Interpretation of biblical narratives
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (1983:2) defined narratives as the recitation of a sequence of fictional event. Unfortunately, most of the definitions are circulatory on the word narrative itself thus making these definitions null and unacceptable. The bible has been one of the misused books and misread books in the recent world. Based on this, false religions as well as cults have been deliberately misinterpreting the bible for their own malicious motives. In addition, the evangelical sector is nowadays dominated by uneducated evangelists who have little or no understanding about the bible thus lead to misinterpretations.
A critical appraisal of the mistakes made by readers interpreting the biblical narratives will be focused in this paper (Fee, 2003) First, lack of proper understanding of the content is one of the many mistakes made in interpreting biblical narratives. Interpreters of biblical narratives should not that the bible message is consisted and thus full understanding of the content is essential. (Merton, 1956) said that, “spiritual life is not mental life”; whereby he suggested that meditation and solitude were essential in interpreting the scripture.
The issue of allegorizing the scripture has also been rampant in the process of interpreting biblical narratives. Thirdly, hyper-literalism is also very common in biblical narrative interpretation; whereby people may literally take facts of speech which are not intended for by the author. This is evident in Mathew 15:8, which says that “if your hand offends you cut it off. ” Further, lack of a positive attitude towards the biblical message has been a cause of poor interpretation. In this case, many people don’t love the truth thus engage in propagating lies (Fee, 2003)
Conclusion In conclusion, proper understanding of the context, loving the truth and full understanding of literature language should be addressed in interpretation of biblical narratives. Further, people should have the desire to learn and have the bible explained to them in order to better understand the biblical narratives. It should also be considered that the guidelines highlighted by fee and Stuart regarding interpretation of bible narratives should be followed. Reference list Fee, G. & Stuart, D. (2003). How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. New York: Zondervan Press.
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