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Biblical Hermeneutics

Transcript - HR501 Biblical Hermeneutics Understanding Biblical Interpretation© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 02 of 12HR501

A Short History of Interpretation

Biblical HermeneuticsUnderstanding Biblical Interpretation

Well good, welcome back to session number two! We want to take up a little bit about the history of interpretation. I think that Milton S. Terry’s [book] was probably one of the best books, long since out of print—1890’s [is when] it first came out. But he argued on page 31 of his book called Biblical Herme¬neutics that:

A knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation is of an inestimable value to the student of the Holy Scriptures. It serves to guard against errors and exhibits the activity and efforts of the human mind in search after truth and in relation to the noblest themes. It shows what influences have led to the misunderstanding of God’s Word and how acute minds, carried away by misconception of the nature of the Bible, have sought mystic and manifold meanings of its contents.

So we want to prevent three things: 1) provincialism—getting just locked-in to our own little bailiwick; 2) subjectivism, which again says, “I’m the master of my fate, I’ll say what the texts means”; and then 3) party spirit too, which is another form of provincialism.

As we begin the background here of interpretation, I guess I will begin with the Jewish schools. But even before that, I think I should have put here the way in which the New Testament uses the Old Testament. For there are almost 300 direct citations of the Old Testament text in the New, with about anywhere from 1,600 to 6,000 allusions to the Old Testament. No wonder it is so important to have a view of the whole Bible. If you’re going to be reading only the New Testament, then if you miss the al¬lusion, then it’s going to really [can potentially] hurt very, very badly.

Paul is one of the great users of the Old Testament. And in I Corinthians 10:6, he talks about types or ex¬amples. “All these things are types,” he says, “so that we should not be desirous of evil.” And he expresses that by going on in I Corinthians 9:9, which

Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Ph.D.Experience: President Emeritus and

Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological

Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts

Transcript - HR501 Biblical Hermeneutics Understanding Biblical Interpretation © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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is a wonderful case. He picks up Deuteronomy 25:4 (NIV), “Do not muzzle an ox that’s treading out the grain.” [To trample the grain] you say, “Hey, look I’m not a farmer. Anyway we don’t use that on the farm today. We don’t have oxen, or if you do they’re only a showcase, and we have threshing machines, combines. [Today], you don’t need to have some “hoof” going round and round hooked up to a bar so it goes in circles.” But Paul picked it up in I Corinthians 9, and he said, “I want to use this passage,” and he used the passage to create a spirit of generosity in God’s men and women. Farmers should really be kind to animals. Now this is not the new “animal rights’ things,” (which is the rage right now causing factory farms and industrial agriculturalists loads of problems; this is some¬thing different). But he [Paul] is saying, “Do you know what? As that ox goes round and sees all those ‘Wheaties,’ it just goes crazy. Take the muzzle off his thing [mouth] and let him take a swipe as he goes around, because Wheaties are the ‘breakfast of champion oxen,’ and so give them a swipe.” Now Paul says in I Corinthians 9:9, “Did God write this only for oxen? No!” (I think he has some fun there. Oxen can’t read as you know.) Well then why did he do it? He did it for farmers. Something happens to the farmer that’s [who is] generous, even to his cattle. So Paul’s point is: those that serve you, be sure that you’re generous to them. In other words, “pay your pastor.”That was the point. A lot of my students say, “Will you come and give this message at my church when I graduate?” Sure, because he takes a principle from a passage.

Sure God was concerned about oxen (Deuteronomy 25:4), but He was more concerned about people who are made in His image who owned oxen. And therefore something happens to generous people, the people who have open hands—“Yeah, go ahead, ox, take a swipe as you go around.” And therefore Paul said, “Now I have ministered, though I really take care of myself, and I’m not asking for anything. But do I have a right to it? Yes! And why so? So that I might be taken cared of? No! Actually, I don’t want to deprive you all of the grace [of giving and being generous] that should come to you.”There’s a grace in giving [and being generous]. Many people don’t understand that in the pew. Something happens to the giver when they tight-fistedly drop a buck in the plate as it goes by. First of all, we shouldn’t put anything in the plate. We should jump in ourselves before we put anything in (now I mean this figura¬tively. Otherwise, you might put undue pressure on the ushers). You must give yourself before you give anything there. Well that’s the history of interpretation as it starts out.



