Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible

How often have you encountered some bizarre doctrine only to be stunned to hear a Bible verse quoted to support it? With new religious cults springing up almost daily and old ones growing rapidly, this is more and more common. How are they seemingly able to twist Scripture to mean something orthodox Christians have never believed it to mean in two thousand years? James Sire, author of The Universe Next Door and How to Read Slowly, has isolated twenty separate kinds of reading errors which are characteristically made by cultists as they interpret the Bible. He covers the full range from simple misquotation to complex argumentation which links one slightly eccentric interpretation to another, mixes in a few orthodox readings and ends with a conclusion totally foreign to the biblical world view. Sire also handles twisted translation, overspecification, virtue by association, ignoring the context and other flawed interpretations. A book to help us all become better readers of the Scriptures. 1. The Methodology of Misreading: An Introduction 2. World-View Confusion: A Preliminary View 3. The Text of Scripture 4. Scripture as Rhetoric 5. Scripture as Literature 6. Scripture as Evidence 7. Reasoning from Scripture 8. The Authority of the Bible 9. World-View Confusion: The Heart of the Matter 10. The Discipleship of the Word Appendix I: A Brief Definition of Twenty Reading Errors Appendix II: John 1:1 and the New World Translation