An Open Letter To My Former Tribe

by Tim Nichols

I was reared in a conservative evangelical tradition that was heavy on strict grammatical-historical hermeneutics. I have repented of that school of thought in favor of following the examples set by the NT authors themselves.

Look, you know I love you, but there’s no point in mincing words here: you guys suck at reading narrative. I mean, it’s terrible. Either you reduce the story to a disconnected set of little morality tales for Sunday school kids, or you chop it up into however many dispensations or homogenize it all into two covenants (or both). At best, you think it’s there as a means to the end of teaching “doctrine,” by which you mean something like systematic theology. In practice, of course, many of you mostly ignore the narrative in favor of the church epistles, especially in your preaching. To be fair, you’re mostly pretty good at the church epistles. Straight-out didactic literature is your forte.

But look, the narrative is three quarters of the Bible. Paul says that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, and your hermeneutics courses are all a-flutter with warnings against “getting doctrine from narrative.” This means — it has to mean — that there’s something wrong with your hermeneutics. As long as you insist that your hermeneutics are fine, you’re going to continue to have the same problem, to wit: you don’t know how to read three quarters of the Bible. As soon as you contemplate some sort of hermeneutical repentance, though, you feel as though you’re about to throw open the door to every perversion and silliness that hermeneutical laxity has ever visited upon the Church. How can you proceed? How can you gain the ability to read the other three quarters of the Bible well without falling victim to the many traps and pitfalls that have snared so many of your unwary brethren?

I want to make an observation and propose a way forward. The observation: you’re scared. If your reason for avoiding narrative is that you don’t know how to avoid hermeneutical excesses, and your response to your lack of skill is to run away and hide in a church epistle… stop it. You can’t learn to swim by running from the water. God has not given us a spirit of fear.

Now, for a way forward. It’s simple in concept, sufficiently rich to cover the variety of problems you’ll have to face along the way, and as a bonus, it starts in your old stomping grounds — the church epistles. Even there, however, you’re going to have to face hermeneutical repentance. You’ve missed some pretty obvious stuff. The authors of the church epistles had none of your reluctance about drawing doctrine from narrative. For example, you somehow fail to notice that Paul derives his doctrine of justification by faith in Romans 4 from the narrative accounts of Abraham and David — the very thing you warn your students not to do. Nor is that circumstance unique — the authors of the epistles overwhelmingly draw their doctrine from the biblical narratives. Peter does it. Hebrews certainly does it. James does it. Know why? Because they’re following Jesus — He did it too.

The authors of the epistles may not have left you a hermeneutics manual, but they certainly did leave you with an enormous set of examples. Start with Romans 4, and work your way out from there. What other examples can you identify? How might you follow the example set forth for you?

Of course I realize that there will be differences of opinion, excesses, and all that. Sure. But if you’re not willing to get out there and make some mistakes, you’ll never get anywhere. You’ve gotta learn somehow.

Or you could keep being bad at reading three quarters of the Bible…

Originally published here.

Further reading: The Historical-Grammatical Nanny State.

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.

A composer will put out a theme (melody) clearly and forthrightly. You can hear it without diffculty. And, from time to time that melody will come back, and without diffculty you will hear it again. But what you probably won’t hear, unless you are trained to listen to music, is that the melody is being used in more ways. It may be broken down, and parts of it used in various ways in the overall piece. It may be played in the bass line, or in an alto line, underneath a more prominent second melody or theme. You’ll hear the new melody, and not notice that the old melody is being used underneath. The melody may be stretched out into slower notes (augmented), or played twice as fast (diminished). It may be used like a round (canon; ricercar; fugue), coming in over and over again on top of itself. It may be inverted (switching high and low notes), or played cancrizans (backwards). (A good listener can hear an inversion, but it takes a really good one to notice when the melody runs backwards.) The melody may be taken from a minor key to a major one, or vice versa. A composer will introduce one theme, and then another, and then play them at the same time.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

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.

The Folks of Nazareth: Bi-Polar or Nah?

by Daniel Hoffmann

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?