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Then the question is, “Yes, but isn’t Paul using Jewish Rabbinic types of interpretations?”This takes us into the Rabbinic schools, and we have various things [items to account for]: The targums are a collec¬tion of interpretations, but the biblical text always was on a different par. Commentaries we may have . . . [have interpretations, but the Bible alone is authoritative].

Have you heard about the lady who came to her pastor and said, “I need to teach on this [paggage]`. Can you give me two or three commentaries?” And he did. Three weeks later, she came back and he said, “Well how did that work out? Did they help you at all?” And she said, “Well pastor, it’s amazing how much light the Bible shed on these commentaries.” So sometimes it goes the other way around. The commentary doesn’t always give you everything that you think you are getting there.

So we have what’s called the peshat—the clear, plain, or simple meaning of a text. Then we have what’s called a midrash, which is illustrative—it’s practical (I used to say in classes, “Rub my belly and say that’s a midrash. But no, this is something different. It’s not that kind of rash). But this is an illustra¬tive, homiletical kind of use of the Bible.

Rabbis had the Mishnah and they had the Gemara and the Talmud. All these were a part of the back¬ground of that particular day, and they were all used to try to help us get the meaning of the text. There are seven rules—the Rabbis called them Midoth, in which they interpreted the biblical text. Hillel, the first rabbi, came up with seven rules early in the Christian times. Then Ishmael had 13 rules— he added to the seven—and Eliezer had 32. But out of them, I’d like to give you six or seven that really show you the principles that were operating, very similar to what we would say.

The first principle is that a word must be understood in terms of the sentence and its context. That’s clear. Words are known, just like people, by the associations they keep. You know people by the asso¬ciations they keep; you know words by the associations they keep. That’s called context.

Secondly, Scriptures dealing with similar topics, they should be compared. When you have a topic and that topic is dealt with later on, then it’s fair to compare the teaching of that topic. And oftentimes this will relieve contradictions that are thought to exist between two passages. So words are known by their associations.

Secondly, topics are known by their constant appearances in the Bible.



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Third, a clear passage should be given preference to an obscure one. D. L. Moody was asked one time [had this story]: A woman came up to him one time and said, “Mr. Moody, I can’t read the Bible. There are too many hard things in the Bible.” And, typical of D. L. Moody, he said, “My good lady, do you eat chicken?” She said, “Yes!”“But answer my question first.” He said, “I am answering your question. Do you eat chicken?” She said, “Yes.” He said, “What do you do with the bones?” She said, “I put them on the side of my plate.” He said, “Well when you read the Bible and you come across something that’s hard, put it on the side of your plate. There’s still plenty of good eating that is there, plenty of good meat.” Now that wouldn’t pass today, but it is pretty good wisdom of another day, and it kind of gets at the heart of the problem.

The fourth principle is pay very close attention to the grammar and the syntax and figures of speech. The Bible has figures of speech, and if you are not part of that culture, then you miss that sometimes. We live in a Dutch community—used to be called Amsterdam; now called Cedar Grove—in Wisconsin. They love to use the word “once.” Many sentences: “do this once.”The real best one I saw was in the Piggly Wiggly Food Store. And it said, I think it was, “Pork chops! Eat them once.”Well I would think so! But at any rate, you have to understand culture in order to get that. That’s used a certain way in that culture. It doesn’t mean one time. It’s used in another way.

So there are figures of speech. We [say], “Yeah, when I told him, he hit the ceiling.” Most people don’t look for him up there [on the ceiling]. They don’t even bother looking up. They understand that, but that’s because we’re part of the culture. What do you do when you go 1,500 years, 2,000 years earlier? You got to make that shift. And so we need to go to that. One of the great books on figures of speech was by E. W. Bullinger, done back in the 1870’s. It’s still in print and it’s a wonderful guide to have on your desk. But Figures of Speech by E. W. Bullinger—he has 220 figures of speech defined [and] illus¬trated in classical Greek and Roman sources, and then 8,000 passages in the Bible indexed in the back from Genesis 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, and goes right on down through the whole Bible—a wonderful guide. Not the last word, but it sure is a great help to us.

Fifthly, use logic when we determine the application of Scripture if Scripture has not been specifically treated there. For example, Philippians 4:2 it says, “I beseech Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind.”You say, “Skip that verse because I’m not Euodia,



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I’m not Syntyche, and they’re not one of my relatives.”

