From Observation to Interpretation

If you see me lurch, or just pull this off, it's because of that. I don't want it to blast you ladies in the ear when I am speaking. Well again, I wanna welcome everyone here tonight. We are doing a combined class.

This is our normal Wednesday evening Bible study that we have, wherein we would be studying systematic theology. However, because of the schedule for Sovereign Grace Academy, we had to combine this class with our normal Thursday evening class because I need to finish the semester by the end of July, actually by August 1st.

And were we to take a night off for the 4th of July tomorrow, that would have put us into the time that I'm going to see Cody for his basic airman graduation from the Air Force. And I didn't want that to happen either and put us back.

I will say this though, just to give you an update. Our last course, we had several of you who have finished your coursework and turned it into me. And so there are three that are getting their certificates, but I apologize because Alan, you're one of them.

You're not gonna get it tonight only because I've been sick and I didn't get to go and have it printed. But I'm going to do a presentation for you next week to present you with your certificate. So give him a hand.

He did a great job. And the others are Ms. Nancy Weller, who messaged me earlier and is sick tonight, and also Ms. Cynthia Childers. And so I may present theirs at church Sunday because they'll be here, but obviously you won't.

So I'll see you next Thursday night. But I'm thankful for those who did the work and they did a great job. Wanna just tell you where we are because I know some of you have not been a part of this course.

Hermeneutics as the Art and Science of Bible Study

Give you sort of a heads up. We have been studying the subject of how to study the Bible. And the fancy name for that is hermeneutics. But I didn't call it hermeneutics. I simply called it fundamentals of Bible study.

But really it is the art and science of hermeneutics. That means taking the message that was given through the apostles, that was written down in the word of God, and taking that message and bringing it to today with an understanding that we would be able to not only read it, but understand it and apply it to our lives.

That's the goal of hermeneutics, to take from the original author and bring it to the modern audience and give a right understanding. There are many wrong understandings of scripture that are out there.

There are many churches that are founded on wrong understandings. There are many churches that continue to perpetuate dangerous misunderstandings of scripture. And so hermeneutics stands as one of the major focal points of the, let me back that up.

It stands as one of the major important subjects that every Bible student should study. That Pastor Mark and I have talked about this several times. He's taken hermeneutics several times. He said, I won't take it again because you can't learn enough.

You just can't, you can always be a better Bible student. And I know that in my preparation for this class, having to read the textbook, having to read the workbook, and having to go through it and do the work myself, it's made me a better Bible student.

And it's given me new insights on things that after 15 years of preaching, I have started to maybe have relaxed on some things. And it got me to have to take a step back and be a little more diligent in my own study.

So I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for any time I get a kick in the shins that remind me of the responsibility that God has given me in preaching the Word. And so that's what this is. This is how to study the Bible.

Now the first, this is lecture four. The first three lectures, we have looked at the subject of observation. We are, we said studying the Bible can be broken down simply into three parts. What are the three parts, class?

Okay, louder. So we have observation is number one, interpretation is number two, and application is number three. Many people jump right to interpretation. Interpretation is what does it mean? And they go right into what does it mean before they have really diligently sought to find out what does it say?

That's what observation is. Observation is having the skills and the knowledge to read well. Most people don't read well. In fact, what was the average? When we say 30 of Americans read at what? A fifth grade or below level.

I worked in public high school for eight years as a substitute teacher. I worked in public high school for three years as a security officer. And I can tell you this, students don't read well. And I can't imagine that after school they became better readers because at least in school we were forcing them to have to try.

Most people do not become better readers, they become worse readers because they have less responsibility and reason to read. And so our first few weeks have really been on the subject of becoming better readers, knowing how to look at something.

It's the value of observation, the process of observation. In fact, I would say this, this section of the study is what I think makes Dr. Hendricks' work unique. Because I've read several books on hermeneutics, I've been in courses myself, went to seminary, did hermeneutics in seminary, and I have to tell you this, nobody stresses observation that I've seen like Dr. Hendricks just the fact of learning to read better, just the fact of looking at the text and digging into the text and what does the text say.

So if you feel like that was the part that was maybe just sort of, yeah, I gotta get through that to get to the interpretation part, please don't. Understand that that was the part that was really the, that was the gem in all this, because that's the part that most people don't do.

