exegesis

I'll keep this OP on a simple level. Here's our target: Revelation 13:18 18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666. Christians have been attempting to decipher the meaning of Revelation 13:18...

It has been my ongoing experience over the years to observe that most people, Christian or otherwise, have felt a sense of chagrin about the topic of Hermeneutics and Exegesis, especially where the Bible is concerned. This got me thinking today, and I thought to myself, "Self!" ...and you know...

Hello! Does the Bible forbid women from being preachers or pastors? 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands...

Hello! I've seen the preterist interpretation of Matthew 24, and it's made me think. However, other passages currently prevent me from adopting a full preterist view of eschatology. I'll list the passages I'm referring to alongside my interpretations of them. If there are any full preterists on...

Hello! Does Deuteronomy 22 teach that we should help stray animals find their owners, even when we don't know the owners? Here's the passage in question (emphasis mine): If you see your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but be sure to take it back to its owner. 2 If they...

Hello! For most of my life, I've understood drinking to be sinful under all circumstances. However, while the Bible condemns drunkenness in no uncertain terms (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Ephesians 5:18), I've come across some verses that cause me to question if alcohol consumption is always...

Hello! In Genesis 38, Er had a wife named Tamar. Because he was wicked, God killed him (v. 7). According to the customs of the time, Er's brother, Onan, should enter a levirate marriage with her to produce offspring continuing his brother's line (v. 8). He knew the offspring wouldn't be his...

Hello! I've been wondering about the woman described in Proverbs 31:10-31, desiring to compress the passage into an easy-to-remember, practical format. What would be her main character trait(s)? (Note: I'm looking for exegetical answers; I'm not asking what trait(s) should be looked for in a...

For most of my life I had heard people talk about these Biblical concepts, and had been led to believe they were one and the same Hell = the pit / abyss Satan is in hell, Satan = sin, Hell is where sinners go, and so on and so forth Let's examine these words using the concordances αδης hades...

The primary problem with the way most Christians interpret the Bible, is that often, the final deciding factor in what causes them to accept one doctrine, and reject another, exists outside of the Bible, internally, within themselves. And as long as your process is internal, it isn't objective...

"More than half of evangelicals (59 percent) believe the Holy Spirit is a force and not a personal being—in contrast to the orthodox biblical teaching of the Trinity being three Persons in one God." (CT Magazine Blog by Ed Stetzer) Why this statistic is alarming is that Evangelicals...

The first step of Bible study is to get at what the original author and audience would have understood the passage to mean. As exegetical scholar, Gordon Fee says, "A text can't mean today what it never meant to its original audience." Atheist, and intellectually undeveloped Christians make...

This is my first "New Thread" post on Christian Forums. Many of the straw man attacks by so-called, "New Atheists," against the Bible being a coherent revelation of spiritual truth from God, are a direct result of reading scriptures literalistically rather than literarily (I.e. as the author...

As everyone knows, the Bible, which is actually a collection of sixty-six separate manuscripts, is a very complex work that says many different things. Because they have different authors, were written at different times in different places, and were written to different cultures, groups, and...