The short answer: no.
I’ve spent some time talking about myself and about the Gospel I believe in, but now back to what I believe is required to correctly interpret the Bible: an historic Jewish cultural framework.
It is the absence of such a framework that I believe is the source of most of the divisions and general confusion in Christendom. I was taught when I initially studied the Bible that the reason for all of the 500+ denominations of Christianity was “people follow people”. This is definitely true. However, from where do these doctrine-creators/church-starters whom the people follow get their ideas and doctrines that are reasonable enough to be followed?
Certainly there is a brainwashing capability that certain dogmatic leaders have which empowers them to attract and entrap goodhearted folks. But I believe this is an exception. I think most leaders who attract followers have intelligent and relevant ideas. In regards to Christian doctrines, don’t they come from the Bible? I know this is arguable in many cases, but the majority of doctrines come from someone’s interpretation of the Bible–even if you can easily dismiss them on the grounds of your doctrine which is better at logically harmonizing the Scriptures.
So how do all these smart people looking at the same text come up with so many different doctrines? Truth be told, doctrines don’t have to differ by too much for a new denomination to emerge, since people take their beliefs very seriously. Nevertheless, there are major differences between many doctrines.
Some differences can originate at the translation layer. This is especially true when a group makes their own translation, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their New World Translation. However this happens after the start of the group, meaning that the group started with a standard translation. While it’s possible (and I’m sure it’s happened) I think most denomination splits and starts did not occur because of translation differences.
I have on many occasions studied the Bible with people for the purpose of influencing or changing their beliefs to match mine. Since my beliefs are so strong, it only made sense to try to help people change theirs, especially since it could be a matter of heaven or hell. I very rarely succeeded. While I was able to influence people without strong beliefs, I rarely, if ever, changed someone with strong beliefs.
I would leave such studies dumbfounded. How come I couldn’t help the person see things my way? Weren’t we looking and reading the same scriptures? Wasn’t I explaining them well? Didn’t the verses stitch together to form and elegant proof of the topic? I think the answer to all of these is ‘yes’.
So what was wrong? I’ll explain that in the next couple of posts.
I believe the Bible can be correctly understood without a knowledge of Jewish culture, but that many things that enrich an understanding of salvation but are not salvation issues will not be clearly understood. I was able to come to a sufficient understanding of sin and the need for grace without it, but I love learning the fuller and more complete things of God as my own studies and folks like Randy add to my appreciation of the scriptures.
I definitely agree that a person with no spiritual background could pick up a translation in a language they understand and read it to come to a saving faith with no concept of 1st century Jewish culture. But when does this happen? Almost never. Most of the time the person is fed an interpretation of the Bible from a particular church. And this interpretation differs greatly from church to church on many matters including salvation issues. It is very possible that if doctrine creators and leaders knew that a 1st century Jewish cultural framework was necessary and had access to it, that fewer denominations would exist and that they would differ by smaller issues.