Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
The city of Smyrna was located approximately thirty-five miles north of Ephesus. It was a prosperous city with a population of over one hundred thousand in John’s day (c. A.D. 95). That location had been inhabited for over three thousand years and no one knows for sure who founded Smyrna or exactly when it was established.
Have you ever been quoted out of context? Sometimes people quote something you said, but by ignoring the context of what you said they can claim that you said something different—sometimes exactly the opposite of what you actually meant! We often make this same mistake with the Bible.
We have grammatical-historical-interpretation and grammatical-critical-historical interpretation. The former preserved objectivity in interpretation, the latter subjectivity. The former preserved the integrity and trustworthiness of the Bible writers and the text; the latter made both the Bible writer and the text untrustworthy. In other words, New Hermeneutics, with its pseudo-scholarship has done nothing more than weaken and demoralize people’s assurance in the Bible being the inspired and fully inerrant Word of God.
The origin of the word “Bible”; determining which books truly and legitimately belong in the Bible as the inspired Word of God; rejection of the Apocrypha. Looking at many of the divine pieces of evidence that have determined the canonicity of the rightful books of the Bible.
There are 320 Greek New Testament direct quotations passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. According to a listing published by Westcott and Hort, the combined total of quotations and references is some 890. (The New Testament in the Original Greek, Graz, 1974, Vol. I, pp. 581-595)
Hands down, the Greek Septuagint version is the most important of the early versions of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, it is the first translation. The Greek Septuagint is abbreviated as the Roman numeral LXX (meaning, “Seventy”).
What did the Bible authors mean by the words that they used? How can Christians determine this instead of imposing their modern-day opinions into the text? What implications does a text have for Christians today? How can Christians rightly apply the Bible in their lives?
Poetry Song of Songs This book, also known as The Song of Solomon, it extols the beauty of romantic and sexual love. Some parts of the Bible are much better known than others. One of the more neglected parts of the Bible is the Song of Songs. It is rarely read and hardly ever used... Continue Reading →
Principles There are many principles that assist the interpreter in understanding the biblical text. For example, the covenant principle differentiates between the various contracts that God has made with his people, specifically their provisions, their parties and their purposes. The Christocentric principle helps us to understand that the mind of deity is eternally centered in... Continue Reading →
Until the Enlightenment, biblical hermeneutics was usually seen as a form of special hermeneutics. It was thought that Scripture required a special form of interpretation. In the nineteenth century, it became increasingly common to read Scripture just like any other writing. Schleiermacher argued against a distinction between “general” and “special” hermeneutics. He proposed a general... Continue Reading →