I started meeting again with the Jehovah’s Witness that I had been meeting with a year or so back. I’m not thinking I’m going to convert him, but it is a way for me to learn.
What I’m looking for is not to debate the fine details, such as the shape of the wood that Jesus died on. I’m looking for more of the major issues that separate us. And I found a big one.
He asked me if we are supposed to interpret the Bible. I responded with a firm “yes”, which apparently was the wrong answer. He explained that we don’t interpret the Bible, we let the Bible speak for itself.
I could have mentioned that the Bible translated from the original languages to English is an act of interpretation, but I didn’t.
I did point out that we all interpret the Bible. I used as an example how the Jehovah’s Witnesses get to Jesus as Michael. They look at the verse that says Jesus comes with the voice of the archangel and interpret that as referring to Jesus/Michael using his own voice rather than Michael announcing the coming of Jesus.
He didn’t buy it. Instead he pointed me to a Bible passage: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” (Genesis 40:8)
The interpretation of the prophetic dreams came from God and not human wisdom. Therefore the interpretation of the Bible comes from what God has said, that is other Bible passages. The implication is that we do not use scholarly historical resources.
The problem is that the Jehovah’s Witness do not just look at the immediate context. They have an elaborate way of connecting various passages, seeing some as the key to others.
Whether they are right or wrong in their interpretation is not the point. The point is that they are doing biblical interpretation whether they realize that or not.
To be fair, there are Christians, including my own tribe of Baptists, that think they are just reading the Bible and not interpreting it. The Bible has been interpreted before we get it in our hands and then when we read it, we are interpreting it again. We cannot get away from it.
I think for Jehovah’s Witnesses, this is important because it addresses the volumes of scholarly works that disagree with their views. They can dismiss those works because they rely on Scripture alone. Even though they are not really.
“The Bible has been interpreted before we get it in our hands and then when we read it, we are interpreting it again. We cannot get away from it.”
which indicates that there is no reason to believe any of you have any “truth’.
To add- the Jehovah’s Witnesses have another fundamental problem. They are interpreting a flawed version of the Bible. Their New World Translation is not an objective, scholarly translation of the Texts.