Theological Term of the Week: Mirror-Reading
Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 3:30AM 
mirror-reading
“A way of reading a New Testament passage that assumes that what the author writes reflects a problem or situation confronting the original audience.”1
- From How to Understand and Apply the New Testament by Andrew David Naselli:
Sometimes [a New Testament] author is writing to Christians about an error that false teachers are propagating in their midst. So our job is to read the text very carefully, over and over, and try to discern the nature of that error and what the antidote is. That kind of mirror-reading is not only good; it’s necessary because otherwise you won’t accurately understand a passage. This is especially important for books such as 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, and 1 John. You can be more confident that you are mirror-reading in a responsible way when the author specifically refers to problems in the church. Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 and all throughout the letter. He doesn’t need to lay out in great detail what the problems were because the Corinthians were already acquainted with their situation. But we are not the Corinthians, so we must responsibly read 1 Corinthians over and over and over in order to look for clues about their situation.
That’s how to mirror-read well: carefully read a book of the New Testament over and over and over. Look for clues in the text that tip you off to the situation. That’s a good and necessary way to read the New Testament.
- From Moises Silva in Introduction to Biblical Hemeneutics:2
The question is not whether we should read between the lines, but how we should do it. Certainly, the more an interpretation depends on inferences (as opposed to explicit statements in the text), the less persuasive it is. If a historical reconstruction disturbs (rather than reinforces) the apparent meaning of a passage, we should be skeptical of it. In contrast, if a scholar proposes a reconstruction that arises out of the text itself, and if that reconstruction in turn helps to make sense of difficult statements in the text, we need not reject it on the grounds that it is just a theory.
Learn more:
- Andy Naselli: Mirror Reading
- Andy Naselli: Is ‘Background Information’ Ever Necessary to Understand the Bible?
Related terms:
1 From How to Understand and Apply the New Testament by Andrew David Naselli.
2 As quoted in How to Understand and Apply the New Testament by Andrew David Naselli.
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