Jewish engagement with Scripture involved more than reading words from a scroll. Teachers and knowledgeable members of the community explained texts, discussed commandments, and applied Scripture to contemporary life.
Interpretation was necessary because ancient texts had to be understood in changing circumstances. Different Jewish groups sometimes disagreed strongly over interpretation.
Teaching could occur in synagogues, households, conversations, and gatherings. Much learning was oral and depended upon hearing, repetition, questioning, and memory.
Synagogues and manuscripts provide material settings and texts for teaching, but archaeological remains rarely preserve the actual explanations delivered by teachers.
Second Temple literature demonstrates vigorous interpretation of Scripture. The Gospels likewise preserve debates over commandments, Sabbath observance, purity, divorce, resurrection, and other scriptural questions.
Ezra and Nehemiah present public reading joined with explanation and understanding of the Torah.
Jesus repeatedly interprets Scripture, answers questions about the Law and Prophets, teaches in synagogues, and debates other Jewish teachers about biblical meaning.
Interpretation and teaching were central to Jewish engagement with Scripture, and multiple interpretive traditions existed.
Later rabbinic methods cannot automatically be assigned in their mature form to every first-century teacher or synagogue.
Jesus' scriptural debates make better sense when understood as part of a Jewish culture in which interpreting Scripture was a living and important activity.