After the first bit of his sermon, they all “spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming out of his mouth” (v. 22, per ESV), but less than ten verses later, they’re making a concerted effort to toss him down the cliff (v. 29). The NASB and NKJV give us this same sense, and it’s owing entirely to the way verse 22 is translated. The translators may have this wrong. So, while realizing that it’s probably unwise to call out three highly regarded, conservative, and literal translations for being misleading, I want to register an objection.

I don’t think verse 22 has the people of Nazareth receiving Jesus well, only to flip right into a murderous rage. I think they were negative toward Jesus from the beginning. I have two reasons:

1) The Greek language of 4:22 is sufficiently ambiguous to allow a more negative interpretation.

2) The context seems to demand the negative interpretation.

First, what’s the Greek Say?

The Greek term behind “spoke well of” is the single Greek verb martyreo (ἐμαρτύρουν), which has as its basic meaning “to testify” or “bear witness to.” What is being testified to is determined by the context. The word does not mean “to speak well of,” even though many times when it’s being used, what is being testified to is someone’s good character (e.g., Cornelius, Acts 10:22; David, Acts 13:22). So the question in Luke 4:22 is, to what are the people testifying? It would appear to be the fact that they knew Jesus’ background and who he was — “Is this not Joseph’s son?” It’s a question asked also in Matthew 13:55, and there it does not appear to be a compliment.

Moreover, “gracious words” is more literally “words of grace.” The people of Nazareth were not marveling at Jesus gracious words, as though he was such a nice guy or eloquent speaker. They were marveling at the words of grace—the announcement he had just made in vs. 18-21 that the year of the Lord’s favor was upon them.¹One heavy-weight commentator on Luke, Darrell Bock, notes that “testify” may have the sense of “testify against,” in agreement with what I’m proposing here, but dismisses the possibility on the grounds that “gracious words” seems to be a positive statement. That objection is unpersuasive if we recognize that “words of grace” is not speaking of the character of Jesus’ words, but the content of his words, which is v.21, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

So putting these things together, what we have is this: Jesus reads the prophecy of Isaiah about the year of the Lord’s favor, puts the scroll down, and says the words are fulfilled “this day in your hearing”.

The people testify – while marveling at this word of grace – that this guy speaking to them is someone they know. It’s just Jesus, the carpenter’s son! How could he be the fulfillment of God’s exalted promises from centuries ago? Jesus claims to be the fulfillment of God’s promises, but the people, “with their eyes fixed on him,” don’t see it that way.

Second, this fits the context

This understanding makes better sense to me contextually because it does not demand that the townspeople have a sudden mood swing. They are feeling suspicious and negative of Jesus from the beginning. That’s why, when they “testify”, Jesus immediately starts rebuking them, about how no prophet (himself) is welcome in his hometown. They weren’t speaking well of him, they were mocking his pedigree—or in their minds, his lack of one.

How about it, translation committees?

Daniel Hoffmann is a Bible and history teacher at Cherokee Christian School in Woodstock, Georgia. Reposted with permission.

“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…”

The Bestial Gardens of Men

Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!”
(Luke 23:30)

The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe, slightly reshaped, are the first spoken words in the classic Australian film, Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock:

What we see
and what we seem
are but a dream…
a dream within a dream.

Based on a novel by the enigmatic Joan Lindsay, the film is an experience that clings to you, not merely because it is so carefully and beautifully made, but also because it is a film with secret blades: it is a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday.

On Saturday 14th February 1900, a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mount Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without trace…

The picnic takes place on St Valentine’s Day. Although named for a saint, the date is a licence for the expression of natural impulses, the heart of paganism. Along with the use of “pipes of pan” in the film soundtrack, the culture of the schoolgirls is a scrapbook of Victorian fertility symbols. Yet, these passionate obsessions and an awakening sexual desire are strictly bound by the corset of Victorian religion. In one scene, recitation of a personal ode to St Valentine is censored for the sake of the memorization of the curricular Casabianca. Like first century Israel, Victoriana is indeed not one but two women, the bride and the harlot.

The golden icon is a blessed sylph named Miranda, likened to “the Botticelli angel” by one of her teachers. Both her appearance and her disappearance become elements in a sort of sacrificial ascension. Time stops and her potential is suddenly a flower pressed in a vice of tragedy. The end of her childhood is the birth of Venus. Though her purity is gone from the world, the memory of its fragrance fills the imaginations of those left behind, just as the mystery of the missing women corrupts, terrorizes and curses them, one by one.