And then they become worse at interpreting and even worse at application. Remember what we've said from the beginning, the better you are at observation, the more accurate will be your interpretation.

The better you are at observation, the more accurate you are, you will be at interpretation. Because Bible study is a science. When we talked about this, we said it's art and science of hermeneutics. What is the foundation of science?

Observation. The foundation of all science is observation. We must become biblical detectives looking at the text with a keen eye before we seek to find out what it means. We have to know what it says.

I'm bringing some of these folks up to speak and they haven't been here. I'm telling them, our motto of this class is very simple. Go back and look some more. The very first day they came to class, I said I want 10 observations from Romans chapter 12 verses one and two.

10 observations from two verses. At the end of this class, they're going to owe me 20 more. Did you know that? Did I tell you that already? I think I did, right? So you should already be observing, looking, digging, finding, mining.

You are doing the work of excavation. And I want you to think about this because the reason for this is simple. The text cannot mean what the text doesn't say. That would be a good point to write that down.

The text cannot mean what the text doesn't say. So that, again, gives us the reason for looking at what it says and spending the time to actually investigate the language and the words and what is it saying.

Remember our first lesson, we talked about exegesis. What was its dastardly neighbor? Eisegesis or eisegesis, depending on how you pronounce it. But what is exegesis? To read, to go to the text and pull out.

Eisegesis is to push in. Next week, I'm gonna actually bring you some examples. We're gonna look at some texts and we're gonna show how these texts have been used to push agendas and push theological falsehoods that are just not in the text.

But you can see how someone would read into the text something that they already believed and they wanted the text to say. Eisegesis happens when we introduce something into the text that isn't there.

People often desperately want the Bible to say something. Maybe they want healing, so they want the Bible to say that they're going to be healed. Maybe they want their marriage that is failing to be fixed, so they find the passage that they think is promising them that fix.

Maybe they need to make an important decision where to move or which job to take. And so they flip their Bible open and they land on a passage and it says, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And so that means I have to take the job north of here rather than south, you see?

That is called lucky dipping. That's R .C. Sproul called that, lucky dipping. He said, we don't know what we want. We flip the Bible open, we close our eyes, we take our little finger and we dip and we look down and we read, what does it say?

And whatever the passage says, we can tort it, can twist it, can distort it or whatever we need to do to make it say just what we want it to say.

You didn't make any kind of difference, did you?

No, I want to say this. I'm not saying that the Bible can't make an impact like that because there are times in history where people have just opened the Bible, read a passage and it changed their life.

One of those men was Saint Augustine who heard a jingle, he heard children singing, tolelege, tolelege means take up and read. And so he went and opened his Bible and he read a scripture verse, I believe it's from Romans 13 but I don't remember exactly but it basically says to abandon wickedness and he read that verse and he took it as speaking directly to him and he did and he became one of the greatest theologians of the early church.

So I'm not saying it can't happen but what I am saying is this, we have to be careful simply using the Bible as if it were a fortune cookie. That's not leading to a right understanding. It leads to misreading and misinterpreting the text.

It's like the man who fell down and he said, well I'm gonna go to the Bible to make me feel better. He opens up the Bible, he goes to the first verse, it says Judas went and hung himself. He said, I don't like that.

So he went to another verse and it says, go and do likewise, I don't like that. So he went to a third verse and it says, what you do, do quickly, I don't like that. So you gotta be careful with lucky dipping.

It can, it's not the way that we ought to seek to understand the Bible or to apply it. So today we're gonna move from observation to application. I'm sorry, excuse me. We're gonna move from observation to interpretation and then we'll move to application later.

We're gonna move into the subject of interpretation. If observation is our excavation, digging, interpretation is construction, building. Okay, we've dug out, we've looked at everything, now we're gonna build our understanding on what we have.

That's the analogy. If we have excavated the text, now we can begin to construct an understanding. And our outline for today's lecture is simply this. We're gonna look at the value of interpretation. We're going to look at the various literary types of scripture.

Then we are going to take our first break. And those of you who are only here for Sovereign Grace, or Family Church Bible study, that will be around 7 .30. So if you guys want to be dismissed at that point, you'll be dismissed at our first break.

