Bible Interpretation

Like most progressive Christians, I love the Bible, so we often write posts about how we think people should read and interpret it.

• If Jesus is the Lens of Scripture, What is the Old Testament?
• If the Bible is Not God's Infallible Word, then How Should We Read It?
• The Queen James Version - more discussion of what it means to translate the Bible, including an examination of the function of deliberate mistranslation in the field of Bible translation, in light of an LGBTQ-friendly Bible.
• The Danger and Beauty of Acculturation - investigating the Heliand, a 9th-century poem that reinterprets the gospels for a Germanic audience.
• Reading the Bible in Translation - how much do Christians miss by reading English translations of our scripture?
• What Does It Mean to Quote the Bible Out of Context? - Christians often accuse each other of quoting the Bible out of context, but we often forget or ignore that there are many different contexts when it comes to the Bible.
• Camel Bones, Confirmation Bias, and American Evangelical Biblicism - Sometimes archaeological evidence contradicts some details in the Bible, and Christians should be able to deal with that.
• The Historical Jesus and The Divine Messiah - I take a look at the Gospels, and discuss a problem in reconciling the historical Jesus with the divine figure that Christians worship today.
• What Is the Bible and What Does It Do? - Dave Mantel talks about what, exactly, the Bible really is, and how we should read it. 
• Idolatry: It's Complicated - I take issue with how idolatry is presented in the Bible. 
• Some Oddball Books of the Hebrew Bible - Review of some of the weirder books of the Hebrew Bible, with some conclusions about the way we ought to think about scripture. 
• Moving Toward Christian Pacifism - Dave Mantel advocates a pacifistic reading of the Gospels.