This dichotomy between nature and nurture is  echoed in the quiet but unsettling tension between conflicting cultures and landscapes. The contrast of the rough Australian stablehand with the young English gentleman is humorous but telling. They do not lock horns but become friends—and possible suspects.

There is real discord, however, between the imported English culture and the dangerous and unforgiving Australian landscape into which its literature, dress and architecture have been confidently transplanted, entirely unadapted. Appleyard College is a manmade Eden, a temple and a greenhouse with boundaries clearly defined, its lush lawns giving way abruptly to brown fields. Moreover, the building in real life, Martindale Hall, was itself a deliberate reconstruction of the English home of the owner’s wife for the purpose of luring her to Australia. She never came, and he eventually lost the property in a gambling debt.

Visually, the picnic is also a hopeful transplant. It is a European painting, an English pastoral, carefully recreated in a foreign land. Moreover, the nature versus nurture theme is found even in the disparate “beauty and terror” approaches to the rock itself: the primeval eruptions described ominously by Miss McCraw and the Renaissance esthetic of Mademoiselle de Poitiers are both represented within the party of the missing. Victoria Bladen writes:

The juxtaposition of rational empiricism and emotive response, evident during the carriage ride, is continued with the girls’ proposed ascent of the Rock. For Miranda and Irma it is curiosity; they “wanted a closer view of the Rock” (p.33). By comparison, Marion Quade’s reason for wanting to go for a walk is to “make a few measurements at the base of the Rock”; she produces “some squared paper and a ruler” (p.25) yet it is not clear how such measuring would be done. In any event, no measurements are taken and the girls’ walk quickly takes on the quality of a mystic pilgrimage. Marion discards her pencil and notebook, “toss[ing] them into the ferns” (p. 38), before they fall asleep at the Rock.

While the natural space is a source of admiration and wonder, it is only superficially and temporarily idyllic, not the nurturing landscape of Virgilian pastoral. The girls become immersed in the landscape to a point where they are no longer in control but become subject to its magnetic, subsuming and devouring forces. The tragedy of Picnic is that the pastoral immersion in nature is taken to its extremity; the landscape takes and swallows up the heart of the human group.¹1 Victoria Bladen, “The Rock and the Void: Pastoral and Loss in Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock and Peter Weir’s Film Adaptation,” in Colloquy, Issue 23, Monash University.

Director Peter Weir gives the rock a brooding life of its own. The brutish, volcanic monolith with its totem-pole profiles, indigenous almost-faces, hangs over the idyllic scene, then tears and devours. Have the women been snatched from paradise and swallowed by an ancient hell? Or have they instead been rescued, released from the unnatural constraints—such as the timekeeping—of high culture by the eternal noon of a timeless land?

Marion: Whatever can those people be doing down there, like a lot of ants? A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Though it is probable they are performing some function unknown to themselves.

Miranda: Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.

Joan Lindsay’s novel was published in 1967. After the story came to her in dreams, she wrote the book in a matter of weeks. She was asked repeatedly if the story were true and repeatedly hedged the question. It seems much of it was based on her own experience in a girls’ college. Lindsay also refused to reveal the solution to the mystery. However, the original manuscript did have an ending, left out on advice from her publisher and not released until 1987. In this final chapter, the reader discovers the fate of the missing women, yet all it does is present a further enigma. The Aboriginal Dreamtime comes to the fore, with transformations into animal totems, falling rocks and the freezing of time, including, surprisingly, the mathematics and science teacher, Miss McCraw. It is beyond weird.

Many lovers of the book reject the final chapter as a fake, or at least as an ugly and unnecessary appendage to the ethereal beauty of this particularly strange and, for many years, “never-ending” story. Yet the reader is indeed given hints of the ending in the earlier chapters.²Chapter 3 shows signs of slightly clumsy editing once the contents of Chapter 18 are taken into account. See the commentary by Yvonne Rousseau published along with the missing chapter as The Secret of Hanging Rock.

This analysis is an excuse to recommend today (St Valentine’s Day, 2014), a stunning Australian film, but also to illustrate a point about the book of Revelation. The attitude of most Christians towards our own enigmatic “final chapter” resembles that of the headmistress of Appleyard College towards the Rock.