But then we're gonna come back and look at our handouts for our workbook, what we were supposed to do. What we've done for our work this week. The value of interpretation. Observation says, what does the text say?

Interpretation says, what does the text mean? Everyone take out your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter eight. In Acts chapter eight, I want you to go to verse 26. Acts eight and 26. And we're gonna read down to verse 40.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, rise and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all of her treasure.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning seated in his chariot. And he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, do you understand what you are reading?

And he said, how can I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of scripture that he was reading was this. Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before it sheared silent so he opened not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from the earth. And the eunuch said to Philip, about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this? About himself or about someone else?

Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with the scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see here is water, what prevents me from being baptized?

And he commanded the chariot to stop and they went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord carried Philip away. The eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.

But Philip found himself in Azotus and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. All right, we'll stop there. Real quick, just for the sake of fun, what are some observations that you can make right away?

Anyone? Philip heard from the Lord, okay. Anything else? The official had a copy of the book of Isaiah, which we know wasn't common. It wasn't a common thing to have for people to have. So that means that this man is probably very wealthy.

And it says that he came worshiping, which probably means that he was a Jewish convert or at least what we would call a God-fear, someone who was not circumcised, but was someone who believed in the God of Abraham.

Richard, did you want to say something? You had your hand up. No. Yes, yes, sir, absolutely. Yeah, there are two, yes. And in this passage, he reads from both showing that it's, yeah, absolutely. There are people who argue that Isaiah was written by two different authors and that Isaiah wasn't written by Isaiah, the prophet.

And this is one of the passages that we can use to prove that at least at the time of the apostles, they believed that Isaiah had written the whole thing. And so that's a good point there to be made as well.

That's digging a little deeper, but that's good. That's an important observation. What's, did anybody else notice a missing verse? If you have an ESV Bible, you'll notice there's no verse 37. That's an important point.

If you're studying the subject of textual variation, textual criticism, there is not a verse 37. In the King James Version, it says, and Philip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest, and he answered him and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

So in the King James Version, there is, prior to baptism, a requirement of a confession of faith. So you might wanna go look at why that particular verse is considered to be not part of the original and what type of archeology, history, studies of the text would make someone come to that conclusion.

So again, these are just things to observe, right? We aren't interpreting anything, we're just observing. Now, here's the reason why I had us look at this passage, because this passage is the great interpretation passage, because it tells us something.

It tells us that the Bible does have to be interpreted. And interpretation often begins with a question. Notice verse 34, and the eunuch said to Philip, about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this?

About himself or about someone else? That's a huge interpretive question. That's one of the basic interpretive questions. Who is the subject of this text? Who is the person that this text is talking about?

Think about how valuable that is to interpretation. If you get that wrong, your interpretation will not be right. If you get that wrong, your application will probably not be right. And so he asks the right question.

He asks an important question. But I want you to think of another question that's in this passage. It's the question Philip asked him. Verse 30, do you understand what you're reading? That's really the question of questions, isn't it?

Philip asked him, do you really understand what you're reading? Do you understand? I tell you, that's an important question because think about how many times you've read scripture and you walk away and you didn't really know what you were reading.

You didn't really understand. That's where this guy was. I've heard people say, interpretation is unnecessary or even wrong. I've heard people say, I don't interpret the Bible, I just read it. Well, that's not true.

You can't read something without coming to a conclusion as to what it means. Even in your observation, you're going to be doing some interpreting because that's part of observation. Again, you're gonna notice an interweaving of these three things as we go.

But the idea that I don't interpret, I just read, not true. So, you're always interpreting. And in fact, reading is a weird thing. It's weird how the human brain works. Did you know you can't look at a word without reading it?

I want you to try. On your way home, look at road signs and try not to read them. Look at the billboard signs and try not to read them. You can go this way if you want. Oh, oh, okay, okay, okay. So, your mind automatically reads and then automatically begins a process of interpretation.

Okay, that's done avenue. Well, what is that, right? Immediately, your mind is kicking in gear. It's automatically doing these things. You're not telling yourself to do it. It's an automatic thing that your brain automatically does.

