ABSTRACT
The Bible and Lay People study took a broad approach to investigating how lay people interpret the Bible. This was deliberately so because so little empirical data existed that it would have been unwise to focus the study too narrowly. The aim was to look at a range of interpretative possibilities in relation to a range of extra-biblical variables that might have some predictive capabilities. Inevitably the interpretative possibilities were somewhat limited, and confined to those things that could be quantified and that seemed to be genuine ways in which lay people might interpret the Bible. Literalism, for example, was one of the main interpretative strategies investigated, which immediately highlights the difference between this study and the majority of work on biblical hermeneutics in the academy.
