Readings in Old Testament Studies

The basic need to interpret Biblical texts (in general) must be considered in terms of the dimensions of time and the audience addressed. All the Biblical texts were written more than two-thousand years ago, and with no doubt have ways of living and the context settings in which these divine words and thoughts were uttered very much changed since then. Such context settings were meaningful to the contemporaries of their respective time, but this is not necessarily the case with contemporary readers of nowadays. Such contextual settings relate to a) historical, b) cultural, c) spiritual circumstances at the time when these divine words were uttered. To understand the the spiritual message (the 'kerygma') of a biblical periocope, we need to 'explore' such background of settings to answer important questions such as: (i) What was the reason of such message from God?, (ii) what was the content, and (iii) what objective did it have to have An impact on the lifes of the people (audience) addressed? Only after having succesfully answered such questions, can we develop the 'kerygma' behind and apply to our lives today. These are methodical requirements of such a preliminary procedure to 'dig out' the kerygma behind, and in doing so, we avoid misinterpretation of the divine message in presenting biblically incorrect conclusions that lead people astray from what the Lord really wanted to communicate to mankind. Doing this is an analytic effort of some intellectual standing that we have to follow each time when teaching or preaching to other people around us. It must be done not only out of highest respect for God´s Word delivered to mankind but also of the huge responsibility we have in delivering it 'uncorrupted' to our audience, without adding or missing anything that was transmitted to us. Church history, in the past and recently, teaches us a very important lesson: The fact that so many different denominations evolved during the course of time in the period after the Early Church in Jerusalem points out to differences in doctrine that have split Christianity and continue to do so today. They all have 'interpreted' portions or the whole of the Bible in 'their way', and exactly this shows the high potential of 'private ontology' that can influence conclusions and concepts claimed to be in accord with the Bible but which are nothing else than human based 'errors'. Our point of orientation is that what the Bible actually says and not what we think it says. [...]