Good morning, girls.

Good morning, Mrs. Appleyard.

Well, young ladies, we are indeed fortunate in the weather for our picnic to Hanging Rock. I have instructed Mademoiselle that as the day is likely to be warm, you may remove your gloves once the drag has passed through Woodend.

You will partake of luncheon at the picnic grounds near the rock. Once again let me remind you that the rock is extremely dangerous, and you are therefore forbidden any tomboy foolishness in the matter of exploration, even on the lower slopes. I also wish to remind you, the vicinity is renowned for its venomous snakes and poisonous ants of various species. It is, however, a geological marvel on which you will be required to write a brief essay on Monday morning.

That is all. Have a pleasant day, and try to behave yourselves in a manner to bring credit to the college.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ is not a book intended to be observed but experienced, over and over. It is designed to resonate. It is offensive to the cultured sensibilities which shield us because it is supposed to transcend them, to speak not only to us but through us. Many of those who have given themselves to it wholeheartedly are seldom seen again. They are devoured. They become alien. They speak a new language, the “madness” of the prophets whose eyes see the chariots of God (2 Kings 6:17).

Although it appears to be a hostile and foreign landscape filled with confronting symbols, animal totems, virginal sacrifices clad in pure white, chosen, slain and ascending with a disturbing sexual undercurrent, the Revelation is in fact the authentic end of the story, a denouement of the natural world. The seed, flesh and skin of Genesis is everywhere in the Revelation, employed to express the bestial nature and hidden nakedness of institutions masquerading as gods and goddesses. The primeval world of Adam, a barren landscape of widows and orphans, is not a Dreamtime but a history. Ridiculed, ignored and neglected, it waits silently until the sixth hour, when time shall be no more. The fruits of culture are ripe, and it bites and devours, consumes and transfigures. Revelation is Genesis at full throttle, a bottle to be consumed and be consumed by, a fruit once forbidden but now freely offered. It is a book which removes inhibitions and exposes the hidden intents of the heart. The gardens of men are theft and nakedness, their lands are murder, and their cities are exile. The pungent, Dreamtime symbols are the hidden reality. The grotesque totems are a tangible exposure of “what we see and what we seem.”

Yet, as with the controversial Chapter 18 of Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Revelation contains nothing that is not contained either explicitly or implicitly in the earlier parts of the story. It simply describes the natural world condemned in Romans 1 and 2 in a different language, one which is impossible to explain or contain within the Victorian corset of Western Christianity. As John Taylor writes in his introduction to Chapter 18 in The Secret of Hanging Rock:

As anyone can see, the chapter is quite unfilmable. Film can only work with what God gives it, and God did not give it the same elasticity He granted the novel—though people keep trying, as the cutting-room floor shows.

It is little wonder that the “schoolgirls” of modern Bible colleges are constrained to the safety of the lower slopes by the prim widows of worldly academia.

This is a chapter from Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.

“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.

There are no such principles. This is because hermeneutics is not a science. There are no hard-and-fast rules in literature. Bible teacher James Jordan, in a recent lecture, said,

Do you read anything else by rules? When you pick up the latest mystery novel, do you say, “Well, let’s remind ourselves of the rules of hermeneutics,” or do you just plow in? Do you read the newspaper by rules? The assumption seems to be that the Bible is some kind of weird book, and that if you don’t have all these rules you’re going to misinterpret it. There’s always some helpful stuff… but the problem with reading by rules is that it reduces reading to science. We have what is called ‘the ideal of science.’ Science has to turn all art into knowledge of a certain sort, with rules. That’s not the way the Bible is written and that’s not who God is. Some rules are commonsense, designed to get you to read sanely, like “Pay attention to the context.” [1]

The reason literature, like art, has no hard-and-fast rules, is because authors and artists confer meaning upon things as they go. So I guess reading cumulatively through a book is one rule. But once you are inside the author’s or artist’s world, the work becomes uniquely self-referencing. So the Bible makes its own rules based on what has gone before. This means that what gets classed as “faithful exegesis” of the Bible’s literature is in fact a sort of scientistic tunnel vision, based on the mistaken assumption that breaking things into smaller pieces will reveal their true essence. We must treat the Bible as literature, as a book. Having eyes like lasers is only good for cutting things up into small pieces, and hermeneutics is not an autopsy. If you take a single note out of a piece of music, it loses its meaning.

