The other day, someone wrote to a discussion list and asked what a particular verse meant. The smart aleck in me almost won out; I was very tempted to write, “Nothing.” I guess that’s a little extreme, but a verse read completely out of its context means very little.
Some would point out that the New Testament writers often quoted verses out of context. That’s true, but it pays to remember that people at that time tended to know much more Scripture than we do today. Like the Jewish people today. Ray Vander Laan tells of attending a Jewish school where the professor would quote a verse, and the students were expected to quote the preceding and following verses. To a large degree, people would tend to hear verses in context.
I do recognize that at times passages were used out of context by the New Testament writers. Though this was their practice (and that of many Jewish teachers at that time), I don’t think we’re justified in doing the same.
I recently read an article at BibleStudyTools.com with the title: “Never Read A Bible Verse.” I like that title. In the article, the author encourages people to always read, at minimum, an entire paragraph, rather than a verse.
It hasn’t helped, of course, that many King James and American Standard Bibles (among others) print each verse as a separate paragraph. I can’t help but think that has encouraged people over the years to take verses by themselves, rather than in context.
Nor has the old style of preaching helped, where preachers would spout dozens of verses during the course of one sermon, almost none of them given with any context at all. I grew up thinking that Paul’s letters were like the book of Proverbs, isolated sayings with little to no connection between them. I was greatly surprised to discover they actually presented a flowing thread of arguments and reasoning.
If you missed them, commenters yesterday provided some excellent examples of out-of-context passages (I think Randall won the prize for most outrageous). Feel free to add to the list in the comments on this post.
Our discussion this week got me thinking about proof texts. Verses like “Faith comes by hearing” that are quoted out of context to prove a point totally different from that of the original text.
The Latin word for “weave” is texere; we can see that root in words like textile. The word for “with” is com. Put the two together and you get a word that is extremely important in Bible study: context. The imagery for the word context is that of a woven fabric; lifting a thread out of that fabric tears the weave, ruins the fabric, and leaves the thread as weak version of its former self.