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Asking Good Questions
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Sometimes we do not even think to ask the right questions about the meaning of a biblical text because we don't realize there could be other answers or, perhaps without even thinking about it, we assume the meaning is obvious.
If we really wanted to approach the Bible as objectively as possible, we would suspend our judgments on what the text means at first and let it tell us what it means. This is hard. It’s like observing a delicious cake that you really would rather eat!
But the stakes are high, right? If we really believe the Bible is God’s inspired word, we want to hear what it really says. Is it possible that, sometimes, when people are fighting over the Bible, they’re not really fighting over the Bible at all but about their interpretation of the Bible or perhaps their group’s interpretations? Is it possible that, to a greater extent than we might like to admit, we use the Bible as a mirror for what we already believe?
Asking good questions about the text is a direct path to hearing it freshly. One of our problems is that sometimes we don’t even think to ask certain questions. Sometimes we do not even think to ask the right questions about the meaning of a biblical text because we don't realize there could be other answers or, perhaps without even thinking about it, we assume the meaning is obvious.
It’s therefore good to ask questions about everything, even questions we think have obvious answers. Just by asking certain questions, other possible meanings to the text spring up that we may have never thought about. Below are several kinds of questions you might ask. You might go through the list every time you observe a passage, even if you think the answer is obvious.
These are the “What does this word mean” questions. These are the “Who is Jehoiakim” questions. Who, what, where, and when questions fall into this category. “What event is Jesus talking about in Mark 13?” “When does Jesus say the events of Mark 13 will take place?” “What does the Hebrew word hesed mean in Jonah 4:2?”
The definitional questions are very easy to spot and often not too difficult to answer. “How” questions can be a little more tricky to answer because the text may not exactly give us the answers. It is when we are trying to fill in the “how” and “why” gaps in the text that we are most likely to smuggle in our own assumptions and the assumptions of our modern culture.
It is when we try to fill in gaps in the text – elements of the picture that are not explicitly stated – that we are most likely to smuggle in our own assumptions and the assumptions of our contemporary culture. This is especially the case when we are trying to answer “how” and “why” questions.
After you have asked questions of definition about the text you are observing, as how questions. Ask these sorts of questions especially about the logical relationships you have observed. “How did King Josiah contrast with King Manasseh?” “How does Matthew 5:48 generalize what has preceded in Matthew 5?” “How does Romans 1-11 lay the groundwork for Romans 12-15?”
When your questions are rooted in your observations of the text, you are far more likely to get to what the text actually meant than if you simply ask random questions that pop into your mind. For example, “Did Noah have dinosaurs on the ark” is not a question that Genesis 6-9 “wants” to answer. There is nothing in the text about dinosaurs, so you will find no answers to that question in the biblical text.
The “Why” or “reason” questions especially run the risk of us importing our own assumptions into the text. “Why did Jesus die for us,” for example, will tap into all sorts of reasons we have heard in church or reasons that make sense to our culture. “Why was Israel not allowed to eat pork?” It is on this ground that we are most likely to anachronize the text. Inductive answers to these questions will require us to suspend what we think we know and do some historical and cultural research.
For example, it makes sense to us in our culture to say that God commanded the food laws in order to keep Israel healthy. But does the biblical text actually say anything of the sort? An explanation that makes more sense for their world is simply the fact that the cultures that herded pigs worshiped other gods. Philistines, for example, herded pigs. Although it may not make as much sense to us in our world, staying clear of pigs may have been part of a whole set of practices that kept Israel separate from the gods of other peoples.
These are “so what” questions. But wait. We are still in that part of our quest where we are asking about the original meaning of the text. We won’t talk about applying the text to today until Lesson 5. So the implication questions we have in mind here are questions about the implications for the original audiences. “Given the answers to all the questions we have asked, what are the implications for the original meaning of this text?”