Tolle Lege: How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

Readability: 2

Length: 264 pgs

Author: Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stewart

I do not agree with everything Fee and Stuart write here, most critically I disagree with Fee’s translation philosophy.  Still the benefits and skills you would gain by reading it are worth commending it.  Reading How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth would go a long way to correcting many poor ways of reading the scripture such as asking it questions it was not meant to answer, reading it sentimentally, and flip and pickin’.

Interpretation that aims at, or thrives on, uniqueness, can usually be attributed to pride (an attempt to ‘out clever’ the rest of the world), a false understanding of spirituality (wherein the Bible is full of deep truths waiting to be mined by the spiritually sensitive person with special insight), or vested interests (the need to support a theological bias, especially in dealing with texts that seem to go against that bias). Unique interpretations are usually wrong. This is not to say that the correct understanding of a text may not often seem unique to someone who hears it for the first time. But it is to say that uniqueness is not the aim of our task.

The aim of good interpretation is simple: to get at the “plain meaning of the text.” And the most important ingredient one brings to that task is enlightened common sense. The test of good interpretation is that it makes good sense of the text. Correct interpretation, therefore, brings relief to the mind as well as a prick or prod to the heart.