Beyond Sola Scriptura: Rediscovering the Bible in Its Jewish Context
For many believers today, reading the Bible begins with a confession of faith in its divine inspiration. The Bible is viewed as perfectly ordained, organized, and preserved by God—a self-contained, systematic revelation that speaks with one unified theological voice. This conviction, expressed most famously through the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”), affirms that the Bible is the final and ultimate authority for faith and practice.
This view has noble intentions. It seeks to safeguard the authority of God’s Word from being diluted by human tradition or institutional corruption. Yet, over time, it has often resulted in an unintended consequence: the reading of the Bible outside of its own historical, linguistic, and cultural context, through the lens of later theological systems rather than through the world in which it was written.
The Jewish Context of Scripture
The Bible did not appear as a single, neatly organized volume descending from heaven. It is a library of texts written over more than a thousand years—born out of the covenantal relationship between God and the people of Israel. Its authors were Jewish, its worldview was Jewish, and its story unfolds within the framework of God’s dealings with Israel and the nations.
The New Testament, too, is not a collection of abstract theological essays. It is a series of letters, testimonies, and apocalyptic visions written within a living Jewish world, addressed to real people in concrete circumstances. Paul’s letters, for instance, were pastoral in nature—occasional writings shaped by the needs of the communities he loved and served. They were not originally composed as systematic theology but as urgent guidance to followers of Yeshua struggling to live faithfully in a complex world.
To read these letters centuries later as if they were timeless doctrinal treatises—divorced from their first-century Jewish setting—is to risk misunderstanding their intent. Paul did not imagine his correspondence would later be canonized as “New Testament Scripture” and used to construct wholly new theological systems detached from the worldview he himself inhabited.
From Jewish Roots to Gentile Organization
After the first century, as the Yeshua movement spread among Gentiles, the cultural and interpretive center of the faith shifted away from its Jewish roots. The destruction of the Temple, the scattering of the Jewish people, and the eventual separation between the synagogue and the church created a widening gap.
By the time the biblical canon was formally organized, centuries had passed. The Church Fathers who debated, translated, and codified Scripture were almost entirely Gentile. They did not read the Hebrew Bible as Jews did but through the emerging frameworks of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. The result was that Scripture came to be read not as a Jewish narrative about God’s covenantal faithfulness to Israel and the nations, but as a universal philosophical text defining a new religious system.
This reorientation did not erase divine inspiration—but it changed how divine revelation was understood.
The Theological Lens of Modern Interpretation
Today, English translations of the Bible—though invaluable—carry layers of interpretation inherited from centuries of theological tradition. Translation is never neutral. Every translator must make choices about meaning, nuance, and word order, and those choices inevitably reflect the assumptions of the translator’s theology.
For example, terms like law, church, Christ, and grace are often rendered in ways that subtly reinforce later Christian ideas rather than the Hebrew realities they once represented (Torah, assembly, Messiah, chesed). These choices are not malicious, but they show how theology can unconsciously reshape Scripture’s meaning.
Most modern readers approach the Bible with pre-formed theological positions, interpreting Scripture around those assumptions rather than allowing Scripture to challenge them. Protestant, Catholic, and even Messianic communities all do this in various ways. The result is that few actually read the Bible on its own terms—within its ancient Jewish worldview—because doing so would require letting go of cherished doctrinal frameworks built centuries later.
The Value of Extra-Biblical Jewish Texts
To truly recover the Bible’s meaning, we must also understand the literary world in which it was written. The authors of Scripture did not write in isolation—they were part of a vibrant Jewish culture that produced a wide range of writings: wisdom texts, apocalyptic visions, historical accounts, commentaries, and community rules.
Writings such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Psalms of Solomon, 4 Ezra, and the works of Josephus are not considered inspired or canonical, yet they offer remarkable insight into the theological landscape of the Second Temple period—the very world in which Yeshua, Paul, and the apostles lived and taught.
For example:
1 Enoch and Jubilees preserve traditions that explain how Peter, Jude, and Revelation understood “angels who sinned” and “spirits in prison.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls show us how Jewish sects interpreted Scripture, viewed purity, and anticipated the coming of Messiah and the end of days.
Josephus and Philo provide a historical backdrop to the Gospels and Acts, describing the beliefs, politics, and social dynamics of first-century Judea.
These writings do not replace the Bible, nor do they possess the authority of Scripture. But they help us see the world of the Bible more clearly—the questions people were asking, the imagery they used, and the expectations they held.
To ignore these sources is like trying to understand Shakespeare without any knowledge of Elizabethan England. Context doesn’t change the meaning of inspired Scripture—it reveals it more fully.
Sola Scriptura and Its Limits
The Reformation cry of Sola Scriptura was meant to free believers from the traditions of men. Ironically, it produced its own tradition—a way of reading the Bible as a self-interpreting theological system, often detached from its historical roots. In its most extreme form, it treats the Bible as if it were a set of divine proof-texts dropped from heaven, rather than a collection of covenantal writings embedded in Israel’s story.
When Scripture is read this way, the focus often shifts from the story of God and Israel to the individual salvation of the believer. Theology becomes abstract rather than covenantal, and faith becomes a private system of belief rather than participation in the ongoing story of God’s redemption of Israel and the nations.
