Everything you already think about a passage before you study it — from sermons, songs, films, art, culture, and your own past reading.

Some of it will be right, and some will not. The problem is that it all feels like knowledge. Preunderstanding is not the enemy, but it has to be checked against the text rather than read into it.

Three wise men at the manger. Matthew never says how many there were, and he says they found Jesus in a house.

The number three comes from the three gifts, and the stable scene comes from combining Matthew with Luke in Christmas pageants. None of it is harmful, but it shows how confidently we "know" things the text does not say.

They went into the house and saw the child with his mother Mary. They bowed down and honored him, then opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Matthew 2:11

When a passage is familiar, we stop reading it and start remembering it — so we see what we expect rather than what is there.

This is why the careful observation of Part 1 matters most on the passages we know best. They are the ones we are least likely to look at properly.

Name it, hold it loosely, and let the text correct it. Submit what you think to what the passage actually says.

The book pictures this as a spiral rather than a circle: you bring an understanding, the text changes it, and you come back with a better one. The point is to be changed by the reading, not to confirm yourself.

Presuppositions are the settled convictions about the Bible itself that a Christian reader holds on purpose — they are not up for revision with each passage.

Preunderstanding is about what a particular passage means, and it should change. Presuppositions are about what kind of book this is, and they shape how you read everything.

Among them: the Bible is God's word; it is true and trustworthy; God acts in history, so the supernatural is real; Scripture is a unity and does not contradict itself; and it is relevant to us.

These are not smuggled in; they are stated up front. A reader who assumes miracles cannot happen will read a miracle story differently, and it is better to see that disagreement plainly than to pretend it is not there.

It leads readers to hear "you" as "me", and to read promises and commands addressed to a whole community as if they were private words to one person.

Many of the letters' "you"s are plural, and much of the Old Testament is addressed to Israel as a people. Reading them individually is not always wrong, but it is a cultural habit, and it can shrink a passage about a church into a passage about a person.

If you have always heard a passage explained one way, that explanation can feel like what the text says, even where the text says less or something different.

Traditions often preserve good readings, so this is not a reason to distrust them. It is a reason to check them the same way you check anything else you bring: by going back to the passage in its context.