Page 26 - Discipleship Ministries Student E-Book

How to Conduct a Word Study (Using an interlinear Bible)

Principle #8

Understand the culture

The cultural gap must be bridged because cultures can be very different.
If we don’t understand the culture of the time in which the Bible was
written, we’ll never understand its meaning. For example: “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God” (John 1:1). What does that mean? Why didn’t he say, “In the
beginning was Jesus”? Well, he used “the Word” because that was the
vernacular at that time. To the Greeks the term Word was used to refer
to a floating kind of cause, a kind of ethereal, spatial kind of energy that
was floating around. John said to the Greeks that that floating cause, that thing which caused
everything, that spatial energy, that cosmic power, is none other than that Word which became flesh
(1:14).

To the Jew, the term Word was always the manifestation of God, because “the Word of the Lord” was
always God emanating His personality. So, when John said, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among
us,” he was identifying Jesus Christ, the incarnate Christ, as the very emanation of God. In the text,
therefore, he meets the Greek mind and Hebrew mind with the right word that grabs both at vital
points.

And this goes on all throughout the Bible. If you don’t understand the Gnosticism existent at the time of
the writing of Colossians, you may not understand the purpose of the book. If you don’t understand the
culture at the time the Judaizers were moving into the Gentile churches, you will find it difficult to
understand the book of Galatians. If you don’t understand the Jewish culture, you will miss the subtle

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