Bible Interpretation Quotes

“the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.”
― Dan Savage, American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

“The broader problem is that a great deal of popular preaching and teaching uses the bible as a pegboard on which to hang a fair bit of Christianized pop psychology or moralizing encouragement, with very little effort to teach the faithful, from the Bible, the massive doctrines of historic confessional Christianity.”
― D.A. Carson

“Well, Louie, you’ll know then that Leviticus also tells us not to cut our beards, not to wear linen and wool together nor to eat crayfish or frogs or snails. I’m afraid that if we adhered to Leviticus the entire French nation would be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.”
― Paula Boock, Dare Truth or Promise

“The comparison of Lam 1:1 and Re 18:7 cannot be ignored. If Babylon the Great is actually rejected mother-Judah, brought back to life by the United Nations, then Is 47:7-10 connects divorced-ancient Israel to modern-day Israel. Remember, Jehovah removed His name. (Is 50:1) Thus, we see why Jehovah’s ex-wife took on many names from her many husbands, such as “Babylon.” (Is 1:21)
Lamentations, pg 2”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Lamentations: how narcissistic leaders torment church and family

“It is not possible to understand the NT concept of the church if we overlook the numerous metaphors used to portray it. The church is Christ's body, a temple, a family, a royal priesthood, twelve tribes, the chosen race, Abraham's children, the new creation, the bride of Christ, and so on. Bible readers should be careful not to construct their theology of the church on a single metaphor.”
― David Ewert, How To Understand The Bible

“Just as the genealogies break off at the end, because Jesus was not begotten by St. Joseph, but was truly born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, so it now can be said of us that our true "genealogy" is faith in Jesus, who gives us a new origin, who brings us to birth "from God.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

“The Bible is universal truth, but our interpretations of it are always historically and culturally conditioned.”
― Paul D. Miller, The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism

“There are at least three types of people who say the Christian Bible is inaccurate or corrupt:

1. Those who never read
2. Who never understood
3. Those who accept others' views of the scriptures as if it was their conclusions”
― Brother Pedro

“The soul, all-perfect and ever perfect, is compelled by the law of evolution to incarnate repeatedly in progressively higher lives— retarded by wrong actions and desires and accelerated by spiritual endeavors—until Self-realization and God-union are attained. Having then transcended the Lord’s delusion, the soul is forever freed. “Their thoughts immersed in That (Spirit), their souls one with Spirit, their sole allegiance and devotion given to Spirit, their beings purified from poisonous delusion by the antidote of wisdom— such men reach the state of non-return” (Bhagavad Gita V:17). In the Bible it is similarly written: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out” (Revelation 3:12)”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Man's Eternal Quest

“A rebellious son, in a quest to mislead the entire inhabited earth, makes himself resemble his Father, and to do so seemingly perfectly, concocts a book resembling his Father’s, within which he admits he is father to no one and has no son; Isaiah 14:14, Revelation 12:9”
― Mannas Eli

“[I]t is helpful to remind ourselves that the church - and its writings - did not come into existence until forty years after Jesus' resurrection. Things got lost. Things got whispered down the lane. Original meaning could have been abandoned completely in favor of a less egalitarian faith. What else did we lose in the interim between Jesus and the recordings? And will we ever get it back?”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“Never settle on High Mountains for it is a height of a peak Fountain but rather grow towards into the never-ending Heavens above”
― Ben Jr Grey

“Never rely on rested hills for it is a leap on a step-forward but rather simplate a walk on a back-towards”
― Ben Jr Grey

“Of all forms of commentary on the divine Word, a translation is the most subtle.”
― Anthony Buzzard, Our Fathers Who Aren't in Heaven

“The Great Apostasy:

The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thessalonians 9-12, NKJV).”
― New King James Version, Nkjv Personal Size Giant Print Reference Bible

“Eastern Mysticism and Western Esotericism Claim that All May Become Divine (gods):

The Mystery Religions claim that all may become divine. Today, both neo-pagans and Gnostic Christians claim they will become immortal “Christs” upon the earth. Mathew 24:24 says, “For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and show great signs and wonders; so that, if possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (AKJV).”
― American King James Version, Holy Bible AKJV Paragraphed with Sub-Headings: American King James Version

“Unless you know how to use facts like a decent human being, you are better off without facts - just like, unless you know how to interpret the scripture like a decent human being, you are better off without a scripture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sin Dios Sí Hay Divinidad: The Pastor Who Never Was

“ஆகாயத்துப் பறவைகள் விதைப்பதில்லை, அறுவடை செய்வதில்லை!”
― Jeyamohan, ரப்பர்

“Let's stop trying to make God in our image.”
― Brother Pedro

“The Bible is not a free-floating book of ageless wisdom, an interesting historical document, or a weapon that can be put in the service of any political goal. The Bible is a gift from God to the church, given for a particular purpose: to shape that community into the kind of people who can fulfill their commission to make disciples of all nations and steward God’s good creation, anticipating its final redemption.”
― Kaitlyn Schiess, The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here

