How not to Understand the Bible

"There is a principle in Biblical interpretation that goes: 'A text, out of context, is pretext.'

It means that every text of the Bible should be understood in its integral context: in the unity of the whole message of a chapter, of a series of books, of the theology of the writer, and even the unity of the whole Biblical message. Taken in isolation, a text in the Bible can be reduced to a pretext, i.e., a half-truth or at worst, a misleading misinterpretation."(Quoted from Pope Benedict and the Condom Question, an article by  Fr. Joel O. Jason, STh)

This quotation is right on the money when talking about understanding the Bible. Fr. Jason is telling us what not to do, but get this: he also implies what what one must do to rightly understand a text. 

We will add below a few other things being done by people that leads to error in interpretation. Like Fr. Jason's, they also imply what is the right thing. They are:

1.     Pitting one text from the Old Testament (OT) against a text in the New (NT). Usually some people say that the text  
from NT supersedes the principle of the OT text. Example: The Ten Commandments in the OT are no longer valid   
today because the new covenant introduced by our Lord Jesus Christ, which is written in the NT, carries new laws.

2.     What is true to the people of Israel is not true to the Gentiles.

3.     Israel was to obey the Ten Commandments that they might be called faithful to the covenant with God; while 
Gentiles must only believe in Christ to be called faithful children of God.

Dome of the Rock

4.     Israel's day for worship is the seventh day, which is Sabbath (Saturday); Sunday is for the Gentiles.

Walls of Old Jerusalem

5.     The Old Testament need not be read, the New Testament is the one that is important in one's faith today.

6.     The temple in the old city Jerusalem, now occupied by the Dome of the Rock on a platform called Temple Mount, 
 will be restored before the end of humanity to fully established God's Kingdom on earth.

7.     Thinking that the God in the Old Testament is God the Father, that He is the Creator, the Law-giver, the one who 
appeared, called and chosen Abraham to start, grow and lead a separate group of people, later to be called Israel;
the one who tested Isaac as he was to sacrifice himself and the one who wrestled with Jacob, the immediate . 
ancestor of the twelve tribes of Israel. Also, God the Father was the one who called Moses to deliver them. The  
truth of the matter is it is the pre-incarnate Christ.  

Next: What the right things these seven errors imply.