Literal Interpretation  

As mention earlier, many are fascinated with "mysterious" interpretation.  Like finding deep secrets hidden inside the letters of the Bible.  This has caused many erroneous interpretations because these interpretation are subjective.  Subjective interpretation has no standard to evaluate its validity.  It is interpreting the Bible in a way that others won't be able to find at all no matter how they study the verse itself.  It is putting the meaning into the verse rather than finding the true meaning of the verse.

Therefore one of the most important guidelines to interpretation is to interpret literally.  literal interpretation doesn't mean reading the words and just doing what it says.  Literal interpretation is taking the Bible at face value and reading it as a literature.  Literal interpretation recognizes the differences between a historical narrative and a parable, or the difference between written laws and poetry.  In another word, literal interpretation is not just reading and doing, it is reading with common sense, because it takes in consideration the real form or style of the passage.  Literal interpretation is what we do everyday, we differentiate between an instruction from our boss and a joke we hear from him, and we interpret them accordingly.

Literal interpretation also requires analyzing the literary genre of the passage in the Bible.  This topic will be covered in Chapter 2.

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