And again, going back to this text, is this text reminds us that interpretation begins with questions. And in fact, how many of you, well, I don't say how many of you ever heard me preach. Most of you here have heard me preach at least once.

When I'm preaching, oftentimes I'm preaching the text. I'm asking questions and answering them. Now, who is it we're speaking to? Now, who is it Paul is talking about? Now, why is Paul so upset? Those questions, those are the interpretive grid.

That's what leads us to the answer. First, having the right question. This guy asked the right question. About whom is this text speaking? Is the prophet speaking of himself or someone else? And of course, Philip, that's a gift.

I can imagine me sitting there, seeing somebody reading Isaiah 53 and me come up and say, do you understand that? And then say, well, who's this about? I'm gonna sidle up and we're gonna go through the gospel right here in Isaiah 53.

I'm gonna tell you all about Jesus and about how this passage points to the land of God and how he took away the sin of the world, how he took it on himself, how he became sin for us and how this great action of transaction that happened on the cross is pictured 700 years before Jesus was ever born.

Right here in the book of Isaiah in the 53rd chapter. I mean, what a great question to ask and what a great question to have asked. So the reason for interpretation is because texts give us questions.

That's the value of interpretation. That's why it is valuable, because we have to interpret to answer the question. Yes, sir? Why is he reading out loud? Why is he reading out loud? I don't know, but I will say this and I'll have to go back and verify what I'm about to say, but I have heard that reading silently is actually a more modern thing that typically in the old world that people read out loud most of the time.

Now, I have to go back and look that up, but I've read that, that reading out loud was more common. So that could be part of the reason. Could be that he was reading to others also. Again, we don't know.

That's a good observation, though, because he wouldn't have known what he was saying if he wasn't reading out loud. See, Jack, that's a good, very good. You know, hadn't even been here and he came right in.

Made a great observation. He's reading out loud. He had to have been, right? So yes, we have this text in Isaiah and he's reading it, and again, he shows us the basis for the reason why interpretation matters.

There are barriers to understanding the Bible, which the interpretation of the text seeks to overcome. I wanna give you a few to think about. These are in your books. If you don't wanna write them down, that's fine, but I just wanna give you a few barriers that will stand between you and the text.

The first one is language barriers. Language barriers will stand between you and the text. It is not enough to just learn the words of a language. You have to learn how those words function. In fact, one of the things that I will say, and I might get some negative feedback from this, and that's okay, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

One of the things that I think is somewhat detrimental to studies is the overuse of what's called the word study, because a word study is where someone takes a word, like let's say agape in the Greek, which means love, and they go and they find all the places where that word is used, and they seek to find out how that word is used.

That's good. What the problem with word studies is word studies rarely seek to find how words are nuanced in the text, and how words can be used differently, and so somebody finds out that the word cosmos, which is world, is used this way in John six.

Well, it must be that same way in John three, and it must be that same way in John eight, and it must be that same way in first John one, or first John two. They don't recognize that the word world has up to 11 different nuances in John's writings alone.

Can be used up to 11 different ways in just the writings of one person for God to love the world. Do not love the world, neither the things in the world. We see that right there. Is it the same? God loves it, but we're not supposed to.

Is it the same? You see what I did, though? I showed you right there two different ways that word is used, and so this is where, as I said, I'm not saying word studies are bad, word studies are great, but where word studies can be a negative is when someone, they get what I call the Strong's Concordance definition, right?

They go to the Strong's Concordance, this is the definition, and every time this word's used, this is it, and they hold on to it. All means all, and that's all that all means, until it don't. All Judea went out and was baptized by John.

Does that mean every single person in Judea? Does that mean every invalid, every Roman soldier, every Pharisee went out and was baptized by John? No, but it says all Judea went out and was baptized by John.

You have to understand nuance of terms and how terms create phrases that are used. We use that today. If Donald Trump came to Jacksonville and the news tomorrow said all Jacksonville turned out for the president's visit, would we understand that there were quite a few that didn't make it?

But yet the word all expressed a way of using language that we're all familiar with. So again, this is language barriers. Language barriers. How do words function, and how did they function in the first century?