Next post, I’ll have a look at a famously difficult passage which can only be understood by taking into account the “meanings” of certains things conferred upon them in earlier Scriptures, and the order in which its events take place.

_____________________________________________
[1] James Jordan’s lecture series is here. Also, details on our one day event on hermeneutics and literary structure (held in Australia), can be found here.

ART: Gold Albert Einstein by Michael Bull. Just to illustrate my point.

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?)

What is it?

Firstly, this is a term I’ve given to a process which I didn’t invent. The name is simply to get people thinking, to get across to the modern thinker that there is a very definite internal logic to the symbolism of the Bible.

Just as systematic theology identifies and isolates similar ideas, so systematic typology identifies similar symbols but does not isolate them. Rather it notices their use at similar points in repeated literary and historical structures or processes or architectures.

How does one apply it?

In two ways: firstly, we must learn the Bible’s symbol language; secondly, we must notice that these symbols are used in a repeated structure, which helps not only to identify them, but also to show how different symbols are used to communicate similar themes. The repeated structure is what allows us to make and verify the typological connections between the events described. It also reveals when the Bible’s typology is being abused. An abuse is like a wrong note in a familiar tune.

The most basic event-structure is the Creation narrative in Genesis 1, and it is the chord from which the entire Bible “symphony” flows. When you see a passage that recapitulates the Creation Week, there are some very valid things you can draw from the text that aren’t actually written in it. An example would be Ezekiel’s use of the Creation pattern as he liturgically “de-creates” the Temple and Israel in his early chapters. The allusion is structural, and a familiarity with the symbols used in each step allows us not only to identify the structure but to pick up when the prophet is deliberately inverting something or changing it to make a point. Another example which comes to mind is Isaiah is working his way through the Tabernacle furniture in one of his prophecies. When he gets to the Incense Altar, he says that Israel’s sacrifices are a stench in God’s nostrils. If we know what he is doing structurally, suddenly the passage is opened to us.

The basic structures we must learn are the Creation Week, Israel’s festal calendar, the Tabernacle, the Covenant pattern, and the resulting process of maturity and dominion. All of these align with each other.

If this all sounds too complicated, it’s not. It’s something you already do if you are into literature or even popular culture. It’s no different than figuring out when a modern movie is a retelling of a Shakespearian play. I think Western writers have the Bible’s shape so ingrained in their thinking that they use it unconsciously – the recent James Bond movie Skyfall, for instance, has a liturgical shape.

Are there contexts where it is considered to be a particularly good or particularly bad fit?

Because the Bible is so consistent in a) its use of symbols and b) their placement in a consistent order, I have found this process useful in all of Scripture. In fact, it answers a great many theological debates. I believe the documentary hypothesis was an error, but only because its proponents did not have the necessary understanding of the Bible’s structure. What appears disordered to us is actually a very careful order. A few months ago, I worked through the book of Numbers. “Systematic typology” explained its structure at three or four levels (sevenfold within sevenfold etc.) and recently worked through Ephesians, which contains exactly the same patterns. What is really interesting is that the structure reveals many of Paul’s allusions and they are stunning. For instance, in one passage he works through Israel’s feasts, and basically makes the Gentile Church the new Firstfruits, that is, a new Levitical priesthood. This would have been shocking to first century Jews who must have been familiar with the “liturgical” structure of the Torah.

Where can one go to learn more about it?

The first thing to do is to learn the Bible’s symbol language. If you read the Scriptures regularly, you will find that when things are pointed out, you already sort of knew them. The best place to start is James B. Jordan’s book, Through New Eyes which is available on amazon.com, or you can download a free PDF from www.biblicalhorizons.com. The site also has a “manifesto” on symbolism, and there is much help in the introduction to his commentary on Judges which you will also find in PDF. He speaks about identifying repeated themes and roles. It surprised me how important Genesis 1-3 is for interpreting the rest of the Bible. The roles of Adam, Eve and serpent keep recurring. For instance, Judges is a book about head-crushing. Jordan also has many Bible lectures, available from www.wordmp3.com Please note, he takes a little while to get used to, but he will teach you to think like a Hebrew, that is, visually. He is American, but recently gave some introductory lectures in London and they are available for free here.

