Digital Logos Edition
A Proven Approach to Help You Interpret and Understand the Bible.
Grasping God’s Word has proven itself in classrooms across the country as an invaluable help to students who want to learn how to read, interpret, and apply the Bible for themselves. This book will equip you with a five-step Interpretive Journey that will help you make sense of any passage in the Bible. It will also guide you through all the different genres found in the Bible to help you learn the specifics of how to best approach each one.
Filling the gap between approaches that are too simple and others that are too technical, this book starts by equipping readers with general principles of interpretation, then moves on to apply those principles to specific genres and contexts.
Features include:
This fourth edition includes revised chapters on word studies and Bible translations, updated illustrations, cultural references, bibliography, and assignments. This book is the ideal resource for anyone looking for a step-by-step guide that will teach them how to accurately and faithfully interpret the Bible.
“For our interpretation of any biblical text to be valid, it must be consistent with the historical-cultural context of that text.” (Page 112)
“Keep in mind that our goal is to grasp the meaning of the text that God has intended. We do not create meaning out of a text; rather, we seek to find the meaning that is already there.” (Page 26)
“The position that stresses the author in the determination of meaning is called authorial intention. The opposing view, which focuses on the reader as the main character in the determination of meaning, is called reader response.” (Page 195)
“Look for words that are important or crucial to the passage” (Page 170)
“Translation is nothing more than transferring the message of one language into another language.” (Page 4)
J. Scott Duvall is professor of New Testament at Ouachita Baptist University. He is the coauthor with George H. Guthrie of Biblical Greek Exegesis: A Graded Approach to Learning Intermediate and Advanced Greek and with Terry G. Carter and J. Daniel Hays of the textbook Preaching God’s Word.
J. Daniel Hays is dean of the Pruet School of Christian Studies and professor of Old Testament at Ouachita Baptist University. He is the author of From Every People and Nation, and he has co-authored Grasping God’s Word; Preaching God’s Word; Journey into God’s Word; The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology; Iraq: Babylon of the End Times?; Apocalypse; and The Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy