I have just finished a fascinating read: 'Journey Into God's Word: your guide to understanding and applying the Bible' by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, published by Zondervan in 2008. I bought this through an Internet based bookshop in preparation for a Theology course that I'm just embarking upon. It's a slim volume packed with (for me) new ideas.
munanyo meaning become familiar with a fair chunk of the Bible over my quarter-century as a Christian, but more as a casual friend than as a the family member that God wants us to be: it turns out that I've been skimming, picking and choosing, taking the low hanging fruit, and guilty of the down-sides that follow familiarity.
Duvall and Hays teach the reader to follow an 'interpretive journey' when studying the Bible, forensically examining God's Word down to the individual written words. It's quite a challenge! The authors propose a four point 'journey' into any passage (five in the New Testament) when interpreting any passage of scripture, taking into account the type of writing/literature that we're looking at (for example: is it a piece of poetry, a letter, a narrative, a gospel?), as well as it's historical and cultural context. First, what did the writing mean to the people to/for whom it was written?; next, recognise that there is a difference between those people and times and our own and try and establish what those differences are (the authors call this a 'river' of differences); thirdly, to cross the river use a 'principlizing bridge' - using the theological principle of the text, the thing about God that applies both sides of the river; and finally applying that principle to our own time and situation. In Old Testament study a fifth step is inserted after crossing the bridge - asking how the New Testament teaching might modify or qualify that of the Old.