Quotes about Interpretation

Hebrews: No one knows who wrote Hebrews, but it probably first went to Christians in danger of slipping back into their old, rule-bound religion. It interprets the Old Testament, explaining many Jewish practices as symbols that prepared the way for Christ.

Jesus is literally the exegesis of God.

Many liberals believe in God; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.

The Hebrew original does not say, 'Do not kill.' It says, 'Do not murder.' Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life — one is 'kill' (harag, in Hebrew) and the other is 'murder' (ratzach in Hebrew).

The next time you hear someone cite, 'Do not kill' when quoting the sixth commandment, gently but firmly explain that it actually says, 'Do not murder".

The waters below are mayim (the Hebrew word for "water"), and waters above are sham-mayim—which some, but by no means all, scholars believe means "water there" (sham is Hebrew for "there").

Therefore, there is no issue here of a holy text depicting people being ordered by their God to kill infidels or innocents.

This verse uses the Hebrew word milacha to refer to work instead of the more common word avoda. Milacha is not truly translatable; it is best understood as creative work—work that produces something.

People need to realize that even the greatest jazz musicians, when they listen to jazz, they're not like, analyzing it and deconstructing it - they're enjoying it. It's like listening to any other style of music. It's saying something to you, and you kind of just absorb it.

But I do not believe that Scripture was meant to be used as a conversation stopper. God seems to invite our questions, our doubts, and our wonderings.

We need to step back and look at the more fundamental question: What was the author originally saying? We cannot simply read our own understandings into the meaning of a word or statement someone else wrote or said. And when we look at some often bizarre-sounding parts of the Bible, we have to try to discover who the original audience was and view the text through their lens, not ours. If we don't, the possibilities for confusion are endless.

So he had them into the slaughter house, where was a butcher killing a sheep. And behold, the sheep was quiet and took her death patiently. Then said the Interpreter, You must learn of this sheep to suffer, and put up wrongs without murmurings and complaints. Behold how quietly she takes her death! And without objecting she suffereth her skin to be pulled over her ears. Your King doth call you his sheep.