Interpreting The Word of God

In Interpreting The Word of God, Dr. Kenneth Berding offers a “layman’s guide” to biblical hermeneutics, hermeneutics being the methods and principles by which to interpret a biblical text. Biblical hermeneutics brings to bear the expertise of a wide range of theological disciplines, and in this sense it is a complex subject.

But what Berding shows is misunderstanding, misinterpreting, and misapplying the Bible, typically comes down to a small number of simple mistakes that everyone makes, but no one has to—not if you know what they are, and know what to look for.

Have you ever misunderstood something you read in the Bible? I certainly have. I imagine you have too. This short book is about reasons we sometimes misunderstand the Bible. The goal is to help us learn how to read the Bible well by focusing on why we misunderstand. We will concentrate upon problems in interpretation with the goal of helping us become more faithful interpreters of the Bible.

Since we will focus upon the negative (in order to teach the positive), let me begin by listing five central axioms of biblical interpretation—positive principles. I refer to these as The Big Five in a class I teach on interpretation and in another book I wrote. If you want to read the Bible well, whatever else you do, you need to pay attention to these five rules of interpretation.