How to read Scripture?

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Hi, there are many approaches for reading Scripture. You can extract historical facts from it, theological truths, moral rules…
How should I read a passage that theologians claim has some theological meaning (like for example a prophecy of Jesus in the Old testament) and historians say (using the historical critical method) that the author in fact speaks of something different?
 
What does Church teaching say about it?
That’s generally how we read scripture.
 
Kullervo said:
How should I read a passage that theologians claim has some theological meaning (like for example a prophecy of Jesus in the Old testament) and historians say (using the historical critical method) that the author in fact speaks of something different?
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I’d ask the author what was His intent.
 
‘Truth, not eloquence, is to be sought in reading the Holy Scriptures; and every part must be read
in the spirit in which it was written. For in the Scriptures we ought to seek profit rather than polished
diction.’ - The Imitation of Christ
 
When reading Scripture ask yourself these three questions; who wrote, who did they write it too and why did they write it?

ZP
 
Kullervo said:
How should I read a passage that theologians claim has some theological meaning (like for example a prophecy of Jesus in the Old testament) and historians say (using the historical critical method) that the author in fact speaks of something different?
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I think the question you need to ask is: why am I reading it?

Theologians, historians, people of different faith traditions, and people of no faith tradition will all read scripture in different ways. If you want to understand the Bible as a Catholic Theologian, read it like one. If you would like to use it as a historical text, read it that way, etc.

Make your decision first, then look at others who made the same decision to see how they approach it.
 
Kullervo said:
Hi, there are many approaches for reading Scripture. You can extract historical facts from it, theological truths, moral rules…
How should I read a passage that theologians claim has some theological meaning (like for example a prophecy of Jesus in the Old testament) and historians say (using the historical critical method) that the author in fact speaks of something different?
Click to expand...
Read this Catechism section: The Holy Spirit, Interpreter of Scripture :
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PQ.HTM
 
Read the Bible as a letter from God to you. Leave the scientific approach to the scholars. The Bible is meant to be read as a guide on how to live, how to think, how to act, how to forgive, how to treat others, how to pray, how to do everything you must to gain eternal life; go to the Bible to find answers to all your problems and desires.
 
No, I like to think about the Bible and discover more information that’s in it, I listen to scholars theologians and historians. I won’t give up trying to understand more.
 
Kullervo said:
No, I like to think about the Bible and discover more information that’s in it, I listen to scholars theologians and historians. I won’t give up trying to understand more.
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Studying literary genres, historical data, and theological treatises on the Bible is all well and good. But this is not reading the Bible for learning how to live. One is scientific, the other is spiritual. The Bible is for Christians to consume as food for our soul, through daily reading. It is not merely to fill our intellect with theological facts. The goal is to go from the intellect and into the heart.
 
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote of the positives, but also the limitations and negatives of the so called historical-critical method.

I dismiss it completely. The faith did perfectly well for 1900+ years before certain self-appointed illuminati drained the supernatural out of it.
 
I’m not dismissing the spiritual site of it. I just asked how to read it when I’m thinking about it intellectually.
 
I think we can read scripture by admitting that it can have more than one meaning in a verse. I remember a Deacon preaching on the keys in Isaiah, talking about how they relate to Saint Peter, but also to something that was going on historically at the time, they don’t contradict each other, they’re both true.
 
Yeah I like this. It’s like foreshadowing of Jesus through the history of the particular time. Very interesting. I hears that Jesus is like all the great archetypal stories of Jung with the exception that it really happened. I think we can see fragments of the truth in many stories.
 
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