But what we generally do is we go to Ephesians 4:32, “Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us.”“So, ladies, whatever your spat is, get over it and be reconciled and be forgiven [and forgive each other]!”That’s what we teach. Euodia and Syntyche are not meant to make the Bible hard, but it was an application in that day. So we then, by logic, go and say, “Well we got two people sparring in the church. You could have Gabriel come and preach and it won’t make any difference because there’s “static” out there.” And what do you need to do? Be forgiven. Be forgiven [to forgive as well].

Another one, just let me give you one more, and that is we need to adapt the Revelation to the recipi¬ents of that, which means a matter of finding an analogy from that day to our day. For example, [in] Numbers 20. Moses is told, when the people are saying “Hey, Moses. Why don’t you get out of leader¬ship? I think when you’re 120 you ought to retire” (something like that. These are marginal readings). He was 120, and they’re all saying, “We want a drink. The sheep and goats are even saying ‘baahh, baahh.’” God had sent manna that day, but no water. And it’s out on the desert and it’s hot. The chil¬dren are saying, “Mommy I want a drink, I want a drink.” So Moses and Aaron go before God and fall down and the Lord says, “Take the rod and go up on the mountain and speak to the rock.”

“That’s just what is not needed,” they all say. “The old grey Moses ain’t what he used to be. And there he is up there [calling out], ‘Oh, Rock!’”They said, “The boy’s done it. He’s gone over. He’s flipped, because you don’t talk to the rocks. In fact, we don’t have courses in seminary—Rock Talking 101. It’s not one of our subjects at all. What’s he doing there?”

And God wanted the people to see the only connection between their need and His greatness was His Word. Speak the Word. But no, Moses goes up there, and he’s “had it up to about here” [had too much stress]. And he took his staff along with him that day, but he takes it up there and he said, “You rebels (boom, boom),” and he socked the rock twice.” Now everyone says, “He broke the type.” I had a Bible that said that too in the footnotes, but not in the text. When you read it from the top down, it doesn’t say that [top page of Bible down to footnote]. And if you get a comparative passage, Psalm 106:32 (KJV) says, “He spoke inadvisedly with his lips.”What did he do? He said, “What’s a guy got to do around here? “Must we (little Hebrew [first person plural] pronoun



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anachnu) bring forth water for you out of this rock? What’s a guy got to do?” And he slugged it. Let me give you another ending to the story: and a voice came from heaven, “Hit it harder buddy. What do you think is this, in the New Testament?”

No, no, it wasn’t that. “The water came forth abundantly.” So people were out there giving, this is called, a “high hand”—bent elbow, clenched fist—and it’s called “B’yad Ramah,” [challenging God], with a high hand. It says in Numbers 20—actually the best translation is—“They blasphemed God.” And they got the high hand. Suddenly, out comes the water. And some were going like this and some like that.

But at any rate, here comes this mighty stream. One fellow said to me, “How many people are there?” I said, “Two million.” He said, “How many sheep and goats?” I said, “It doesn’t say.” He said, “Give me an es¬timate.” I said, “One for every two people, a million sheep and goats.” He said, “How much water does a person need in a day?” I said, “For cooking, washing, cleaning, drinking, a gallon and a half. That would be very, very normal, and at least a minimum.” He said, “How much for sheep and goats?” I said, “What about two gallons.” He said, “Wait a minute,” and he got out his calculator. What they did, they ripped God off; they stole glory. But yet God still gave them the water they didn’t deserve.

Now in the analogy, we don’t talk about how we need to really improve the water resources in town. This text is saying, “What we need to improve is the people seeing the power of the Word of God.” That’s the only thing between where we are right now—out of H2O—and God and speak His Word. What brought the water out? His Word! But what did these rascals do? Slug, slug, slug the thing (Num¬bers 20)!

