You open your Bible with good intentions, then five minutes later you’re staring at a genealogy that reads like a phone book, wondering how Hezekiah connects to anything you’ve ever heard in church.

From ancient banned books to archaeological finds, the Bible’s story is richer and more complex than most realize. Historical context and spiritual interpretation open new dimensions of meaning.

Editor's Note: The following illustration from the book Fill These Hearts shows the need to put the Bible or theological statements into their proper context or framework. (There are also some other ...

And yet, when we say, “The Bible says…,” we often speak as if that process doesn’t exist … as if the meaning is always immediate, obvious, and the same for everyone. But is it?

If ever there was a richer set of readings to ponder or exegete than the set from today, I have yet to see it. The third Sunday in Ordinary Time is set aside by the church as Word of God Sunday. The ...

Cultural anthropologists tell us that one of the characteristics of our postmodern age is a disregard for history. Catholicism itself, however, exists in a tradition that recognizes doctrinal ...

About Paul’s writings, Peter said that they, “contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other scriptures, to their destruction” (2 Pet ...

How should we approach seemingly inconsistent messages in sacred texts? Religious types insist that contradictions in sacred scriptures are not cardinal flaws. They blame it on artistic classification ...

The unintended consequences of concordances offers a warning to Christians today. I open my Bible to 1 Peter 2:8: “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” By “open,” I ...