The Bible is not easy to read.

The Bible is not easy to read.

The Bible is not self-evident.

The Bible was not written with your worldview in mind.

The Bible was not written in America.

The Bible was not written to you (or Americans)

The Bible was not written in English.

The Bible is not a simple book.

The biggest misunderstanding I had before I started a Biblical Studies degree was that the bible was easy to read and that everyone was capable of interpretation. That is just simply not true. It takes grammatical analysis, historical analysis, philosophical awareness, and literary analysis, and even then, you need a community in which you will receive the scriptures and traditions of Christianity that have been passed down for millennia.

I learned a lot while at Criswell College: Hebrew, Greek, Church history, theology, philosophy, NT and OT studies, Ancient Near Eastern studies, how to read literature, and the list goes. Those classes revolutionized the way I approached the Bible, but after spending four years working on understanding how to read this ancient, varied, and complicated text, the most important thing I learned was that I will have work at understanding the world of the Bible (and it’s many parts), and the people by whom it was written for the rest of my life.

It’s still hard work, but i’m working on it, because the Bible is not easy to read.