Rules for interpretation: the Dead Sea Scrolls [at] Qumran, also kept a library there down by the Dead Sea. Some of you may have visited that [site], where, out of some 16 caves we’ve gotten 800 partial copies of every book of the Old Testament except Esther. No Esther. I have no idea. At any rate, we have not found it. With some (Isaiah) we have two complete scrolls of the book of Isaiah, and that takes us back in text tradition. The oldest complete text [of the Old Testament] we had up to the point of 1946, when we began finding Dead Sea Scrolls, was the Nash Papyrus of AD 1000. This took us all the way back to first–second century BC. That’s [at least] 1,100 years of text tradition that we didn’t have to fill in. But on the book of Isaiah [the Dead Sea Scroll version], when I was in the gradu¬ate school Brandeis University, we



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were doing it with [Dr. Harry Orlinsky], the only Jewish man in the Revised Standard Version committee. And Dr. Orlinsky said, “I was reading the proofs of the RSV com¬ing over [the Atlantic Ocean] on the QE2,” and he said, “as I was reading the Dead Sea Scrolls for the first time, I read it through,” And he said, “There were 13 word changes in 100 pages of texts.” And he said, “Since then we revised it. Ten of those we were precipitous on, there are only three word chang¬es [in the whole book of Isaiah]. And the changes are like the difference between the English and American spelling on honor (h-o-n-o-r or h-o-n-o-u-r)—very, very small difference.”That is preserva-tion, enormous preservation of text. Not all are that good, but I can show you Isaiah was enormously so.

They had a “teacher of righteousness,” they claim that he was their teacher of righteousness. That comes from Joel 2 where there is a reference to the Messiah, who is called a “teacher of righteousness,” moreh, not mareh, “the reign of righteousness.” Now changed, originally the NIV had it right, “teacher of righteousness”The later editions—they have changed that.

By the way, I was on the team for the NIV, and when you have a team translation, you get two, three things [your way] and [then] it goes for [against] you, three to four and you’re on the fore sight, but then they keep saying, “No I’m taking my [own] translation.” Next time, it goes against you. There’s the problem with the beauty of a whole group working together against one person.

And they [the Dead Sea Committee] came out with what’s called the pesher interpretation. A pesher interpretation is one in which they said, “Look here in the book of Habakkuk, which talks about the Babylonians.”They said, “You know who the Babylonians are? They are the Romans. And you know who the Israelites are? That’s us, the Dead Sea community. And we’re out here in the desert, and they’re coming after us just like the Babylonians came after them.”Well that is not a true interpretation. They’re so contemporizing the text that they’ve lost the historical background.

Pesher is to say this, which is happening to us, is that, which is in the text. This is that. That’s a Pesher interpretation, this which is happening to us [spoken of in the text].

But the big thing in the history of interpretation are the allegorists. Already in the pre-Christian times there was a tremendous sort of preference for allegorical interpretation. You have in the Greek community, they had a tradition of the philosophers coming



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out, and then you had Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey and Hesiod [interpreting allegorically]. So how are we going to put these two things together? The religious tradition, which seemed to be absurd with gods and goddesses acting in grotesque fanciful and immoral ways as you have in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the philosophical historical tradition in which they were trying to find “what’s the unity of the whole universe?” And they said, “Well there were four things: earth, fire, air, and water. But they said, “Yes, but what pulls them all together? Give me the forest! What is the fifth thing that unifies everything in the universe?” And the fifth, which is quin—this is where we get our word quintessence. What’s the quintessence of everything? So they were seeking, “How do you put it all together?”This is what universities are supposed to do. “Uni”-versity, which should be renamed “pluralversities” (there are no more universities; there are pluralversities because they know the mostest about the leastest, and all of it is chopped up. None of it is unified because we lost God, who made everything. You can’t put it all together. It’s like stale chewing gum. It falls apart in your mouth. But you just can’t put it all together, so you don’t have the quintessence). So what did the Greek philosophers say? “Let’s allegorize Homer.”

And so each of the gods became some kind of virtue, or some kind of principle, but [their stories] wasn’t tied to history anymore. It was no more about Odysseus [Ulysses] trying to get back home with Penelope at her spinning wheel, waiting and waiting and waiting. But rather it was a religious tradition in which the tension between the search for the five principles was pulled together by saying, “there is something that is underneath the text.” And this was called the hyponoia, which is the mystery or “that which is under the letters.” So there was no attempt to go back and to find, historically, what the text meant, but rather there was an attempt to give a separate and a new meaning here.

The place where this really took place and got the Jews involved was down in Alexandria, because Alexandria was taken over by the Greeks. And so we have a Jewish scholar there, Philo Judaeus, from 20 BC up through the time of our Lord, [even to] AD 50. He found the philosophical and other mean¬ings hidden underneath the literal statements in Scripture. And this began the search for the so called “deeper meaning.” So the quest was on for this: who can say what is the deeper meaning of the text? And if you have a lot of creativity, this is an easy way to teach the Bible, which becomes very creative and inventive when you make everything in the text mean something deeper.



