John Wycliffe’s 9-Point Guide to Reading the Bible

**Guest post by Demian Farnworth, formerly of “Fallen and Flawed. You can find Demian now at The Copy Bot.**

John Wycliffe, the first man to translate the Bible into English, gave us a simple rule to Bible reading when he said:

It shall greatly help you to understand scripture, if you mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, and to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goes before and what follows.

Let’s break that down.

1. Mark not only what is spoken or written. Wycliffe is not saying “Draw a line in pencil around everything spoken or written.” While there isn’t anything wrong with writing in your Bible, this is not Wycliffe’s meaning. He simply means: Pay attention. Notice what is being said.
2. But of whom? Next, Wycliffe instructs us to find out who’s the author behind the text. Is it Paul? Peter’s secretary, Mark? Is it Jesus speaking? Or a Centurion?
3. And to whom? In other words, who’s the audience? The Galatian church? The Israelite community? Adam? The Apostle John? Knowing who the author is speaking to is just as important as who the author is.
4. With what words. What is being said? Not only that, but what’s the genre? Is it poetry or historical? Prophetic or didactic?
5. At what time? The date of the narrative or teaching is important because it gives us certain historical clues, as you’ll see in a minute. We want to know as much about cultural context as we can.
6. Where? Where did the author write the text? And where was the audience he was writing to?
7. To What Intent? What was the author trying to accomplish? Paul in the book of Galatians is scolding the Galatians for departing from the original gospel he taught them. What was Solomon trying to accomplish when he wrote the rather bleak Ecclesiastes?
8. With what circumstances? Think Paul in a Roman Jail. John exiled to island. Moses wandering in the desert with two million Israelites. Understanding the circumstance is vital to a proper understanding of the text.
9. Considering what Goes before and what follows. This is the basic command that Scripture needs to interpret Scripture.We read the paragraph before. We read the paragraph after. Better yet, we read the the entire chapter. If we have time, we read the entire book.

Why would Wycliffe emphasize these nine-points? It boils down to this: It’s hard to get to the meaning of a text if we don’t ask these questions.

In fact, if we fail to ask AND adequately answer these questions when studying the Bible we are likely to twist them to fit some perverse purpose.

Words have context, whether we quote Gates, Kennedy or the letter to Titus. And Wycliffe, who knew the risk behind opening up the Bible to theologically-uneducated people, simply wanted readers to read it in its context.

These nine points will help you do just that.