Biblical Interpretation - Paperback

by Sharon H. Ringe (Author), Frederick C. Tiffany (Author)

For the novice, this book brings order and understandability to the seeming confusion of theological and methodological approaches to the interpretation of biblical texts. It is a guide to discovering and asking the questions about the text, the reader, and the interaction between the two which form the basis of modern biblical interpretation.

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Biblical Interpretation: A Roadmap is a guide to discovering and asking the key questions - about biblical texts, about readers of the Bible, and about the interaction of the two - that forms the basis of biblical interpretation today. These questions are organized around three fundamental assumptions that govern the authors' approach to reading the Bible: the biblical texts arise from particular historical, social, and cultural settings: the reader likewise reads from a specific setting; and neither the diversity of the texts nor the multitude of readers stands in isolation one from the other. Tiffany and Ringe here offer an approach to biblical interpretation that takes both the texts and the reading context seriously, guiding and encouraging readers to draw upon the expertise and authority of their own life experiences and contexts. They also recognize that wide-ranging experiences and contexts are necessarily involved in biblical interpretation, showing how critical engagement with those contexts, in all their historical, social, and cultural diversity, is itself an unavoidable and invaluable part of the interpretative process.