Summary: In this second episode of the series on Bible study, Dr. Heiser discusses what interpreting the Bible "in context" really means -- taking the Bible's own primitive context seriously. Rather than filter the Bible through creeds dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, or even the period of early Christianity, the Bible's actual context is the one that produced the biblical books -- the era stretching from the 2nd millennium BC to the first century AD. All other contexts are foreign to the Bible, no matter how persuasive they are in denominational traditions. The student of the Bible must make all foreign contexts subservient to the Bible's own context. That means replacing our own worldview with that of the biblical writer living during this ancient time span in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. The way to do that is to immerse ourselves in the intellectual output of those cultures in which the biblical Israelite and later Hellenistic Jews lived when God moved them to write Scripture. The episode ends with suggestions about resources for familiarizing oneself with the literature of all these cultures. These guides are the first step, and set the stage for a discussion of where to find these texts in English translation, as well as informed discussion of that material for enriching Bible study.
