themselves among the implied audience that God envisaged. But we are not in the implied audience of the human author. Another way to say this, and one I use all the time, is that the Bible is therefore for us but was not written to us. To fully comprehend the way that it is for us, we have to do whatever it takes to join the author’s implied audience. In that cultural and literary context we will find the authoritative teaching of the text. What the ancient author gave his audience had authority