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Now I need to go back and do a little lesson on the difference between a simile, which is a word [figure of speech] that uses as or like. You can say, “He is as beautiful as a painted ship on an ocean,” or some¬thing like that. That’s a simile. It’s an expressed comparison, because you used “as” or “like” depend¬ing on whether it’s a noun or a verb. But a metaphor is [an] unexpressed [comparison], so there is no as, there is no like. “Go tell that fox” He [Jesus] says about Herod (Luke 13:32). Now that’s interesting because it puts a picture in your mind of Herod with a red body and a bushy tail. So for the moment it kind of strikes up a nice picture in your mind, but not everything on the fox is to be compared. Don’t try to talk about the tail—Herod doesn’t have a tail—or the four feet, or the color, or anything like that. The fox is slick, it’s sly. Go tell that “slick character.”That’s the way to do that, “that fox.” So fox and Herod share one thing in common. So it’s a metaphor, but it only speaks to one as or like [comparison]. Not everything is there [not everything in a fox is compared].

I keep telling my students, “When you preach on Mother’s day on Proverbs 31, [be] careful, careful. ‘She is like a merchant ship,’ [be] careful, careful. Do not refer to the bulk of the ship! You’re going to have a short ministry. ‘She goes afar and gets gifts and brings them home.’That’s all! End the exegesis! Don’t talk about the anchor, about anything else there, it’s [just] one thing.”

Now if you take a simile and turn it into a story, it becomes a parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like a sower that went out into the field and sowed seed” (Matthew 13). See, it’s like or as, still expressed, but it builds a story. And a metaphor, if you extend it, becomes an allegory. Are there allegories in the Bible? Yes! Turn with me to Proverbs 5 [verses 15-23]. But in Proverbs 5, there is this warning against adultery in verses 1-14, and he addresses “my son.” But then, in verse 15, you have an allegory (there are very few allegories in the Bible, but this is one) where he talks about marital fidelity and he talks about the intimate side. But it is so beautiful he doesn’t want to crush this [topic]. So what does he do? He uses an unexpressed comparison.

“Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.”

“Well,” you say, “that’s good. If you’re not hooked up with the city water,

that’s a good verse.”

“Should your streams overflow in the street? Your streams of



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water in public squares.”

“This is “green” theology, save water! That’s good!”

“May your fountain be blessed. . . . ”

“Why thank you very much.”

“And may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

“Beg you pardon? I wasn’t prepared for that.

What is he trying to say here? What he is trying to say is He uses five un-expressed comparisons here. He doesn’t want you to think anatomically, but he wants you to think here of the joy and the satisfac¬tion that come from the marriage act as being a gift from God. And he says, “A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love” (Proverbs 5:19 NIV). The word captivated here is [also means] “drunk.”“Why be drunk my son by an adulteress? Why em¬brace the bosom of another man’s wife? For man’s ways are in full view of the Lord” (Proverbs 5:20-21). There’s not a motel or a hotel where God can’t see through. He got the full picture. And anyway, man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths. “And the evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast” (Proverbs 5:22). Round and round and round they go— he’ll die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly. That is a powerful teaching on marriage and the marriage act. Stay out of someone else’s bed! That’s what he’s saying plainly there.

Therefore, there are allegories in the Bible, but very few. Probably you can count them on both hands.

Well then we come to Origen (not origin, that’s different) about AD 185 to 253 in the Christian Era—the greatest theologian of his day. [He has] given to us a lot of technical things on text of the Bible, but he claimed every passage had three meanings: (1) there was literal meaning and then (2) there is typi¬cal meaning and then (3) there is allegorical meaning. And he taught this regularly. In the school at Antioch, they argued that there was what they called a theoria. They countered what was going on at Alexandria. Alexandria was under Greek influence. So you have the school of Alexandria (Egypt) down in the port there [an allegorical school]. And over against that we had this [a call for theoria] up in Syria, which I think is a place [where] the apostle Paul also got his education, Antioch, Syria (present-day Turkey). Now when they argued [for] this word theoria, which means in Greek “to see,” their



