Do You Think Contextually When You Read the Bible?

Biblical Studies

May 6

Lately, I’ve been wondering if some versions of the Bible, merely by the way they are formatted, make it easier for Bible readers and interpreters to think contextually.

If you are an architect, thinking contextually means that you always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

If you are a student of the Bible, that means you try to read and interpret passages of scripture in their larger context. That context may be only a few verses, an entire chapter, several chapters, or even an entire book.

Why is thinking contextually when reading the Bible important?

Well, it keeps us from ripping passages from their contexts and giving them an interpretation the author never intended. It helps us to rightly handle the word of truth, to borrow Paul’s phrase in 2 Timothy 2.

For example, take the single verse of John 6:53:

John 6:53
“Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.’”

What is the meaning of this passage? Is Jesus saying that we must become cannibals? Surely not! Is he talking about what happens in the Lord’s Supper? That somehow the bread and the cup become the actual body and blood of Christ? Some have interpreted the verse this way.

But, having not yet instituted the Lord’s Supper, it’s doubtful Jesus was referring to the Supper in v. 53. Were he doing so, his disciples surely would have been even more perplexed by his declaration than they were.

To determine the possible meaning of v. 53 we should consider the verse in its larger context. There, Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread that came down out of heaven,” and says: “he who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:58; cf. vv. 48,50).

Bread from heaven. Eating the bread that leads to eternal life.

Doesn’t this sound like Jesus is thinking on a spiritual plane, rather than a literal or physical one?

Note some other verses in the larger context:

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him who he has sent” (John 6:29).
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe” (vv. 35,36).
“Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (v. 47).

What is Jesus doing in these verses? He’s trying to produce belief in people who were slow to believe who he was. The larger context of John chapter 6 bears this out.

Putting these thoughts together, we might say that to eat of the bread from heaven is tantamount to believing in Jesus. He seems to think of spiritual life as resulting from a continual appropriation of him as our spiritual food. He is the food and drink which satisfies the hunger and thirst of our souls.

Looking at the broader context of John 6, then, yields a very satisfactory meaning to v. 53.

Here is another illustration.

However we may apply 1 Corinthians 14:34 to our day, Paul’s instruction for the women to “be silent in the churches” and his aﬃrmation that “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” are clarified by giving attention to the context.

Let’s consider that Paul does not use the word “church” here in the universal sense; nor does he use it in a geographical sense. He uses it in the sense of the assembly, as other verses in the chapter clearly indicate (14:19,23,28). The silence Paul commands can thus be seen to apply to the general assembly in Corinth.

In fact, we would do well to examine the larger context of 1 Corinthians 14:26-36 in order to understand that single verse, 1 Corinthians 14:34, don’t you think?

Similarly, I think it would be a mistake to try to interpret 1 Timothy 2:11 without a close examination of its context, 1 Timothy 2:8-15. Indeed, the larger context of that single verse is surely the entire letter of 1 Timothy.

Studying the context of a single verse of scripture is very important to understanding the meaning of a particular verse.

But, you say: What does thinking contextually have to do with the way Bibles are formatted?

Let’s consider two versions: The King James Version (KJV) and the New International Version (NIV).

There are many diﬀerences between the two, aren’t there? An obvious one, of course, is the release date of these versions. The KJV was published in 1611; the NIV was first released almost four centuries later in 1978, with major revisions in 1984 and 2011.

Another diﬀerence, one that is relevant to this ever-lengthening conversation , is that the KJV arranges the biblical text in stand-alone verses. Each verse is its own paragraph. On the other hand, the NIV arranges the text into paragraphs that may include several verses.

Now, I don’t want to denigrate a particular version.

But, is it possible that one helps us to think contextually over another?Before you answer that question, let’s say a word about the chapter, paragraph, and verse division in our Bibles. You probably already know that they were not in the original manuscripts.

Thought
Ancient biblical manuscripts did not use paragraph and verse division. Neither did they use punctuation and spaces to separate words. They ran the letters together without word, sentence, paragraph, verse, and paragraph divisions. Isn’t that interesting!
In order to facilitate the reading of biblical books, especially in public, scribes began to make chapter-like divisions as early as the fourth century. The chapters in translations of the New Testament used today go back just to the beginning of the thirteenth century when Stephen Langton, a lecturer at the University of Paris, introduced major divisions into the Latin Bible. (If interested, see Bart Ehrman, “When Did the Bible Get Chapters and Verses?” The Bart Ehrman Blog (March 20,2022)

As for verse divisions, they did not come along for another three centuries. the first edition of the Bible to have the text in separate verses was compiled by a Parisian printer-editor named Stephanus in 1551. I found this factoid in Jack Lewis’s, The English Bible from KJV to NIV: A History and Evaluation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), p.42). These are the verse divisions still in use today, by the way.

What diﬀerence does any of this make? you ask.

OK. Consider this: As long as we read the verses of the Bible in their contexts, it makes very little diﬀerence.

However, is it possible that a Bible version that arranges the text in multi-verse paragraphs might help us to better see scripture passages in their context? Is it possible that the way the scriptures are formatted may actually help or hinder interpretation and application?

Actually, I wonder if we would better understand scripture if our Bibles had no chapter and verse divisions at all. True, removing those divisions might make it harder to find a certain passage. However, removing them might help us to keep the importance of context in mind as we read. What do you think?

Conclusion

The point of my wonderings is that there may be value in reading a Bible that arranges the verses in paragraphs. It may help us to think contextually, which would helps us to better interpret and apply the scared writings.

On the other hand, there may be a subtle danger in only reading a Bible that makes each verse a separate paragraph. Such a Bible may foster an atomistic reading of the text, which might cause us to miss the meaning intended by the author. That would be tragic, for that could very easily lead to misapplication of God’s word.

What do you think?
I would love to know what you think about all this. Know that your comments and/or questions are welcome, whatever they are!
Feel free to reply to hello@kerryandbecky.com.