In my hermenuetics class we were taught the historical grammatical method. This means that the reader must take into account the author, the audience and the genre of the book. We were taught to ask oursleves two questions, "What did this Scripture mean to the original readers?" and "How does this Scripture apply to me today?" For example, Deuteronomy 22:8 requires that all rooftops have railings. The reason was that the rooftop was the "family room" of that day. The evening meal was served there as well as the majority of the familial activities. During the summer, the family would sleep on the rooftop. So the railing would prevent a child or adult from getting up in the middle of the night, for whatever reason, and walikng of the roof. Okay, so what does this mean to Christians living in the 21st century? Simply, if you have a pool, you should fence it off to prevent the drowning of a child.
I have found that this method is the best for studying the bible, and is the method used by most of the scholars I reference.