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whole idea (I’m going to illustrate it, this is my own illustration not theirs) it’s like having the barrel of a shotgun here with the sight here [close] and sight here [barrel end]. So you have the now and the not yet, the distant future. And they claimed that, as the eye of the prophet [sight], God gave through the proph-et—He looks through this sight and He can line up the distance and He sees maybe A, B, and maybe even C with a gap here all the way up to Z. And they argued that you could see the near, like in I John [3:2], “Beloved now are we the sons of God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” So you have what later on was called inaugurated eschatology. This just means the future has begun. Jesus said, “If I cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you now,” but not yet! [Luke 11:20 NASB]. So they ask John the Baptist, “John, are you Elijah, the prophet that is to come before the great the day of the Lord?”

“No” he said.

They asked Jesus. [He answered], “Yes! If you are able to receive it, yes he has come in the spirit and in the power of Elijah [Luke 1:17], but I tell you, Elijah will come [Matthew 17:13].”

“Would you repeat that, Jesus? Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes, it was both now and not yet.” So they could see what was given to them was a sight [view] of the now. So rather than allegorizing and trying to get a picture of the deeper meaning of the future, or the not yet, they were given a vision of the future.

Now too bad they [Antiochians] didn’t win out in history because they had one doctrinal problem, and that was the Nestorian heresy which therefore knocked them out [as serious contributors to this issue]. But in interpretation I think they were on the right trail. The best known was Theodore of Mopsuestia and John Chrysostom. You can see their dates here in the 300s, 400s AD, so it’s about fourth, fifth centu¬ry of the Christian era. That’s the school of Antioch which was over against [the school of] Alexandria.

So Alexandria was saying, “We’ve got to look underneath the text.” Antioch said, “No! Look at the text, look at it literally. Take the simple, straightforward, direct, historical meaning.” And Alexandria’s saying, “No!” Now that debate continues to this day. That debate is the big one that is still in surprising circles here. The emerging church has [continued] part of it; part of it is New Testament use of the Old Testa¬ment; part of it is Beyond the Bible Movement and how that is being described too as well. We’ll get in to some of those [matters] later.



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The western school was more eclectic, and they picked up elements of both Antioch, and of Alexandria, and Hillary, Ambrose, Jerome (who gave us the Vulgate— the translation of the Bible in Latin), St. Augustine of Hippo (gave us the Rule of Faith in which we measure Scripture against other Scripture), but actually he was back and forth. For all the greatest theologians the church has ever had. Augustine, who began as a rascal, who was a womanizer of the worst sort. His mother Monica prayed for him constantly. He went off to Rome, came back to Northern Africa where he then led the church and wrote volumes after volumes, hundreds of volumes. But, on the other hand, in his method he was part allegory and he was part straightforward [literal].

Skipping over to the Middle Ages, the four-fold sense of every passage continued. So if we had [the word] “Jerusalem”, it meant (1) the real city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem also was allegorical Jerusalem—[it]

(2) stood for something else. And there was also an (3) ethical meaning of Jerusalem and (4) a practical meaning. So whenever you saw “Jerusalem,” the guys would just go bananas and tell you everything. A lot of it is taught somewhere in the Bible. It’s like many messages I’ve heard in which I say, “That was a wonderful message, but it’s a bum text. The text doesn’t say that.” Fortunately it says it somewhere in the Bible. Because most of us know enough of the Bible, we import it. But we can’t put it “where it stands written.”The old Scandinavians (who came over from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark about 125 years ago out of the mission revivals that were there, revolted against the Lutheranism of that day)—and they themselves had a movement which always asked, “Where stands it written?” Always they’d ask of their teacher, their pastor, “Where stands it written?” It’s a great phrase and it’s a great background here.

There was one particular abbey, St. Victor in Paris from AD 600 to 1500 , which were called the Victo¬rines. Hugo of St. Victor emphasized the literal meaning. Stephen Langton (AD 1150–1228) stressed the literal meaning too. Very influential, Langdon was one who helped us get the versification of the Bible. That’s where we first had verses. Nicolas de Lyra (a very important one—AD 1270–1340), who was a Jewish convert, who complained of all the mystical saints. And he says, “They allow the mystical saints, the allegorical saints, to choke the literal.”There was a little ditty, “If Nicolas De Lyra had not played, Lu¬ther could not have harped,” or something like that. Luther went back to Nicolas de Lyra when he said, “The just shall live by faith,” because it says



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that in the text. He was going back to Nicolas de Lyra.

