Updated 2009-10-06 (build:2) by Andrew Fountain
Updated 2009-10-06 (build:3) by Andrew Fountain
Ancient Jewish hermeneutics is best described as an attempt by those who were passionately committed to the inspiration of Scripture to make God’s word relevant to the current context. In their zeal, they often took an overly literal and legalistic approach in which every detail of the Scriptures had out-of-context meaning and significance for their current situation.
“The rabbis presupposed that since God is the author of Scripture, (1) the interpreter could expect numerous meanings in a given text, and (2) every incidental detail of the text possessed significance. ...eventually extended this to maintain that ...even the shapes of letters had hidden meaning.” Henry Virkler, Hermeneutics, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 49
Abusive Characteristics of Midrash:
Letterism: Interpretation that ignores context, historical and cultural setting, and even grammatical structure, taking each word, letter, and number as an isolated truth.
Deut 21:18–19: “If a person has a stubborn, rebellious son who pays no attention to his father or mother, and they discipline him to no avail, his father and mother must seize him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his city.”
Misshnah Sanhedrin 8.4: “If either of them [the parents] was maimed in the hand, or lame or blind or dumb or deaf, he cannot be condemned as a stubborn and rebellious son, for it is written, ‘so the father and mother shall lay hold of him’—so they were not maimed in the hand; ‘and bring him out’—-so they were not lame; ‘and they shall say’—so they were not dumb; ‘this is our son’—so they were not blind; ‘he will not obey our voice’—so they were not deaf.”
Matt. 23:23: “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You give a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, yet you neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness! You should have done these things without neglecting the others.”
| Allegory (bad) | Typology (good) |
| Finding hidden meaning in characters, places, events, numbers, and other details that would not otherwise be found | Finding a foreshadowing of present and future events in historical events and people of the past. |
| e.g. “oil” in Elisha = Holy Spirit? | e.g. Ark-->Christ brass serpent-->Christ |
rebellion in the wilderness. Lot’s daughters represent Jerusalem and Samaria.
The use of the Medieval fourfold method was firmly established from the fourth until the sixteenth century. Each text was examined for 4 meanings: literal, moral (tropologic), mystical (allegorical), and future-prophetic (anagogic). Here is sermon from Origen, who although he was earlier (third century) showed a disinterest in the literal meaning:
We make our selection from the homily on Abraham’s marriage with Keturah (Hom. vi. in Genes). Origen does not expressly disavow his belief in the fact of such a marriage having actually taken place between the parties in question, though his language seems to point in that direction; but he intimates that this, in common with the other marriages of the patriarchs, contained a sacramental mystery. And what might this be? Nothing less than the sublime truth, “that there is no end to wisdom, and that old age sets no bounds to improvement in knowledge. The death of Sarah (he says) is to be understood as the perfecting of virtue... Abraham, therefore, when an old man, and his body in a manner dead, took Keturah to wife... Then Keturah, whom he married in his old age, is by interpretation incense, or sweet odor. For he said, even as Paul said, ‘We are a sweet savor of Christ.’ Sin is a foul and putrid thing; but if any of you in whom this no longer dwells, have the fragrance of righteousness, the sweetness of mercy, and by prayer continually offer up incense to God, ye also have taken Keturah to wife.” And forthwith he proceeds to show, how many such wives may be taken: hospitality is one, the care of the poor another, patience a third, - each Christian excellence, in short, a wife; and hence it was, that the patriarchs are reported to have had so many wives, and that Solomon is said to have possessed them even by hundreds, he having received plentitude of wisdom like the sand on the seashore, and consequently grace to exercise the largest number of virtues (p. 4).
Some material taken from The Theology Notebook 2005, bible.org
Updated 2009-10-12 (build:16) by Andrew Fountain
The truths of the Scriptures are not innate in man. They are distinct from him. Their source is God. The Bible contains truths about the world and about ourselves that we need to know, but we cannot know them by looking within ourselves. Because the Bible is an objective body of literature, we need an objective approach when interpreting it.
Truth does have a subjective element in that it speaks to us and involves us. We respond to what the Scriptures are saying and ask ourselves what significance the truths have for own lives.
Subjectivism “takes place when we distort the objective meaning of terms to suit our own interests” (Sproul p.39). We choose what we want to believe. We interpret passages to suit ourselves rather than applying objective methods. We defend ourselves by saying, “Well, that’s the way I understand it,” and we are not prepared to think seriously about anything that somebody else has to say. We do not want to be corrected because we believe that we already have the truth.
(i) eis = into
Eisogesis involves reading into the text something that isn’t there at all. For example, somebody might use Acts 16:33 to support the baptism of babies because it says that “all his [the jailer’s] family were baptized.” We don’t know the ages of those who were in his family. To say definitely that this family had a baby is to put something into the text that is not stated explicitly. Besides, other parts of Scripture make it clear that only those who are old enough to profess belief in Jesus Christ are baptized.
(ii) ex = from or out of
Exegesis means to get out of the text the meaning that is there. When we exegete a passage, we do our utmost to determine what the passage is saying, not adding anything to it and not taking anything from it.
If you use the deductive approach when studying the Bible, you begin with generalizations and then move to particular verses for support. For example, you might use as your topic for study, “Riches are always a hindrance to spiritual prosperity.” You would not have difficulty finding verses that spoke about the danger of trusting in riches, but you would most likely neglect any passages that indicated that riches could be a blessing if used properly. Lydia was a wealthy woman who used her home for hospitality and no doubt later for church meetings (although church meetings are not mentioned explicitly so we cannot be dogmatic about this) (Acts 16:14,15, 40). If your initial generalization is flawed, then all your following study will be weakened. The deductive approach can be useful, but it may encourage subjectivism and bias. Use it with care.
Those using the inductive approach begin with the text itself. First they examine the particulars such as key words, the grammatical structure, and the context. Then they may use study aids to fill in the background and to verify the way words were used at that time. From this intensive personal study of the text they draw conclusions. This approach when practiced properly is impartial and objective.
All of us are somewhat subjective in our interpretation of Scripture because we bring our background with us. As Mickelsen says in his book Interpreting the Bible,
“. . . we must try to be so molded by God that the distortion brought about by our subjectivity will be at a minimum. In this molding, the believer is not passive but very active. If intellectual development is part of our salvation, then the believer works out his intellectual growth ‘with fear and trembling’. . . Failing to be open to self-correction is like a man’s having 20/200 vision and steadfastly refusing to wear glasses” (66ff.).
Reading an allegorical interpretation of Origen shows how far it is possible to go if we do not apply firm principles. Are there hidden meanings in Scripture? If there are, who decides what they are? The interpreter ends up exercising authority over Scripture. If there is a hidden meaning, God and the inspired human author are the only ones who know and can tell us the hidden meaning. N.T. authors will sometimes tell us (under inspiration) of such a meaning.
Every passage of Scipture can have a unique interpretation for each individual. The work of the Holy Spirit is to communicate this to us. For example, the verse from Joshua 1, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” may mean something very special to me in the situation that I am facing right now, and the Spirit may impress on my heart this word of comfort.
Updated 2009-10-07 (build:7) by Andrew Fountain
The first assignment we will do is rather different to the others, and is about daily Bible reading.
See the article on Daily Bible Reading for the content of this section.