The Music of Interpretation

Music has a special place in my heart. I played alto saxophone in my school band from fourth grade all the way through high school. I had to learn hermeneutics even from that young age. I had to learn how to read sheet music. I had to learn scales. I had to learn that 4/4 time meant four whole beats in a section of music. I had to learn to count “one and two and three and four and” to keep time and measure how long the note was I was playing. There was a lot of interpretation that was involved in music. Music is a beautiful art, but it is also a science. Interpreting the Bible is the same way. There is an art, or beauty, to interpreting the Bible as well as a science.

You have to learn how to read the music of the Bible. You have to keep it in its context, historical and grammatical. You need to make sure that you are keeping in time with the conductor, or author of the book. When you follow these rules there is a whole world of truth and beauty in the scriptures. My books in the Using Hermeneutics Series will help you do that. My first book, When My Ox Gores My Neighbor, is about an Old Testament passage that is a case law about an ox goring a person. Then I walk you through the art and science of interpreting literature using just that passage to show you how to understand it and apply its principles to your life. My second book, Romans Roadblocks, teaches you the rules of hermeneutics, then it applies those rules to Romans 1:1-7. When the rules of interpretation are applied to that passage, then we can understand the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. It also shows you how you already use the rules of interpretation but also how to avoid the mistakes that are often made in interpretation.

Thank you for reading this I hope that this has blessed you. To get these resources you can go to Josiah’s sermons for examples of going verse by verse through the Bible and using context to explain it. If you want to read the Bible and understand it you can go to the resource page and get the Using Hermeneutics Book Series. If you buy these books they will teach you how to study God’s Word and you will be helping this ministry greatly. Please consider buying my books to help support this blog, I can’t do this on a regular basis without you. They also make great gospel tracts. Not only do they find out how to study the Bible but they read the gospel over and over again. Lord bless you and study God’s Word.