Investigating the Bible: Reading the Bible can be made easier

By DAVID CARLSON PASTOR

It’s been said the Bible is the world’s least read bestseller. A Christian friend, new in his faith, said: “The Bible is so hard to read. All those weird names and genealogies. It doesn’t make

It’s been said the Bible is the world’s least read bestseller. A Christian friend, new in his faith, said: “The Bible is so hard to read. All those weird names and genealogies. It doesn’t make sense!” Here are suggestions to make reading and understanding it easier.

sense!” Here are suggestions to make reading and understanding it easier.

Find a comfortable translation. Some leave their Bibles closed because of the language. At a Bible camp with junior high youth, the teacher called on someone to read the verses studied in the version called “The Living Bible.” The youth sitting next to an adult leaned over and said, “Mine is a dead Bible!” The biblehub.com is one of many free resources, offering study tools, dictionaries, commentaries, and the Bible in more than thirty translations.

Consider that the Bible is an ancient document, written in different cultures and times. Modern translations of the ancient Hebrew and Greek text put old words in the language of our day, but they do not give the historical context. At the end of Paul’s 13th chapter in his first letter to the Corinthians he explains that there are still many mysteries in life and things we do not see clearly. A literal translation of his words in verse 12 is “We see now as in a mirror dimly.” In the first century, mirrors were polished bronze, tin, or silver. Romans had developed only crude glass mirrors. The image a person saw of themselves in these early mirrors was faded and distorted, unlike today’s mirrors.

Understand that each human writer had a different purpose and style. The Bible is a collection of 66 books and letters inspired by God, composed by some 40 different human writers over a span of several thousand years. Moses recorded God’s laws and God’s saving actions in the first five books of the Bible. The apostle Paul’s letters usually addressed specific problems in first century churches. The disciple Matthew, the former tax-collector, was a master of detail and wrote to convince Jews that Jesus was the true Messiah. Luke, the physician and skilled storyteller, wrote for non-Jewish believers. For people new to faith, the Gospel of Luke is an excellent starting point.

God provides an unseen and silent tutor. The Bible exists because of the quiet work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised his disciples, “…the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John14:26, New International Version used throughout). Jesus promised for all believers today, “… the Helper … will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement.” (John 16:7-8). It’s a mysterious reality that reading the Bible is unlike any other book. As a person reads, God is present in the Holy Spirit.

Read with others. While reading the Bible alone is of great benefit, the texts were written to be read to groups of believers, to be discussed, and studied. It was not designed to be a self-help, do-it-all-on-your-own book. Paul wanted his letters to be read aloud in the young churches. “After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.” (Colossians 4:16). Unfortunately, Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans was lost.

Read with expectation. Believers were told to keep looking up for the second coming of Jesus in the clouds. A friend teased me with the advice to “keep looking down.” I jogged daily and he was a lineman for the local electric company. He often found tools and cash by the roadside. Believers have a much better promise. Jesus said: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” (Matthew 13: 44).

David Carlson Pastor (yes, that is his last name but not his profession) is a Polk County resident and graduate of Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota (M.Div., M.Th.).