My work has been to “systematize” Jordan’s thinking, giving it some terminology and laying out the structures visually. Once you are more familiar with the symbol language, the architecture, and its source in Genesis, you might like to move on to my ‘Bible matrix’ books, which explain each pattern and how it is used. You will see that each Bible text is a microcosm of the whole.

Genesis 1 is the Bible Matrix. As it matures throughout the Scriptures, the identification of this pattern unlocks the books of Moses, Israel’s history, the structure of Jesus’ ministry and the book of Revelation. If the Bible is truly God’s Word, should we expect anything less? It also has staggering implications concerning the identity, purpose and future of Christianity—and these implications are thoroughly, joyously liberating.

And where does it come from? (Who developed it, and based on what?)

Quite a number of theologians have identified the Creation Week as deep structure in many Scriptures. Jordan noticed its similarity to the Covenant pattern (the suzerainty treaty) What I have done, being a visual thinker, is to diagram these and lay them out a little more plainly. So this process is not new. But it is not a haphazard or occasional ornamental literary flourish. It is a carefully integrated weave, and I have found that it often answers questions of variant readings (the structure often shows that a phrase in question is required to keep it complete).

What this boils down to is learning not only the symbols as “musical notes” but also the tunes which they keep repeating. This includes the sacred architecture, which begins in the Garden, works through the Tabernacle and Temple and is finally expressed “in flesh” in the Christian Church. I am confident that this process works because it has never failed. It is remarkably consistent, incredibly intricate, and yet all based on a relatively simple formula.

Symbols and structure cannot be divorced. Very often, the particular placement of a symbol within a structure is what reveals its meaning. So structural analysis is crucial. This is why I find the sole reliance on word studies so frustrating. That is only part of what needs to be done. What the word is is important, but just as important is where it is in the phrase and where the phrase is in the passage. If you want to see this in action, check out my recent work on Ephesians. Note that it might seem incomprehensible until you learn the basic tools. But it will give you an idea of how the text is constructed.

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:

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
—Psalm 51:4 (ESV)

David did sin against God, but it seems a stretch to say that he sinned against God only. Surely he sinned against at least Uriah, the soldiers who died with him (and their families), Bathsheba, his current wives, and even his unborn child. In addition, he probably sinned against Joab too by abusing his authority to settle a personal matter.

The logical connector “so that” seems out of place. Whatever connection there might be between a person sinning against God and God being blameless in judgment, I can’t see how justice could be the purpose or explanation of sin.

Is there some way to understand this Psalm that resolves this conundrum? What am I missing?

The best answer (I believe) comes from Qoheleth-Tech:

Not a Hyperbolic Expression

The Text of Psalm 51:4:

לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ ׀ חָטָאתִי וְהָרַע בְּעֵינֶיךָ עָשִׂיתִי
לְמַעַן תִּצְדַּק בְּדָבְרֶךָ תִּזְכֶּה בְשָׁפְטֶֽךָ׃

Explanation

1) “Against you alone” (לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ): This is a prayer of David for repentance (a penitential psalm), and while he sinned against many others in the affair with Bathsheba, this is just not where he handles them (possible reasons are many). He says it is “in your [God's] eyes [בְּעֵינֶיךָ] that I have done this” , further indicating that this is a personal prayer (which was later set to music). Interestingly, having looked at most of the “so that” (לְמַעַן ) phrases in the canon to this point, I found at least two where a sin condition was “so that” God would be glorified; and both are instances where enemies are hardened or defeated (Ex.10:1, Dt.2:30). If anything can be drawn from that syntactical similarity, it would be that David see himself who has been completely undone, so that God can be shown victorious (LXX) in his judgements. In any case, this is how he uses the preposition “so that” (לְמַעַן).