This is not what the biblical authors intended. Their writings were deeply communal, historical, and eschatological. They looked toward the restoration of all things—the vindication of God’s promises through Messiah, not merely the refinement of personal theology.
Biblical Authority
Within Christianity, we often use phrases like “Scripture is authoritative” or “divinely inspired.” We evaluate ancient writings according to whether they possess that same authority. Yet when we say that extra-biblical Jewish texts “do not possess the authority of Scripture,” we’re actually repeating a framework that was developed long after the biblical world had closed. This raises an important question—one that’s rarely asked but deeply significant: who decided what counts as Scripture? It’s not a simple question. Much of what Christians call the “New Testament” consists of commentary, reflection, and midrash on the Hebrew Scriptures—the Tanakh. The apostles and early disciples didn’t see themselves as creating a new Bible. They were interpreting Israel’s existing Scriptures through the lens of Yeshua’s life, death, and resurrection.
So when Paul tells Timothy that “all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), he is not referring to the Gospels or Epistles—they didn’t yet exist as canonical Scripture. Paul was referring to the Hebrew Bible, the Scriptures Timothy had known “from childhood.” In other words, what we now call the Old Testament was the Bible of the apostles. The writings that would later become the New Testament were viewed as pastoral correspondence, apostolic testimony, and eyewitness proclamation—important, inspired, and authoritative in function, but not yet Scripture in the formalized sense.
It was only in the centuries following the separation between synagogue and church that Gentile leaders, often disconnected from Jewish interpretive traditions, organized the texts of what we now call the Bible. The process was complex and uneven—shaped by councils, theological debates, and practical use in worship rather than a single divine decree. While many Christians affirm God’s providence in the formation of the biblical canon—and perhaps rightly so—it is important to hold that claim with humility. If the Scriptures tell the story of God’s enduring covenant with Israel, His faithfulness to His people, and His plan to restore all things through that relationship, then the later organization and interpretation of those Scriptures apart from their Jewish context raises serious questions. Can we so easily assume divine providence in a process that, over time, helped obscure the very covenantal identity the Bible reveals? Perhaps God’s providence lies not in the institutional act of canonization itself, but in His continued faithfulness to preserve the truth of His word despite human systems, translations, and theological distortions. The canon may reflect historical and communal decisions, but the living Word continues to call God’s people back to its original story—the story of His enduring covenant with Israel and His redemptive purpose for the nations, a truth waiting to be rediscovered beyond the confines of later theological assumptions.
Ironically, many Christians today stand fiercely to “defend Scripture,” yet the very boundaries of that Scripture were determined by Gentile theologians centuries removed from the world of Yeshua and the apostles. In contrast, within Judaism, while the Torah and the Tanakh are deeply revered and held as sacred, there is also an ongoing tradition of debate and interpretation. Jewish study does not end with the text; it begins there. The Talmud, Midrash, and later commentaries are seen not as rivals to Scripture but as living conversations around it. Authority in Judaism rests less in the closure of a canon and more in the dynamic of ongoing dialogue with the sacred word.
Perhaps that’s something the modern church has overlooked: the authority of Scripture is not rooted merely in its preservation or organization, but in the story it tells—the unfolding of God’s covenant with Israel and His purpose to redeem the nations through that covenant. To treat the canon as a closed system to be defended, rather than as a living witness to that ongoing story, is to miss the very heart of what the apostles were doing—teaching, interpreting, and embodying the Word within their own generation, all in continuity with the promises given to Israel.
Returning to the Bible’s Original World
To read the Bible in its Jewish context is not to diminish divine inspiration—it is to honor it. It means reading the Scriptures as their authors intended them to be read, in the world that gave them meaning. It requires humility, the willingness to set aside modern assumptions, and the courage to let the text speak freshly, even when it challenges long-held beliefs.
Such reading is not an act of rebellion against tradition but a return to authenticity. It restores the Bible as a living testimony of God’s faithfulness, rooted in the soil of Israel’s history, culture, and covenantal identity.
When we do this, the Scriptures come alive in ways that transcend denominational systems. We rediscover the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the same God who revealed Himself in Yeshua the Messiah—and we begin to see the continuity of His redemptive plan throughout history.
Conclusion: Reading Without the Filters
The Bible is divinely inspired—but that inspiration unfolded through real human authors, in real historical contexts, speaking real languages. To read the Bible faithfully, we must be willing to meet it on its own terms, not ours.
This means reading it as a Jewish story about God’s covenantal relationship with His people and the nations, rather than as a post-biblical theological system. It means recognizing that Sola Scriptura—though born from a good impulse—cannot replace the need for context, history, and humility.
Extra-biblical Jewish texts, archaeology, and history do not compete with Scripture; they help us recover its original voice. They remind us that the Bible did not emerge in a vacuum but in a rich world of worship, expectation, and revelation.
The goal is not to discard theology but to purify it—to build it again on the firm foundation of the text as it was meant to be heard.
When we return to the Bible’s Jewish roots, we find not less revelation, but more. We find a story richer, more coherent, and more faithful to the God who revealed Himself in the midst of Israel’s history—and who continues to reveal Himself to all who seek Him with understanding hearts.