As 21st century Americans, we have an historically unprecedented amount of access to the Word of God. Whether it's an old copy on your shelf, a Gideon's Bible in a hotel room, or even an audio MP3, it seems that the Scriptures are ubiquitous in our society. But even though personal Bible-reading is at an all-time high, it does not necessarily mean that everyone is profiting from it. In other words, not all Bible-reading is created equal. Part of the problem is that people do not recognize the fact that the Scriptures contain various genres that were composed by numerous people throughout a significant amount of time. In order to fully understand the various books of Scripture, they will have to be read in subtle, yet different ways.
One of the major genres which we encounter in the New Testament is that of the "epistle" or "letter." Whether it's the 13 letters written by the apostle Paul, or the "general epistles" of James, Peter, John, and Jude, what we have in our possession are real correspondence from real individuals to real congregations in the first century world. In order to fully appreciate this part of Scripture, here are a few guidelines for profitable reading:
1. Letters must be read as a whole.
How often do you get a letter from a friend and instead of reading from beginning to end in one sitting, you read a few paragraphs, then stop, a few days later you read the end, and then you sporadically read random sections over the next few weeks. Certainly this is NOT the proper way to read a letter. In the first century church the New Testament canon was still being composed, and when a church got a letter from one of the apostles (like Peter or Paul), they would assemble together (typically on the Lord's Day) and have it read out-loud in one sitting. This way, they were able to know the context of what the apostle was saying to them. One of the biggest reasons why particular Bible verses are misunderstood today is due to the fact that they were taken out of their context. The best way to insure that you are properly understanding what is being said in New Testament letters, is to read them in their immediate and broader context.
2. Letters must be read historically.
Part of knowing a letter's broader context is to have, as best we can, an understanding of the historical situation in which particular letters were composed. As I mentioned above, these are real letters, written by real people to real churches. Gaining a knowledge of what was going on in certain situations helps immensely. This always involves a bit a guess work, but the evidence that one looks for is classified as "internal" and "external." Internal evidence are those things which we read within the text itself. External evidence are clues that we gain from other extant documents (the Book of Acts is key), as well as the tradition that we have from the Early Church. Some of the letters in the New Testament are known as "occasional" letters. This does not mean that they were written every once in a while, but that their writing was precipitated by a certain occasion. Sometimes they preceded a visit or served as a follow up letter after one. Other churches were in the midst of controversy or under the sway of various heresies. Those letters where the occasion[s] seems to be the overriding interest of the author are a bit like hearing a one-sided phone conversation; you only hear the person your with, but you still can piece together what's being said. This is the same way we can figure out what heresies Paul confronted or what issues plagued the early church.
coming soon... 3 more ways in which letter ought to be read.
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