Reading and Interpreting the Bible in Science

Every passage of Scriptures in the New Testament arises in the field of history, which is the reason to read and interpret the Bible within context, we need to read it within its historical context that accounts for the author and the original readers.

When considering the primary and initial audience, we ought to separate the original figures in the Gospel from the initial readers, those who were studying the New Testament about those Biblical personalities. For example, In his Gospel account, John discusses to his post-resurrection readers circumstances that were not adequately understood until after the resurrection, conserving historical accuracy and also evoking us to account for the fact the early 1st and 2nd-century audience was reading the Gospel subsequently after Christ’s resurrection.

It is here that the Gospels demonstrate the policy that the historical context of the New Testament is implicated by both the primary authors and the primary audiences.

Belief is something one chooses to believe in based on evidence or lack thereof.

It has less to do with emotion and more to do with information that begins to inform one of what is the truth.

There is a reading in the Bible that states, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17). In addition to this passage, we like to link it to another which states, “God has dealt with every man the measure of faith’ (Romans 12:3). The essence of these two passages is that faith comes by hearing, so faith is something that arrives at one who listens.

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Meaning one’s belief system is affected by what is heard and by allowing the Word of God to be heard. This hearing of God’s Word is what is affecting a man’s faith. It is also important to know what precedes faith “coming” is hearing a “word.” Meaning one cannot have faith in God for something that was unheard. Our faith is strengthened in God’s path when we listen to His Word. The Holy Spirit is not an expression for a personal being but rather a way of describing ‘authentic Christian living’ (Adewuya).

However, can a person’s faith be affected by other things they hear, if it is not God’s Word and can that information affect one’s faith? So the information we ingest is linked to what we believe. As laid out in Roman 13:3 dealt with every man a measure of faith.” The Scripture claims that first, the ability to believe in something was placed within every human being by God. Secondly, a measure of faith is provided, so every man has faith or the ability to believe in something.

All the believers were together and had everything in common (Act 2:24). This verse describes the first Christian community, which would have breathed about 2,000 years ago. Acts is perhaps the best-known community verse for the millions who have lived within Christian communities over the eras. The work of this verse is concerned the followers of Jesus, known to the Christians as Jesus Christ (son of God), and specific activities, or “acts,” that occurred in that establishing generation of Christian communities.

Christian communities are not at all homogenous, and they indeed do not partake in a federated system. Churches have been a significant cause for the deliberate spawning of the community. The symbol of a growing Christian fellowship is one that is open, always willing to share personal thoughts and feelings (Bielo). It is not unusual to discover communities that have separated from the more traditional or orthodox churches over discrepancies about distinct teachings or religious views. Furthermore, churches have had their origins within these communities by breaking off and progressing their way to practice their faiths, which is similar to what they did in the first millennium.

With this in mind, one could ask –what is a Christian community? A Christian community is one that extracts some or all of its emphasis for existence from Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The Bible is the genesis of faith from which these communities sprang. Few ancient documents are as influential as the Bible, at fertilizing people with the concept of community. It is the primary guide for all Christian communities, despite how they interpreted the New Testament. The seeking and believing in something outside of oneself, like the Bible, is the compost for the conceptualization and growth of the community.

No individual should be at freedom to claim their new insight for the full church and assume it to be received just because they assert that it is something the Spirit has bestowed to them with their interpretation of the New Testament. Therefore the place of the Hermeneutical learning and the tradition of the Church. Any private account that is put forth for the entire church has to be subject to that church’s community. Moreover, the interpretation of the Bible in today’s church has also to be set against the activity of the New Testament within the church over the previous two millennia. We ought not to give this tradition so much authority that it becomes infallible, obtaining comparable state with the Scriptures, yet should we overlook the treasury of Christian heritage of interpretation that has accumulated over two thousand years.

Like in the contemporary world, the world of the New Testament authors included various competing cultural values. Ehrman contends that the development of Christianity as the victor over pagan religions in the ancient world was “the single greatest cultural transformation our world has ever seen”(Ehrman). Understanding the New Testament scribes and taking into consideration that the characters they wrote about lived in a society where various civilizations met. It is necessary to comprehend these cultural conditions even if they are not directly declared in the passages, they do still have pertinence to the sense of the book.

One can address this in two modes. Primarily, we can recognize a particular cultural or social value and look up one of the works that we are trying to comprehend, or we can find a source that deals with it. As an example, if we recognized that magic was a crucial tradition in the early Graeco-Roman world where pagans practiced it to guard themselves against evil spirits. And if an author wanted to reach them, they would have to write a spiritual text. Ephesians we would be that great text. Ephesians 6:10-18 discusses the way to prevail in the warfare of good and evil.

The other approach is to consult a tool that talks about cultural values that may or may not speak about a specific passage. We discussed Paul’s teaching of women during this course and how there are verses that try to marginalize them within the early church. Alternatively, one should observe Luke 1:26-38 which also focuses on a woman (Mary), one should look at one of the multiple verses on women in the New Testament and whereby they were significant. Devoutly faithful women are one focus of Luke. Within his gospel, he tries to make women equal to men. Of course, social context might not focus on women, so one should look into historical context. This would help one understand how women or other marginalized individuals were perceived in the first-century Christian community.