Advanced Hermeneutics

Essentials of Christian Faith

  • Orthodoxy: Doctrine
  • Orthopraxy: Worship and character.
  • Importance of foundational doctrine, worship perspective, and daily life expression.

Biblical Foundation

  • Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures) and New Testament (Christian writings) compose the Bible.
  • Hebrew scriptures called the Tanakh
  • Protestant perspective: 39 Old Testament books; 27 New Testament books.
  • Apocrypha included in Catholic scriptures and some early versions.
  • Manuscripts, autographs, copies, and translations involved in scriptural transmission.
  • Translation issues: "A lot is lost in translation."

Canonicity

  • Protestant canon consists of 66 books providing God's rule of faith and life.
  • Church recognition of divine origin and authority is involved in canonicity.

Approaches to Studying Scripture

  • Synthetic overview (Biblical survey): Understanding the Bible as a whole.
  • Arranged in redemptive order, not chronological order.
  • Analytical study (Expository): Verse-by-verse in-depth understanding.

History of Interpretation

  • Palestinian, Babylonian, and Egyptian influences.
  • Timeframe: 100 BC/BCE (Before Current Era).
  • Post-exile period: Prophets addressed captivity reasons and messianic king promise.
  • Hebrew lost as common language during captivity and became a religious language.
  • Shift to Koine Greek due to Alexander the Great's influence.
  • Septuagint: Greek translation by 70 scholars in Egypt; first translation of Hebrew scriptures.
  • Masoretic text: Standardized text of the first century, based on the Septuagint.

Key Terms

  • Interpretation: Reader's understanding of scriptures.
  • Hermeneutics: Theory, method, or rules of biblical interpretation.
  • Exegesis: Discovering original meaning via historical and grammatical context.
  • Synagogues emerged after captivity for Jewish worship and scripture study.

Jewish Interpretation

  • Hellenistic Jews: Allegorical interpretation
  • Palestinian Jews: Midrash (rabbinical teaching)
  • Essene/Qumran community: Pesher (eschatological interpretation)

Interpretation Approaches

  • Literalism: Straightforward reading
  • Letterism: Focus on individual letters/numbers (mystical approach)
  • Pesher: Allegorical, eschatological understanding

Factors in Scriptural Understanding

  • Ancient audience's understanding (culture, language).
  • Timeless principles.
  • Contemporary application.

Interpretation Process

  • Exegesis from ancient audience perspective (historical, grammatical, contextual, literary).
  • Exegetical statement: What did it mean then?
  • Theological statement extraction of timeless principles
  • Homiletical statement: contemporary application
  • Author's intent is crucial.

Important Questions

  • How did first-century Jews, Christ, apostles, and early church interpret scripture?
  • Should Christians today follow the same hermeneutic as the early church?

Ancient Jewish Hermeneutics

  • Making God's word relevant to the current context.
  • Overly literal and legalistic approach; out-of-context meanings.
  • Rabbinical interpretation: Expecting multiple meanings, every detail significant.
  • Rabbi Akiva: Every repetition, figure of speech, letter shape had hidden meanings
  • Midrash: Contemporizing text; homiletical teaching; potential for extensive out-of-context applications.

Abusive Midrash Characteristics

  • Meaning assigned without regard for context.
  • Combined texts with similar words without referring to the same idea.
  • Incidental grammar aspects given interpretive significance.

Three Approaches to Scripture

  • Hellenistic Jews: Allegorical interpretation
  • Palestinian Jews: Midrash interpretation
  • Qumran community: Pesher interpretation

Approaches Defined

  • Literalism: Straightforward reading
  • Letterism: Ignoring context; isolated truths from words, letters, numbers.
  • Pesher: Eschatological significance; needing divine revelation.

Potential Pitfalls

  • Little regard for original context.
  • Overly literal interpretation.
  • Biblical text as a vehicle for hidden meaning.
  • Emphasis on allegory; Hellenistic Judaism.
  • Interpreter deriving, not forcing, interpretations.
  • Autonomy of faith consults all of scripture.
  • No scriptures studied are out of context.
  • Do not build doctrines on obscure passages.
  • The Holy Spirit is not a substitute for diligent study.

Christ and New Testament Interpretation

  • Christ as fulfillment of Hebrew scriptures.
  • Literal hermeneutic: Straightforward, historical interpretation.
  • Pesher and typology: Christ's advent brought fulfillment.
  • Apostles expected Christ's return within the first century.

New Testament and Old Testament

  • Approximately 10% of the NT has quotes, paraphrases or allusions to the OT.
  • All but non OT books are referred to in the NT.

Allegorical Interpretation

  • Finding underlying/hidden meanings in characters, places, events and numbers.
  • Not employed by New Testament writers, caution is needed when using these same hermeneutics for ancient or contemporary fulfillment

Typological Interpretation

  • Looking at events in history as foreshadowing.
  • Typology finding a foreshadowing of present and future events in historical events and people of the past

Cautions

  • Balance with historical-grammatical interpretation.
  • Avoid rationalization/emotionalization of the text.
  • Do not overly emphasize mysticism/spiritualism.