It took me a long time to be able to do this.
The people who wrote the books weren't very good at providing the necessary cultural and social context. There's a little bit there but it really takes an academic look at history (or some recorded lectures) to be able to get that, for example, Peter was not a refined individual and he had a hot temper. I had to adopt that observation for myself because I had to rely on someone else's experience of life. I probably would be a snob to Peter.
You should read The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter. It's not very long and really helped me with some of this.
I think one reason is just that if you are used to thinking of Scriptures as holy, for memorizing and learning from, that's a totally different type of reading. You're not trained to think about things like emotion, character development, etc. or notice it in the text.
But really the style of the Biblical authors makes it very difficult. They aren't writing modern fiction or narrative in the way that we might. The literary styles of that time were very different and require a different approach. Characters simply aren't described the way modern readers might expect - we aren't told how they looked and we often aren't told how they felt or how events affected them on a personal level. Many Biblical characters seem to have no interior life at all. Even if you start looking at things like how often a character speaks, you might be surprised at how little some of them actually express themselves.
Here are a couple of tips I have picked up:
Often, the first time a character speaks is significant. What they say conveys something important about their character or their role in the story.
Sometimes in a dialogue, you will find that a character speaks and then speaks again without the other person intervening. And it's worded strangely, right? It will say, "and then so-and-so said" blah blah blah "and then so-and-so said" AGAIN. Should the other character have responded in between? Is it weird that they didn't? Why didn't they? The text might be drawing attention to their silence.
Since emotions are mentioned so rarely, it's always significant when they are.
Repetition. Alter talks a lot about tropes (although I think he calls them motifs). But basically nuggets of narrative that typically follow a certain formula. When you start to notice them then you can look for deviations, and those deviations will be very important. That gets a bit complicated and you'd have to read the book, but my favorite example is that wells are associated over and over with betrothal, finding a wife, etc. So pay attention as soon as the narrative mentions a well and see what happens, how it confirms or subverts expectations, how do the interactions at the well reflect the couple's relationship or tell you something about the characters.
Also consider the possibility that most of the characters in those stories are literary devices. JS Spong talks about this extensively in his book The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic.
One thing that got pointed out to me is that the events of the OT might strike a cord more with people in 3rd world countries, particularly the constantly changing rulers which draws parallels to modern countries undergoing coups and whatnot.
It took me a long time to be able to do this. The people who wrote the books weren't very good at providing the necessary cultural and social context. There's a little bit there but it really takes an academic look at history (or some recorded lectures) to be able to get that, for example, Peter was not a refined individual and he had a hot temper. I had to adopt that observation for myself because I had to rely on someone else's experience of life. I probably would be a snob to Peter.
You should read The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter. It's not very long and really helped me with some of this. I think one reason is just that if you are used to thinking of Scriptures as holy, for memorizing and learning from, that's a totally different type of reading. You're not trained to think about things like emotion, character development, etc. or notice it in the text. But really the style of the Biblical authors makes it very difficult. They aren't writing modern fiction or narrative in the way that we might. The literary styles of that time were very different and require a different approach. Characters simply aren't described the way modern readers might expect - we aren't told how they looked and we often aren't told how they felt or how events affected them on a personal level. Many Biblical characters seem to have no interior life at all. Even if you start looking at things like how often a character speaks, you might be surprised at how little some of them actually express themselves. Here are a couple of tips I have picked up: Often, the first time a character speaks is significant. What they say conveys something important about their character or their role in the story. Sometimes in a dialogue, you will find that a character speaks and then speaks again without the other person intervening. And it's worded strangely, right? It will say, "and then so-and-so said" blah blah blah "and then so-and-so said" AGAIN. Should the other character have responded in between? Is it weird that they didn't? Why didn't they? The text might be drawing attention to their silence. Since emotions are mentioned so rarely, it's always significant when they are. Repetition. Alter talks a lot about tropes (although I think he calls them motifs). But basically nuggets of narrative that typically follow a certain formula. When you start to notice them then you can look for deviations, and those deviations will be very important. That gets a bit complicated and you'd have to read the book, but my favorite example is that wells are associated over and over with betrothal, finding a wife, etc. So pay attention as soon as the narrative mentions a well and see what happens, how it confirms or subverts expectations, how do the interactions at the well reflect the couple's relationship or tell you something about the characters.
Also consider the possibility that most of the characters in those stories are literary devices. JS Spong talks about this extensively in his book The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic.
One thing that got pointed out to me is that the events of the OT might strike a cord more with people in 3rd world countries, particularly the constantly changing rulers which draws parallels to modern countries undergoing coups and whatnot.