Interpreting the Old Testament

3. Interpreting the Old Testament

Reading has never been as simple as it seems, especially when it comes to the Bible. The process of reading is always governed by a theory, conscious or unconscious, of how a text should be interpreted. When we approach a text we typically have a preliminary idea of its type, as in a bookstore where volumes are arranged in fiction, biography, travel, self-help, and other categories.
    Categorizing the Bible is doubly difficult. Since it is a collection of books, it is like a bookstore that has a variety of types of books. But even when we think we know which type a particular biblical book is, we may not have it right. A book that appears to be history may be in fact be historicized fiction or myth, or a poetic text may tell us something important about history.
    Consequently we need to develop a perceptual awareness of the literary, historical, and thematic qualities of all the texts we examine. We will apply a number of reading perspectives to the biblical text:
   

a literary perspective, looking for style, repetition, and cross-text allusion;
   

a linguistic perspective, to explain the meaning of names and terms;
   

a perspective from comparative literatures, using parallel ancient Middle Eastern documents;
   

an archaeological perspective, using artifacts that illuminate cultural and textual features;
   

an historical perspective, placing biblical events within their broader setting, and gleaning the history of Israel from the texts.