Hermeneutical Repentance
“Look, you know I love you, but there’s no point in mincing words here: you guys suck at reading narrative.”
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“Look, you know I love you, but there’s no point in mincing words here: you guys suck at reading narrative.”
Continue reading
By James B. Jordan, at Theopolis Institute.
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write “high” music. Let me amplify.
What does it mean to read the Bible as inspired literature?
by James B. Jordan – PART 1
What does it mean to read the Bible as inspired literature? The method is not new nor is it uncommon in Dutch Reformed circles. Exegesis must be Christocentric, plenary (all the text serves a theological purpose), respect the context in God’s redemptive plan, and plumb the full literary depth of the writing.
Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.
Jesus’ first recorded public engagement in the Gospel of Luke comes in 4:16-29, where he speaks in the synagogue of Nazareth, his hometown. Go ahead and read it; I’ll wait. If you read the account in the English Standard Version, it sounds as the though the people of the synagogue do a complete 180° in their attitude toward Jesus: from hearing him enthusiastically, to wanting to kill him. Is that what really happened?
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…”
“The reason literature, like art, has no hard-and-fast rules, is because authors and artists confer meaning upon things as they go.”
Recently on the hermeneutics exchange, Monica Cellio (one of the bright lights, whose eyes are like lasers) asked,
Do any principles commonly used in the field of hermeneutics have any counterparts in scientific principles? Is there a corollary in hermeneutics to the requirements that science demands as far as the reproducibility of experiments, peer review of results, etc?
This is a fantastic question, not because it will lead us towards a better understanding of the Bible, but because it exposes the reason why modern academics have such a problem with understanding and teaching the Bible.
An online acquaintance asked: “There’s a hermeneutical method that’s been used on this site called ‘systematic typology’. What is it? How does one apply it? Are there contexts where it is considered to be a particularly good or particularly bad fit? Where can one go to learn more about it? And where does it come from? (Who developed it, and based on what?)
“…there is no sacrifice to Bathsheba…”
Jon Ericson asked this question on the Biblical Hermeneutics site:
To what extent is Psalm 51:4 poetic exaggeration?
The context of Psalm 51 is clear:
To the choirmaster. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
These events are described in 2nd Samuel 11–12. In summary, David essentially murdered Uriah the Hittite in order to cover up an affair with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. So this verse causes me trouble:
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“For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land…”
(Haggai 2:6)
Many modern commentators hamstring various parts of the Bible so they don’t run against the grain of modern scientism and historical revisionism. They do this by “classifying” the bits of Scripture that offend modern theory into neat literary genres. “If Genesis is poetry, it can’t be historical,” and other stupidities. Nice try. Another one is “apocalyptic,” a genre which, to the eye of unbelief, might appear to actually exist.