That's a huge question. The second thing is cultural barriers. Every passage of scripture has a cultural context of a time was the Bible written. Remember? Yeah, span of time from Moses to the New Testament.

About 1500 years, approximately. It could be 1615, something like that. About 1500 year period. Did cultures change in 1500 years? Was the culture that David lived in a little different than the culture Daniel was forced to live under?

Was the culture of Moses in the wilderness different than the culture of Solomon in the palace? A little different, right? Was the culture of Abraham different than the culture of Moses in that Abraham didn't have the covenant law of God that was given from outside?

Did he live differently? You know the thing about this? Abraham never read the Bible. He had daily devotions with God, but it wasn't our daily bread. You know what I mean? It's a much different culture.

It's a much different life, living style. It's all different. And so here's one that I'm dealing with. You know, I've been preaching through first Corinthians. I'm ending this week. Last sermon in the series.

I'm excited to be done. But I'm gonna remind everybody, what is Corinth? Corinth is a metropolis of the ancient world. It sat on a four-mile span of land that connected the northern Greece from the southern Peloponnesus, which was like southern Greece, and everybody who traveled had to go through Corinth because essentially it was right on that, unless you were going by water, you were going straight up through Corinth.

So it became a major trade route. And the south Peloponnesus is about 250 miles span. If you wanted to take your boat, you'd have to go all the way around that. Sort of like going around South America.

You know, that's where we created the Panama Canal. Well, they didn't have the Panama Canal then, but what they did do is they took the boats up onto skids and they would carry the boats across that four-mile span rather than having to take that 250-mile trek.

Take a lot less time to just carry the boat across, put it in the water on the other side. So Corinth was a, it was a metropolis. It was a place where Navy, not Navy, but seafaring men came and also traveling men and women came.

And it was a place where prostitution was rampant and all kinds of other things, because this was a place where people were coming and traveling, they had money, they had means, they had opportunity to do what they wanted to do.

Now we go to the book of 1 Corinthians and we see Paul is dealing with people who he says are carnal. And we wonder why. We don't have to wonder why. They're living in Las Vegas. You know what I mean?

They're living in Atlantic City, as it were. And so right there you have a better understanding when you seek to understand the cultural barrier, or seek to break the cultural barrier. Literary barriers.

We're gonna talk about this one in a minute because we're gonna actually look at the different literary types. But I would say this is a major issue for people because they try to interpret Romans the same way they interpret Psalms, or the same way they interpret Isaiah.

And if you take the same interpretive process to those books, it's not gonna work because they're different types of literature. So we're gonna talk about those in a minute. Finally, the last one of these four barriers, in language barriers, culture barriers, literary barriers, last one is communication barriers.

Communication barriers, what is that? Well, sometimes we have difficulty hearing what the text is saying because we don't wanna hear it. Or because we're just having, we are not allowing it to communicate with us.

The way that Dr. Hendricks described it, he described the Far Side comic where the man is talking to the dog and he says, okay, Ginger, now, don't knock over the trash anymore. I don't want you going through the trash anymore.

I don't want you looking at, don't get in the trash anymore. And then it shows it from the dog's perspective and the dog's just hearing, blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah, Ginger.

And then, dog didn't know. Sometimes there is a communication barrier. We have difficulty hearing what the text is saying. And I think a lot of it is because we don't want to hear what the text is saying.

In fact, I believe this. I didn't quote this. I don't remember who originally said it, but I've said it many times myself. The problem with the Bible is not the parts that we don't understand. It's the parts that we do understand we don't want to do.

We don't want to obey. So what do we do with the passages that we don't want to obey? We seek to reinterpret them so that we can have what we want. That leads to dangerous misinterpretation. I know what it says, but I'm gonna twist it and turn it, have it the way I want.

All right, there are tools that can help us overcome our barriers. Here are some tools, tools for overcoming these barriers. The first one, Atlas, an atlas. Most of you have Bibles that have a little book in the back, have little maps in the back.

Most people think the maps are just colorful little insertions. They don't really do anything with the maps, but those maps are valuable. Have you ever looked at Paul's traveling in the book of Atlas?

