Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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The Twist in the Sermon on the Mount You Probably Missed

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In “The Twist in the Sermon on the Mount You Probably Missed,” Mark Ward shows how to observe connector words, how to ask interpretive questions, and how to follow the author’s train of thought. His study leads into rich application dealing with anger and reconciliation. This is great Bible study.

I’m about to make the greatest understatement of all time: Jesus is brilliant. By focusing my attention on my own sins, he not only helps me defuse others’ anger against me, he also defuses my anger against others. It is in remembering that I am a sinner, and a sometimes mean one, that I can have pity on others. It is in remembering that I am a forgiven sinner that I can find the strength to forgive other sinners—just like the parable of the unforgiving servant.

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Understanding the Story of Joseph in Genesis

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Samuel Emadi wrote a piece on the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50. Sometimes we read that story and zero in on a few ideas about innocent suffering or the sovereignty of God. But Emadi does a great job examining the full narrative and following its train of thought.

Moses gives Joseph more time in Genesis than he does any other character—a striking fact given the significance of Genesis’s other main characters: Adam, Noah, and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This prominence is even more striking considering the apparent insignificance of Joseph in the rest of Scripture.

What then do we make of the Joseph story? Why is it so prominent in Genesis?

Many Christians fail to notice how Joseph’s story contributes to the Genesis narrative and to redemptive history in general. Within Reformed circles, preachers often use Joseph merely to illustrate how divine sovereignty and human responsibility intersect, focusing almost exclusively on Genesis 50:20: “What you meant for evil God meant for good.” Certainly, we are meant to read Joseph’s life in light of this verse. God’s sovereignty is a major theme in Genesis 37–50, and Joseph himself intends for us to interpret his life in light of God’s providence (cf. Gen. 45:1–9).

But reducing the story to an illustration for the doctrine of compatibilism misses the rich contribution Joseph’s life makes to the storyline of Scripture. God’s sovereignty figures largely in the Joseph story because God wants us to see how he puts himself in impossible situations and yet finds a way to keep his covenant promises. Joseph highlights how God’s providence secures God’s promises.

In this light, we can see how Joseph uniquely contributes to Scripture’s opening book.

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Responses to Difficult Questions for Exodus

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I’ve really enjoyed letting you into my study as I work through Exodus. I’ve focused on the main ideas of each passage, and I’m always trying to keep the big picture in front of me.

But there’s also a time for digging into the details and asking all the hard questions. Such as:

  • Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart?
  • Why can we trust Exodus as history?
  • Did God expect Israel to obey all those laws?
  • What was manna?
  • Can we recognize any symbolism in the tabernacle?

The guys at the Bible Project do more than make really great videos. They also have a podcast where they expand on the stuff in their videos. They have two podcast episodes (also available as YouTube videos), where they answer difficult questions about the book of Exodus. They’re great students of the Bible. They observe, interpret, and apply with much skill. If you’d like to understand Exodus further, you would do well to listen to their discussion of it.

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The Real Reason We Don’t Read Our Bibles

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I’ve heard many reasons why people struggle to read their Bibles. My co-blogger Ryan has written about many of them:

Of course, in our most lucid moments, we’ll acknowledge these reasons are lame. But they continue to ensnare us on almost a daily basis.

So I appreciated Brandon Smith’s recent article, “The Real Reason We Don’t Read Our Bibles.” Smith suggests that the underlying excuse behind all the other excuses is that we forget that God’s word is living and active. That the living God is still speaking to us today and meeting with us in the pages of his word.

Want to know what God thinks? Not just what he thought, but what he thinks? Open your Bible. The Spirit lives within you to help you understand God’s will and character, to help you taste and see something fresh and new that you’ve never seen before. A passage you read five years ago might speak to you differently today, because the living God speaks to you through his living Word, right here and right now.

If only this truth would get under our skin, the rest of our excuses might evaporate into the vaporous void of nothingness they are.

Smith gets this just right. Check it out!

Bible Study for Ordinary Canadians (And the Rest of Us)

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I recently had the opportunity to appear on Indoubt, a podcast for Back to the Bible Canada, where I spoke with host Isaac Dagneau about Bible study for ordinary people. We spoke about why believers study the Bible, how to do it, and what role the Holy Spirit plays in our Bible study. The 28-minute audio episode could serve as an introduction to the topic of Bible study for ordinary folks.

Check it out!

The Myth of Literal Bible Translations

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Because this blog is for ordinary people, who don’t typically know Greek or Hebrew, we don’t write much about translation issues. But once in a while there’s an opportunity to speak to an issue that impacts ordinary Bible readers broadly. One such issue is the popular, yet misleading, assumption that some English Bible translations are more literal than others.

Bill Mounce, Greek scholar and author of one of the best-selling Biblical Greek textbooks, wrote recently about translation philosophies, and the popular misconceptions of what they mean. Mounce has served on translation committees for both the ESV and the NIV, so he’s well qualified to comment on a variety of philosophies.

Speaking about the two main categories, he writes:

Most people say there are two translation camps, formal equivalent [word-for-word] and functional equivalent (or dynamic equivalent) [thought-for-thought]. The longer I am in translation work, the more I see how simplistic this division is.

There actually are five methods on translation with three sub-categories for the handling of gender language. Translations are all on a continuum, overlapping one another, and hence it is misleading to picture them as different points on a line. I am guessing, but for example, about eighty percent of the ESV and the NIV are the same, once you account for different translations of individual words.

Mounce goes on to explain that, except for a few interlinear Bibles (which aren’t really English translations), no English Bible is literal.

The word “literal” should never be used of any other form of translation since all of them, every single one, despite their marketing, rarely translate word-for-word. They will say they translate word-for-word unless it does not make sense or misinforms, but that is a red herring argument. They are never consistently word-for-word, unless you can find a translation that translates John 3:16 as, “in this way for loved the God the world so that the Son the only he gave in order that each the believing into him not perish but have life eternal.” No Bible on the market is “literal.”

Mounce goes on to describe more nuanced categories of translation, which should inform how we think about our English Bibles. In addition, he addresses the matter of gender language, arguing that there is no English translation in existence that is “gender neutral,” and we should not ignorantly use the term to describe any well-known, modern English Bible.

Mounce’s full article is useful and easy to read; it uses no Greek. Check it out!