Where the New Testament is Concerned, You Have to Unlearn What You Have Learned

 The best way to interpret the New Testament is to ignore the two thousand years of Christian theological writings, Councils, splits, and Reformations that have followed it. The best way to approach it is on its own terms as a product of the first century Hellenistic society of the eastern Mediterranean Roman Empire, and in its own language. The way to understand it is to ignore the anachronisms which modern Christianity frequently thrusts upon it and get into the heads of its authors as much as possible. Frequently, this is called the "literal-historical-grammatical" approach of interpreting the New Testament within the context of itself, and the linguo-cultural context in which it was written.

     Many purport to do just that, but then get tripped up over the Reformation theology of the 1500s, or modern Roman Catholic theology, and still attempt to understand it based on theological interpretations that didn't exist until hundreds of years later.

     Another key to understanding the New Testament is that it is composed basically of letters written to people who already knew what the author was talking about. Even the Gospels themselves were writing about things which nearly everyone in Judea and Galilee at least knew something about first or second hand. When Paul wrote his epistles, he wasn't telling his immediate audience anything they didn't already know. He was reminding them of what he had already said before. In the case of the letter to the Romans, he was writing to an already established church and while he hadn't been there himself, he knew or knew of several people who were already there, and took the time to explain the basics of what he taught. There were a lot of things they assumed their reader or readers would already know because everyone at the time knew.

     In this respect, when we approach the writings of the New Testament, we are approaching them not only with the disadvantage of foreign linguistic, cultural, and societal understandings, we are approaching them with the disadvantage of someone who hasn't been privy to the full ongoing conversations between the authors and the audiences.

     When you come to read what Paul wrote, what John wrote, or what Peter wrote, you are playing catch up. Paul wasn't a Protestant or a Catholic. Neither was Matthew or Luke or John. By the time they wrote, they might have been ethnically Jewish, but just for safety's sake, they had figuratively and literally distanced themselves from Judea and the Judeans. And the Judaism with which they were familiar had more in common with the Sunni or Shiites of the Middle East today than with modern American Zionist Judaism, either reformed or conservative.

     You can't interpret the New Testament with the modern understanding of an American Christian, either Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, and have it actually mean what the original authors intended. As Yoda told his new trainee once upon a time, you have to unlearn what you have learned in order to actually get what these first disciples were actually saying and teaching.