Well then we come to the reformers. Johannes Reuchlin (AD 1455–1522) was an uncle to Philipp Melanchthon (AD 1497–1560). Melanchthon is the real theologian of Lutheranism. He is the one that Luther went to and he [Luther] said, “Eat the soup!” and he said, “No, I’m going to die.” He said, “Eat this soup or I will excommunicate you from the church!” So he ate the soup, got well (and he actually out¬lasted Luther by 14 years), and he [Luther] said, “The church needs you,” and it did. Lutheranism really wouldn’t have had their theology and a lot of their creeds had it not been for Melanchthon.

Johannas Reuchlin was an uncle to Phillip Melanchthon. What did He do? He published a Hebrew grammar and a Hebrew Lexicon and an interpretation of the seven penitential Psalms which were so instrumental in Luther’s [thought]. [Among these were]: Psalm 32, Psalm 132, Psalm 51—David’s great Psalms of repentance.

Desiderius Erasmus (AD 1466/69-1536) published the first critical edition of the New Testament. You can go to Cambridge, and they’ll point to a little room up there where, on the top floor, he did his translation. Martin Luther (AD 1483-1546) denounced all allegory. He said, “It was just so much dirt, so much ‘monkey drivel,’” and he had all sorts of bad things to say for allegory. John Calvin (AD 1509-1564) thought allegory was a contrivance of Satan and it tries to introduce numerous meanings to the text.

That’s where we are today. Today the question is the number of meanings that a text can have. And usually, in the classical form, unless there is a clue in the text, there is a single meaning to each text which is the basis for a principle that comes from that text. And then we principalize that as we try to make application. But single [meaning] over against plural—that’s the big debate that’s going on right now, [even] in Evangelicalism. This is not a word from another day but it’s a word from not only that past day, but it still continues.

Other Reformers: [Philipp] Melanchthon, [Ulrich] Zwingli (AD 1484-1531), [Martin] Bucer (AD 1491-1551), [Théodore] Beza (1519-1605), William Tyndale (AD 1494-1536). Tyndale, [he] did the first English trans¬lation [of the Bible]. Well part of it was Coverdale’s, so a lot of Tyndale is really Coverdale. But never¬theless they burnt Tyndale at the stake. Tyndale says “Scripture has but one sense which is the literal sense. If you leave out the literal sense, you cannot but go out of the way.”



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Lesson 02 of 12

In the post reformation we have philosophical rationalism coming: [René] Descartes (AD 1596-1650), [Thomas] Hobbes (AD 1588-1679), [Baruch] Spinoza (AD 1632-1677), [John] Locke (AD 1632-1704), [Got¬thold Ephraim] Lessing (AD 1729-1781) with his “Ditch.” But then the pietism of John (AD 1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (AD 1707-1788), and [August Hermann] Francke (AD 1663-1727). Then we come to the existentialism of Friedrich Schleiermacher (AD 1768-1834), [where] he said, “Religion is the feeling of the heart.”

My teacher (I was talking about Irwin R. Goodenough at Brandeis University) was still leftover from that Schleiermacher liberalism. He was saying day in class, “Religion is the feeling of any feeling that you have.”

Well the lecture wasn’t going well, and I had been teaching at Wheaton for 3 years. My students raised the hand, so I raised my hand, and [he said], “Yes?”

I said, “Professor, I have a stomach ache. Would that be religion?”

Oooh—he swore at me, and gave a number of theological terms, and apparently he didn’t like the question. So my buddy, who is a Japanese-American, spoke up and he said, “Well you mentioned this,” and he gave another definition. Well he really was mad then. He said, “I’ll put you through the key hole in that door.”Well, I’d never seen Ed Yamauchi [my friend] go through a key hole so I was interested in seeing this happen too as well.

