Cris,
My point is why do we need experts to interpret the bible? Why is the bible so confusing that it takes enormous intellectual ability, endless analysis and study, to be sure of the correct meaning? Surely those with poor education and/or low intelligence stand no chance. Why would such a perfect God create a book that isn? clear to everyone? If he is omnipotent as claimed then he could have created a book that everyone could understand without any confusion.
Remember that all the books of the Bible were written thousands of years ago. If you get the original Old Testament written mostly in Hebrew, will you understand it? I don't think so. Even people that study Hebrew nowdays have difficulty in reading the manuscripts as they didn't used to put vowels in the words. Although a system of vowels was later made, in the time when the Bible was written they never wrote any vowels. The vowels would appear in the spoken word. That may seems hard for us, but they were so used with it that it was easy for them.
Greek is another. Most of the New Testament was written in Greek. Almost all words in greek have accents (with the exception of one letter words...). There are many forms of accent. Not very easy to know which one to use... (mainly if you are not used with it...). Besides that, the end of a word changes as the syntax in the sentence changes. In this sense, each word has about 15 forms. You have to know them to read properly in greek.
History is important to create background. If you lived in Jesus's time you would understand things much more easily. You should know the traditions and the culture to understand thing properly. It was pretty easy for them to speak those anciant languages. They even used all of them at the same time! In the houses they used the Aramaic, in the synagogues the Hebrew and in the market the Greek; they knew them all! For example...
Mark 5:25-29
"25 A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years,
26 and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse--
27 after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak.
28 For she thought, "If I just touch His garments, I will get well."
29 Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. "
You would probably say that it is not big deal to touch someone's "garment". However, if it was a high priest's cloak, it was forbidden to be touched, because of a Jewish law. In this sense, she would be going against the laws of those times, what is not a small thing...
Another thing is the sentence:
"Have faith
in God." (as in
Mark 6:22)
This means to have faith in what God will do, to trust Him, etc...
However, if you get from the manuscript or an Interlinear Bible, you will read:
"Have faith
of God."
Which means to have
God's kind of faith!
So, if you really want to read the Bible and get the most of It, my suggestion is to buy:
- An Interlenear Bible that has the Greek and Hebrew original text in it plus the numbers of the Strong's Concordance.
- The Strong's Concordance - that matches all the words of the Bible, so you can look them up (even though you can look it up in the computer in sites like http://bible.gospelcom.net/)
- A Bible Encicolpedia - which has the history
- A Bible Dictionary - which has the meaning and history of the words
Because of the internet, you may not need to buy all this stuff. You probably can seacrh for words in the internet instead of searching in the Strong's Concordance. Also, a Bible Dictionary may not add as much as an Enciclopedia. Probably, if you have one, you won't need the other. But the Interlinear Bible is still essential.
