own paradigm shift<\/a> on their journey of Christian faith.<\/p>\nHere are 5 words that I feel get at\u00a0my\u00a0approach to biblical interpretation. If you think of others, and you are a non-crazy person, please tell me and\u00a0I\u2019ll try to expand the list in another post.<\/p>\n
Genre-calibration<\/h2>\n
(That\u2019s technically two words, but the hyphen makes it one.) The Bible, like anything that has ever been written, can be classified according to genre\u2014many genres, in fact (letters, laws, wisdom, apocalyptic, prophecy, story, parable, etc.). Recognizing what\u00a0genre you are in is key to sound biblical interpretation (i.e., don\u2019t expect a parable to relay historical information; don\u2019t read proverbs as if they were laws).<\/p>\n
Recognizing the various ancient\u00a0<\/em>genres of our\u00a0ancient<\/em>\u00a0Bible is greatly aided by our ability to compare and contrast <\/i>the Bible with similar\u00a0writings from the ancient world, i.e., by \u201ccalibrating\u201d the Bible against ancient analogs and thus learning to adopt ancient expectations for interpreting biblical literature rather than imposing alien, modern conventions of reading.<\/p>\nSo, Genesis 1-11 is best understood when compared to other ancient origins texts rather than expecting something along the lines of modern science; the Gospels are best understood alongside ancient Greco-Roman \u201cbiographies\u201d rather than contemporary biographies.<\/p>\n
Christotelic<\/h2>\n
Telos<\/i> is a Greek word meaning \u201cend\u201d or \u201cgoal.\u201d The Old Testament does not so much flow easily into the New Testament, nor do the Old Testament writers \u201cpredict\u201d Jesus of Nazareth in any conventional sense of the word \u201cpredict.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather, after the resurrection, New Testament writers read their scripture (the Christian Old Testament) in light of\u2014in taking into account\u2014the surprise ending of a crucified and risen messiah.<\/p>\n
The faith of the New Testament writers is that Christ is deeply connected to Israel\u2019s story while at the same time grappling with this surprise, counterintuitive development of the\u00a0gospel. This led the New Testament writers (especially Paul and the Gospel writers) to cite the Old Testament well over 300 times (connecting the gospel to Israel\u2019s story) and in doing so significantly re-read, i.e., transpose, Israel\u2019s story to account for the surprise ending.<\/p>\n
The tendency toward \u201ccreative\u201d(i.e., midrashic) readings of scripture\u00a0in Judaism in general at the time is the proper hermeneutical backdrop for understanding this \u201cChristotelic\u201d hermeneutic (another instance of genre-calibration<\/strong>).<\/p>\nThis is why\u2013as many Bible readers already know\u2013New Testament writers, when quoting the Old Testament, typically \u201ctake it out of context,\u201d meaning the context of the original utterance. The\u00a0gospel\u00a0requires<\/em> creative re-framing of Israel\u2019s story.<\/p>\nIncarnational<\/h2>\n
The incarnation is the grand mystery of the Christian faith and an apt and ancient analogy for understanding how the Bible can be embraced as God\u2019s word while at the same time unequivocally displaying the mundane properties, cultural infusions, and simple human imitations of any text, ancient or modern.<\/p>\n
By using the incarnation as an analogy for the Bible, no claim whatsoever is being made that the Bible is a \u201chypostatic union\u201d or another language normally reserved to describe the incarnation of Christ. It is an analogy not an attempt at identification.<\/p>\n
An incarnational model of scripture accounts better for the Bible\u2019s own properties than do various inerrantist models, which at some point all need to tame or corral biblical\u00a0phenomena that do not sit well with certain doctrinal needs.<\/p>\n
Ecumenical<\/h2>\n
I use this term in the broadest sense, meaning wisdom and insight for interpreting the Bible can and does come from anyone, not limited to Christians alone, or Protestants alone, and most definitely not to particular\u00a0tribes.<\/p>\n
Genuine and deep insight into the nature of the Bible and its interpretation comes from Judaism, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, from agnostics, atheists\u2014even mainline Presbyterians.<\/p>\n
Further, insights concerning the Bible come to us from all sorts of unexpected, less cerebral places, like the world around us\u2013which is God\u2019s world.<\/p>\n
Pilgrimage<\/h2>\n
This ancient metaphor for describing the Christian faith as a whole is also apt for describing the interpretation of the Bible. Our understanding always has a provisional dimension to it, and we should expect our views to change over time as we all change and grow as human beings.<\/p>\n
I do not think now as I did half a lifetime ago when I started seminary. I had better not. Nor do I think that my currents thoughts are now free from the need for future refinement, change, or abandonment.<\/p>\n
Pilgrimage is a metaphor for humility. Pilgrimage encourages us to let go of the need to have final certainty on how we understand the Bible\u00a0and be less prone to put up walls of division, because we are more willing to discuss, explore, and change rather than proclaim, conquer, and defend.<\/p>\n
This blog was originally posted in March 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My prompt for this post is to clarify some of what I am doing in The Bible Tells Me So\u00a0and\u00a0Inspiration and Incarnation, which is to say this post addresses some questions I\u2019ve gotten, especially since\u00a0The Bible Tells Me So\u00a0came out in September. Questions like: \u201cPete, what exactly is your problem?\u201d or \u201cDid you take\u00a0hermeneutics with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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