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To: don-o
"How does one know that a particular interpretation, or a system of interpretation is the correct one?"

I've never had to much of an issue with the interpretation of passages as to which is correct.

Rarely, if ever does the Bible only speak of something one time.

If my reading/interpretation does not fit/jive/reinforce what the other passages on the same subject seem to be saying then it is more than likely that the passage in question is being interpreted incorrectly.

My approch to Bible study is to use a concordence and to read all the passages that deal with a particular theme/topic.

Take baptism as an example.

You really do need to read all relevant sightings of baptism to understand its meaning and significance.

39 posted on 02/22/2003 10:11:43 PM PST by PFKEY
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To: PFKEY
My approach to Bible study is to use a concordance and to read all the passages that deal with a particular theme/topic.

You know, I have kind of a problem with that type of approach. When I was a new Christian, someone told me to do that sort of concordance search with the word "church" so I could better understand what church was all about. What happened was, I completely missed Acts Chapter 2 which even if you are not close to being a pentecostal, you must admit is a foundational event in the life if the Christian church. But the Greek word for "church" is nowhere to be found in that whole chapter.

Likewise a term like "baptism". If you merely search a concordance for that word alone, then would hit Romans 6:3,4 but, if you were only looking for the verses, you would miss the entire rest of Romans 6 which elaborates tremendously on the idea behind baptism. Or, a concept like sanctification or regeneration are often elaborated on without even using those specific terms, so a simple concordance search would be useless.

So, for proper names, like Moses or Jerusalem, maybe, but for a subject search I have serious reservations about that method.

50 posted on 02/23/2003 12:54:50 PM PST by ponyespresso (I know that my Redeemer lives)
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