Where’s That?

On the third page of my site is a short book named “Using the Bible.” One chapter is titled “The Value of Context.”

Through the years of being me, I have frequently been asked, “Where’s that in the Bible?” That’s a valid question if you really are interested in discovering something new. The people Paul encountered from Berea didn’t believe him, so they went to the Scriptures to seek the Truth. They didn’t just brush over their notes from seminary and brush him off as a heretic, which did happen to him frequently.

An accusation I have frequently encountered has been, “You’re taking that out of context.” I have used that one myself on days. While listing the subjects I felt I should deal with in this paper, I had a vague memory of some times in the Scriptures that I had looked at a Scripture being quoted in the New Testament and thinking that the place being quoted said something different. 

So, I  looked at all of the over 250 New Testament quotes of Old Testament Scripture,  and looked at  sometimes as much as 30 verses of context in the OT Scripture.  It took a few months.

7 times, a New Testament writer said something like, “The Scriptures say…” and what they were calling “Scripture” was not the Old Testament. One of the quotes was from the book of Enoch. 8 times, the statement being made in the NT is taking the OT passage completely out of context.

I am wondering how much we let religion, fear and pride be the spirits we are inspired by as we seek to understand the Book. It seems that the Holy Spirit can handle giving life to “it is written” without regard for what the writing meant when it was written. He knows everything, and how everything works, and why.