“Just because it’s in the Bible
doesn’t mean it’s instructive.
Just because it was formerly
doesn’t mean it is presently
meant to be modeled after.”
― Ngina Otiende, Courage: Reflections and Liberation For the Hurting Soul

“Here’s to awareness.
That developing empathy for ourselves
is a healthy step forward,
not an unhealthy step backward
to unbelief.”
― Ngina Otiende, Courage: Reflections and Liberation For the Hurting Soul

“There’s a passage in Exodus—God tells Moses, 'No one can see My face, but I will protect you with My hand until I have passed by you, and then I will remove My hand and you will see My back.’ Remember that?

Emilio nodded, listening.

“Well, I always thought that was a physical metaphor,” John said, “but, you know—I wonder now if it isn’t really about time? Maybe that was God’s way of telling us that we can never know His intentions, but as time goes on … we’ll understand. We’ll see where He was: we’ll see His back.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God

“The famous ritual of Jesus washing the feet of his male disciples (John 13 : 1–11). After taking his clothes off (yes, he strips) and tying a towel around his waist, Jesus does something that only slaves and women did in his culture, something that “real men” never did: he washes other peoples’ feet. More provocatively still, it is this unmanly or womanly act, he teaches, that signals both his own divinity and the way he wants his own disciples to live. As Jennings has it, “Jesus’s ‘divine’ identity thus is expressed in his disregard for the most intimately enforced institutions of worldly society: gender role expectations.” Not everyone, of course, is pleased with such a queer act: “Jesus stripping naked and washing the feet of his friends,” Jennings reminds us, is “something that Peter at least regards as quite unseemly.” Dale Martin makes a very similar point: although “Jesus allows a woman to wash his feet (and we biblical scholars— who know our Hebrew—recognize the hint [foot penis]), when it is his turn, he takes his clothes off, wraps a towel around his waist, and washes the feet of his male disciples, again taking time out for a special seduction of Peter.” Modern readers, then, may be blind to the gendered and sexual meanings of such acts, but the original participants certainly were not, nor are our contemporary gnostic scholars.”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion

“Beginning with the context that produced a text then allows us to ask the question we really want to ask, the question that causes us to come to the Bible in the first place: What is this saying to us, today?”
― Josh Scott, Context

“Too often when a person's experience and the standard interpretation of Scripture don't add up we immediately blame the person instead of interrogating our understanding of Scripture. It is far easier to believe that someone else is wrong or does not have enough faith than it is to face the truth that it's possible that our interpretation doesn't match how reality works.”
― Josh Scott, Context

“Any time Jesus sounds like a Cynic or Stoic or like Socrates, we may wonder if we have evidence of Gentile Christians coining sayings to distance Jesus from Judaism and thus to legitimate their own preferences. For instance, when Jesus is made to abandon fasting since the kingdom of God has arrived, and one cannot force the new spiritual reality into the outmoded forms of Jewish observance (Mark 2:21-22), we have to wonder: are we seeing here a religious revolutionary breaking with his own culture? Or are we seeing an excuse by Hellenistic Christians for why they do not intend to continue Jewish fasting practices? [...] Surely this is theological propaganda for Gentile Christians repudiating alien Jewish norms. Was Jesus a radical, or has a later faction of his followers rewritten him in their own image? If sayings of Jesus strongly echo Christian belief, practice, or wisdom, we have to wonder if someone is, again, attributing to him what they had come to believe on other grounds, providing a dominical pedigree once debate arose. We will see in the next chapter how this principle disqualifies virtually all the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John: they are unparalleled in other gospels, closely paralleled in the Johannine Epistles, and they explicitly state sophisticated Christology that seems to have formed through a complex process of Christian reflection, not just to have dropped from the lips of Jesus himself.”
― Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?

“When the plain sense makes good sense, seek no other sense.”
― Millard J. Erickson, A Basic Guide to Eschatology: Making Sense of the Millennium

“Have a Master Plan for your life when you know the Master's Plan"-from "Why the Bible Makes Life Make Sense: Pursuing a Purposeful Life with a Biblical Perspective”
― Heather Erdmann

“The words in the Bible are not just words; they are God’s words. Something happens when you read the Bible as opposed to any other piece of literature. It is almost too complicated to explain, but there is a simple concept that sums up the complexity of the matter. Ask yourself this question: “If I read the Bible every day for a year, for fifteen minutes a day, how would my life be different?” Pause right now and ask yourself this question. If you have never read the Bible before, dream about what this might mean for you.”
― Steven Kolberg, Reviving Fatherhood: Guiding Every Dad from First Steps to Lasting Legacy