One of the first things I tell my students and that I repeat throughout the semester is that texts do not interpret themselves.

Every time a person reads scripture, they see it with new eyes and with shifting perspectives.

The words on the page may be the same, though of course with the Bible, those words may vary by translator.

But it is up to us to seek by knowledge and through the spirit to learn by the spirit.

We also recognize that we have to go to trusted sources of information for more.

It's part of our project here on Abide to think about how we can learn by study and also by

faith with spiritual impressions in concert with learning out of the best books.

We'll discuss that and much more

on today's episode of Abide, a Maxwell Institute podcast. My name is Joseph Stewart. I'm the public

communication specialist of the Neely Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

Christian Hill is a research associate of the Maxwell Institute. In each week, we discuss the

week's block of reading

from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Come Follow Me curriculum. We aren't here to present

a lesson, but rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block so as to help fulfill

the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of their

restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage the world of religious ideas. Today we are once again joined by

Joanna Olson, one of our research assistants. Joanna is a pre-business major at BYU from Fort Collins,

Colorado. After Joanna graduates, she plans to go to grad school to go into medical administration.

Welcome back, Joanna. Thank you, Joey. Now, Christian, this is our second episode on the

Book of Psalms, and we're taking a different thematic approach. What can you tell us about the

interpretation of the Psalms? So the Book of Psalms has played an outsized influence in Jewish and

Christian worship and devotion from the Second Temple period onwards.

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