Background and interpretation

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arapahoepark

Puritan Board Professor
When reading Bible or preparing for teaching or a sermon and one wants to know the background and how it illuminates a particular verse do you consult a commentary? Or do you get acquainted with the ancient literature and come to your own conclusions?
I recently bought the IVP Bible Commentary for the New Testament by Craig Keener and some places are interesting but other places it is elementary or I disagree and believe it does not affect an interpretation or reading.
 
For weekly sermon preparation, there's no way that there's normally time or resources to look at primary sources for yourself -- at least that's my experience. I rely on several secondary resources (outside of commentaries), including:

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament -- Beale and Carson
IVP Dictionary of New Testament Background
IVP Dictionary of Paul and His Letters
IVP Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
Backgrounds of Early Christianity -- Ferguson

As you can tell from my list, I've spent a lot of time in the New Testament in the last few years...I'm not as conversant in OT background resources.
 
A good commentary will discuss the historical background of a particular passage of Scripture. Try to find good commentaries on the book that you are teaching/preaching from. A single biblical book commentary tends to be more specific. I use Keener's NT commentary and it is extremely basic. For example I am preaching through Luke and I get a rich explanation of background from Bock's 2 volume commentary on Luke as well as a good commentary set like the new American commentary series. Hope this helps. Background can come from other resources like books on ANE culture and bible dictionaries.
 
Background can be tricky and sometimes used to read things into a passage that may not actually be there. I preached a sermon on the Colossian heresy (Colossians 2:16-23) and there is a lot of speculation when scholars try to reconstruct the historical context. These days, I give more weight to "the analogy of faith" than extensive non-canonical background studies.
 
Revisiting this thread, how much knowledge of background sources do you think is necessary (if any) to properly interpret the Bible since while the world of God, it was written in a specific time and place?
How did certain scholars fare before archaeology?
 
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