You know, his missionary journeys. Where did he leave from? Where did he go? Where was he when he was in that shipwreck? Where is the island of Malta? What was happening? Where was he in relationship to Rome and to Asia Minor, which is Turkey, and where was he in relation to Jerusalem?

Most folks today are not real good at geography. It might do you well just to sit down and look at the geography of the biblical places. Now, some people have the means to go to Jerusalem, and I've heard many pastors, oh, pastor, you gotta get the money to go to Jerusalem.

It's a money issue for me, but more so it's an issue of not fitting well on an airplane and having to be on an airplane for 20-something hours. I think I'd just look at a map and figure it out. But if you have the means to go, of course go, but if you don't, get out a book and look.

Look at these places. Look at the biblical geography. So atlases help with geographical barriers, right? In fact, one of the stories that Dr. Hendricks tells in the textbook, he said he was in a class like this of students, and this lady who had a doctorate, like very intelligent woman, raised her hand, and she says, where in South America did this take place?

They're reading about the story of Jesus. Again, she's not stupid, she just didn't know, right? And again, if we're not familiar with these things, then it can hurt us in our interpretation. The next thing is a dictionary, a dictionary.

What can a dictionary do? It can help us overcome language barriers. Now I mentioned earlier the Strong's Concordance. Please know that I was not trying to pooh-pooh on the Strong's Concordance. I wasn't trying to make it as if it were a bad thing, but there are better ones.

There are better, what we call lexicons, which tell you the history of words and where they come from. If you have a computer and you have the internet, you have access now to more than our computer. Our predecessors, even 20 years ago, ever, were even close to having as far as Bible dictionaries.

But don't do this, let me tell you this. Don't look up in Webster's Dictionary the meaning of a word. I had that happen years ago. I was talking about God's sovereignty and I had somebody arguing with me over sovereignty and the sovereignty of God.

And he went and he came back and he brought to me, well, Webster's Dictionary defined sovereignty as blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, no, my point was, number one, sovereignty means sovereignty.

I'm not arguing really the definition. I'm arguing how God exercises sovereignty. That's the first thing. But the second thing is what would possess you to go to Webster's to look up a biblical word when there's Bible dictionaries?

This is not the modern use of that word. This is the biblical use of that word. And so Bible dictionaries are good. And you can get, there are several that you can get for free online. A Bible handbook.

Now, brother, you sent me an email. I'm sorry I didn't respond. I've been a little busy with chronic hemorrhaging. But you asked me about the Bible handbook about the Romans. I hope you don't mind me mentioning it in here.

There are different ones. There are, like the United Bible Society has handbooks for every book of the Bible, right? And I have those on my computer. They almost function like commentaries, though. They're like a verse-by-verse handbook, and they're great.

The United Bible Society's great. But what I was talking about, though, is more like a condensed whole Bible, Bible handbook. Something like, I think, Erdman's has one. There's a few different ones. I can look on my shelf when we go to leave, and I can show you the few that I have.

Say that one again. Erdman's, it's E-A-R-D-M-A-N-N-S, I think is how it is spelled. But there's the Bible handbook. There's several. And basically, it's not a commentary. Its intention is to tell you about the cultural background of the book, who wrote it, when they wrote it, why they wrote it, what the purpose is.

Now, there are some bad ones. I remember one of the ones that I picked up one time, and I was reading about the book of Daniel, and it was telling me how Daniel wasn't really written by Daniel, but was written later, because Daniel could not have written the book because there was too much accuracy in the prophecies.

It had to have been written after the fact, written into it, because God certainly couldn't be accurate in his prophecies. But I remember, I'm looking at the handbook, and I'm saying, well, this tells me all I need to know about the author.

Right, at least it tells me where he's coming from, right? He doesn't believe in the miraculous. When it comes to the ability to prophesy, because Daniel, I mean, is a pretty powerful prophetic book. It prophesies national changes that happened well after the death of the author.

Yeah, can I use a classic interpretation? Yeah, yeah. So, a Bible handbook is good, and it's different than a commentary, even though some of them do have some, like I said, the United Bible Society one is sort of half and half, but the last one is commentaries.

Commentaries can be used to overcome communication barriers. If the text isn't communicating with you, and it isn't making sense to you, sometimes a commentary can help overcome that communication barrier.