2) We should not read the verse with an emphasis on purpose as if David’s purpose in sinning was so God would be glorified (cf. Rom.3:5-8). Rather, it is the second part of the verse which dictates the first: it was all against Him alone, “(so) that” God will be victorious. The purpose of this verse in the Psalm is to declare that God will be victorious/justified in His judgement of David’s sins. The second line of the verse is the point. In this sense, it is the purpose of the preceding verse. To understand this better, read the second line first. Try and think of it again with the second line first.

Interpretation

In this penitential prayer, there is no sin to be reserved, as if it was not against God, it was all against God. Every bit of it. God is just in judgement in all of it. The same portion against Uriah, was also against God. David must answer to God above all.

Likewise (as is evident in this Psalm) when God pardons David’s sins, he washes away all of David’s sins – there is no sacrifice to Bathsheba. David’s forgiveness was entirely with God. Whatever else was needed for the personal restoration/reconciliation with those against whom he sinned would also be in primary obedience to God.

“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.

James Jordan writes:

A couple of decades ago, when I was a young Reconstructionist (instead of a middle-aged post-Reconstructionist), I coined the phrase “political polytheism” to describe how modern evangelical Christians approach matters of social law and politics. Christians want the Bible for Church and family life, but turn to other gods for society. Their social theory is syncretistic, a blend of the notions of Roman, Greek, and Enlightenment ideas like “natural law” and “social contract,” not to mention the blurry and nebulous (and contentless) notion of “common grace.” Gary North wrote an excellent first exploration of this whole question in his aptly named book, Political Polytheism, available from the Institute for Christian Economics, Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711.

Sadly, the evangelical and Reformed world is also too much afflicted with hermeneutical polytheism as well. In this brief essay I want to encourage the reader not to be swept away by this tendency.

Hermeneutical polytheism occurs when the Bible is broken up into various “genres” or types of literature. The result of hermeneutical polytheism is that the various parts of the Bible are not properly interpreted because walls have been built between one part of the Bible and other parts.

What I am concerned with will be clearer if I give illustrations. In one recent book we find that there is one way to interpret the “historical” parts of the Bible, another way to interpret “poetry,” another way to interpret the “gospel genre,” and another way to interpret the “epistle genre.” Another illustration would be the attention given to so-called “apocalyptic” literature in the Bible. Yet another would be the desire of the strict theonomists to divide the “moral law” from the “restorative law.”

If these distinctions are only rules of thumb, then well and good: They can help us come to grips with the Bible. But when they are elevated into types of literature and rules are provided for each type, I believe there are real dangers.

Consider “apocalyptic.” First of all, there is no apocalyptic literature in the Bible. Apocalypticism, originally a form of Jewish gnosticism, taught that the world is coming to an end and therefore we should retreat and wait for deliverance. (Apocalypticism is one of the major heresies of American evangelicalism, of course.) The prophetic passages of the Bible teach the opposite. They always teach that the world is coming to a new beginning, and therefore we must get to work.

What fools too many scholars is that the later prophetic books of the Bible (those of the Restoration and New Covenant eras; that is, the two phases of the Latter Days) are written in symbolic language, and so is apocalyptic literature. The large majority of commentators on these books misinterpret them seriously for two reasons.

First, they do not recognize that the symbolism in these books comes from the structures established in Genesis 1, the Tabernacle and sacrificial system, the Temple of Solomon, and especially the visionary and symbolic Temple in Ezekiel. In other words, by separating the “ceremonial law” from “apocalyptic” as two different genres, they cannot interpret these prophetic books.

Second, by and large the interpreters do not take into account the historical background of these books, and thus do not see the immediate relevance of them. For instance, several aspects of Zechariah 1-6, as well as Ezekiel 38-39, are fulfilled in Esther. But these scholars have Esther pegged as a “historical novella,” and don’t link it with these prophetic books. Also, they don’t see the connection between the palace of Ahasuerus in Esther and the Temple of Yahweh. Similarly, they do not link the book of Revelation with the book of Acts, which they should do.

To take another illustration: the Law. The Law is a seamless garment, and is seamless with the rest of the Bible. To pigeonhole some parts of it as “ceremonial” and others as “moral” does violence to the text. You cannot understand the penalties in the “moral” law unless you connect them with the killing of the animals in the “ceremonial” law. Our tradition betrays us here, because it is common in evangelical and Reformed thought to say that the “ceremonial” law was fulfilled in Christ and thus is done away with. Rather, we should say that because Christ fulfilled it, it is now applied in a new and greater way in the life and worship of the Church. One of the greatest failures of “theonomy” lies just at this point, as I mentioned above.

