words and general understanding of the verse/chapter that is being explained.