[The professor] He got so mad, he came back and said, “Your name, who are you?” I said “Kaiser.” He said, “I’ll see you after class!” and I said, “Well sir, I have an appointment,” which I did, in the providence of God. He said, “Well come to my office on Wednesday.” So I came to his office on Wednesday. He said, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Well you are saying that religion is whatever we paint in the sky and it’s our feeling, any feeling we have.” But he was just trying to say religion is “feeling.”That’s where they were during the days of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Then Higher Criticism came, about 1753. A French doctor (in those days doctors had to know, to be re¬ally educated. They had to know Greek and Hebrew). And he was reading his Hebrew bible and he said (This was Dr. Astruc), “Astruc’s Clue” in 1753 (AD, of course). He said, “Here’s my clue that Moses wrote Genesis 1–11, but he wasn’t there,” of course [he did not live in this period of time]. “Well then how did he get that?” He said “There were two names for God: Elohim and Yahweh. So he must have used two



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Lesson 02 of 12

documents: a J document and an E document.”Well this starts the very famous liberal critical view that the first five books were composed of documents: J which is Jehovah, E which is Elohim, D which is Deuteronomical, and P which is Priestly. This one (J) came in 850–750 BC. [This was from] old stories that were originally told around campfires and finally was put down in which it has bad ethical views of God. And Elohim was about 750 BC and it’s a little better; but this one (J) was Judean; this one (E) is Ephraimite (northern). D is Deuteronomy, most of the book of Deuteronomy. That’s what they found in the temple, but it was a pious fraud. Someone penned it and put it there when they had a church cleanup day and they found it in the temple in 621 BC. And then [the] Priestly [came in] 450 BC; and finally you have redactors working on all this like you have copy editors, and they pulled it all together. And everyone thinks today that it was done by Moses. This is called Higher Criticism of the liberal sort, [and] it does away with inspiration.

Well what put the “kabash” to all of this was World War I. Man was getting better and better, and “good¬er and gooder” (if I can break my grammar here). We have, with World War I—[they] said Karl Barth was getting up to preach in Switzerland and he said, “It felt as if the law of God was slipping out of my hands.” He said, “I have nothing to preach.” So he decided to read Luther’s commentary on Romans and he said “Guess what? Man is not getting better, man is a sinner” and he said, “God has sent a Savior.” And he said, “This is all new to me.”

And they [evangelicals] said, “How do you know that? Because it’s true, it’s in the Bible?”

“No, no,” he said, “The Bible is only a witness. It’s not the inerrant inspired Word of God, but it’s only a pointer, it’s a witness.” But he said, “This is part of it.”

Well then Søren Kierkegaard (AD 1813-1855) (the morbid Dane) said, “Yeah, look, all of this [Christian¬ity] is true. All of the creeds are true. But, you know, everyone in Denmark is a Christian. This is a state church and everyone belongs to the State. Therefore, everyone belongs to the church and therefore everyone is saved.” He said, “No! It has to be [true] for me, for me, promethesis.”This begins the personal application. He meant it. I assume all this is true, but what about its application? It’s not true unless it’s true for me. But everyone forgot that he took the creeds as the [assumed] basis and said, “It’s all about me,” which is the first line in a very famous book, which sold 30 million copies now

Transcript - HR501 Biblical Hermeneutics Understanding Biblical Interpretation© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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A Short History of InterpretationLesson 02 of 12

[The Purpose Driven Life]. The best part of that book is the first line, “It’s not all about me” [written by Rick Warren]. People can preach that for years, but it was the right moment he said that—Rick Warren. By then, of course, “the whole cat is out of the bag.”

So then this continues until we come to post-modernism which probably picks up 1960s. Joe Fletcher writes the book “Situational Ethics,” and he says, “It’s the situation that defines [us]. If you’re two con¬senting adults and you love each other, do it, do it.”

And so we went all the way up until the current generation. So we have the boomers and the busters and then their children. And their children said, “It doesn’t work.” And they want a whole new response to that. And so out of it has come in the post-modern thing [movement]. The only thing that they agree on, the boomers and the busters, is “it is all about me. I set the meaning for myself.” So [William Ernest] Henley’s Invictus poem [published in 1888 says], “I am the master of my faith, I am the captain of my soul.” I determine meaning; I determine beauty; I determine truth; I determine what is right; I determine what is just; I determine what’s wrong. Read me!

Except now we have, in the millennial generation, they’re saying, “There is no worship here [in this con¬temporary evangelical church]. This doesn’t make sense at all. We’re going to go back to Canterbury Trail, which may lead all the way to Rome, but bells and smells and whistles and some sense of the majesty of God. I just have had it with [modern worship]! We don’t want bee-bop anymore. We want what the Lord has to say.”

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