One of the worst forms of hermeneutical polytheism comes from Meredith G. Kline and his notion that the so-called Old Testament is one “canon” and the so-called New Testament is another. Thus we have two canons, two rules of life. Not so. The Bible never hints that it is to be divided into two “testaments.” There is only one Bible, a through-composed book, seamless and inseparable. And thus there is only one canon, one rule of life.

To be sure, Paul has one style, Ezra another, and Samuel another. And to be sure, each book is a unit with particular concerns. And to be sure, the books that were produced for one period or another have different themes and concerns appropriate to each stage of covenant history. It is legitimate to take account of these, but only if we always remember that God is the Final Author and that the Bible is one unified book.

There are no true “genres” in the Bible, because the Bible breaks all merely human molds. It is the written word of the Word of God Himself, and sui generis. So-called “genre criticism,” whether practised by liberals or conservatives, is a red herring that diverts attention from the true structures in the Biblical text.

Ultimately, such approaches treat God as speaking with many different voices, and approach a kind of polytheism. At its extreme, hermeneutical polytheism actually pits parts of the Bible against one another. One evangelical commentator on Chronicles says that when the Chronicler tells that a king had many wives, he intends that as a sign of God’s blessing! Thus, the Chronicler contradicts Genesis 2:24, Leviticus 18:18, and especially Deuteronomy 17:17, all of which prohibit second wives, especially for kings.

Objection: God is Three and One, so we should be sensitive to various “genres.” Yes, but it is also true that “all of God does all that God does.” However pointedly different various parts of the Bible appear from one another, they are all part of one unified story.

Hermeneutical polytheism, like political polytheism, is a tendency, not a formal heresy. All the same, it is a serious error, and one we must be aware of, and beware.

Some further thoughts on “apocalyptic” literature.

The term is presumably taken from the Revelation and applied to highly symbolic texts. The problem is that, beneath the symbolism, the content of the biblical symbolic texts is very different to the uninspired texts, which seem to have taken the style of the prophets and used it for a very different purpose. Once we identify this difference in content, the biblical texts outshine the bandwagon “Jewish fables,” and their difference in purpose is more easily seen.

The Olivet discourse, the Old Testament prophets and Revelation, are not describing the end of the world but only the end of the old order and the beginning of the new. Revelation, like Ezekiel for instance, is a covenant lawsuit against the covenant people, and describes their “death and resurrection” as a new Israel. The last days are only ever the last days of the old order.

The other issue is that John’s “apocalypse” is in fact a “revealing.” Paul speaks of his Gospel as a new “revealing,” a cutting away of the old, replacing the circumcision, tearing down the veil and the wall of the Law (the Jew-Gentile divide) forever. This can only happen once (AD70), so maintaining “apocalypticism” as a genre is misleading. The biblical texts are all outcomes of previous Covenantal events. They are trumpets announcing the coming of God’s combine harvester over the horizon, to “shake the Land” once again and plant a new crop.

So, biblical symbolism, being Covenantal, is systematic. Every Covenant cycle in the Bible has the same shape, and predictions of the next cycle, or Covenantal event, invariably make allusions to the previous ones (such as the allusions to the Great Flood and the Exodus in Isaiah 11, and Jesus’ references to Isaiah 13 in Matthew 24 concerning the end of the Herodian “Babylon.”) The uninspired texts lack this kind of purpose. They take on the stylistic appearance of the prophetic much as the book of Mormon sounds like the King James Bible. The similarity is only skin deep.

But this similarity gets moderns doing silly things like searching other ancient texts for the source material for biblical revelation. It is assumed that John draws upon Jewish “apocalyptic” in his writings, when in fact the inspired texts are fundamentally self-referential. The first place we must look is the Old Testament. This is because these texts are revelations from God, not products of the culture of the day, not the demented sputterings of a man shattered by a visit from Jesus (as Rowan Williams believes), and not simply the thoughts of men about God.

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See also Spot the Fake and Sweeping Genrelisations.