Five essentials of Biblical Interpretation 1: canon
Iii years ago, I started a mini-serial on cardinal elements of biblical interpretation, and never quite got round to completing it. Simply in that location appears to be connected interested in this, so I am reposting the ones I wrote previously, with updates and additions, and volition be completing the series.
As I accept explored previously, it is impossible to read the Bible without 'interpreting' it, whether we realise it or not. To read is to interpret; to translate is to interpret. This is because we live in a unlike cultural and historical context from those who wrote the Bible, but also because
The Christ event is an act of estimation.
And so if nosotros are going to interpret, how practise we practice information technology well? In these posts I want to offer what I think are v essential elements of a responsible interpretive strategy. These are not then much techniques or methods as dimensions to responsible reading. As a bonus, they all brainstorm with the same sound!
The beginning essential in estimation is toread the Bible canonically. By this I mean to read whatever particular text we have in front end of us in the light of its place in the immediately surrounding texts, within the book of the Bible it occurs, and nigh broadly within the whole sweep of whole of the Bible.
Our word 'catechism' comes from the Greek discussion for 'reed', and came to mean the act of measurement for which the reed was used. Applied to the Bible, the term first meant the way in which Scripture functions to 'mensurate' our lives, a standard to live by, but besides came to mean the 'measure' of what constitutes the books of the Bible. So the 'formation of the catechism' relates to the process by which Christians discerned what should exist included betwixt the covers of the Bible.
If you lot picket the TV programme Time Team, you will run across the archaeologists on the ground exploring the details of a feature. But they only make full sense of it when they pull back, usually in an aerial shot, to come across how this detail fits in with the bigger picture. That is what we are doing when we readcanonically; we are standing back to see this text in the context of the bigger motion-picture show of a passage, a book or the whole of Scripture. To read canonically is to ask the question:
What does this text meanhere, in this part of the story of Scripture?
The reason for asking this question is 2 fold. First, many of the writers of what we now call the Scriptures already had Scriptures of their own. So nosotros find traces of the Ten Commandments in even the earliest prophets (for example, Hosea), and nosotros detect ideas and phrases ('The Lord is gracious and compassionate', swords and ploughshares, people sitting nether their own vine and fig tree) recurring and being reworked. In this sense, reading canonically is about taking seriously the world of the text and of the author. The most obvious case of this is the function of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as the canonical context for the writing and reading of the New Testament documents. This means that nosotros cannot to responsible exegesis (reading of the texts) without attention to this dynamic.
But, secondly, the Scriptures we have have been collected past earlier generations of believers in the conviction that, as the testimony to God's saving actions in history, they vest together and, at some level, share a common voice. This means that we cannot do our biblical theology without taking into account the wider theological film of which any individual text is but a part.
So asking the question of canon immediately opens up of import problems, deepens our understanding and tin can transform our interpretation. Hither are some examples that spring to mind.
Final Sunday I was preaching on 2 Tim 1.7 'For God has non given usa a Spirit of fear, but of power, honey and a sound mind.' Reading this canonically meant seeing where the construction 'not…but' comes elsewhere in the alphabetic character (information technology comes again in poesy 9) and elsewhere in Paul (Romans eight.xv), where power and love are associated with the Spirit in Paul and elsewhere, and the importance and role of ability (dunamis) in Jesus' ministry.
In Luke 4.17, Jesus is in thesynagogue at Nazareth and reads from Isaiah 61. But Luke's quotation of the passage misses out an important office. Compare the texts and you lot will see something pregnant!
In theparable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25.31–46), the sheep are those who have given aid to 'one of the least of these my brothers.' Almost gimmicky interpretations read the 'brothers' as the poor in general, and some have even mounted relief campaigns on the footing of this (I heard it nevertheless over again on Thought for the Day this forenoon!). But Matthew consistently uses the word 'brother' (which we might now desire to interpret 'brother or sister') to refer to fellow believers; see Matt five.23, 5.47, 18.fifteen, 18.21, and especially Matt 12.48-49 and 28.x. Jesus' brothers are the disciples and anyone else who joins them in following Jesus. We need to read Matthew 25 quite differently! (See my complete mail on this question here.)
We need to read thediscussion about justification in Romans 3.28 and James ii.xiv in the light of each other. There is a long tradition of setting them against one another—but several generations of Christians clearly thought they were both truthful.
The debates aboutsame-sex unions ofttimes founder on the failure to read this effect (and other problems where the church has supposedly 'changed its heed') across the whole canon of Scripture. In relation to food laws, all of cosmos was first declared 'good' by God, and the Levitical restrictions were understood by Mark to have been repudiated in Jesus' teaching (Mark 7.xix). Slavery was not function of the cosmos of humanity, who were all equally created in the epitome of God; God'due south key act in the OT (the exodus) was understood as liberation from slavery; and NT teaching such as Gal three.28 and Eph 6.9, seriously undermine the distinction between slave and primary (meet the long exposition of Philemon in this regard in the opening of Tom Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God). Just the Levitical text prohibiting same-sex unions (Lev 18.22) echoes quite strongly the language of cosmos in Gen 1.27, and Paul coins a new word in i Cor 6.9 and 1 Tim 1.x as a reference back to the Leviticus text. So in that location is a consistent canonical connectedness between these verses—in marked contrast to the other two issues.
(It continues to puzzle me how people can mention slavery, the ministry of women, and aforementioned-sexual activity sexual relations in the same breath, as if there is whatever connection betwixt these issues inside the biblical texts. The shape of the debates about these questions within the church have besides been quite dissimilar.)
If seeing reading canonically, past seeing the big picture and locating individual texts within it, is so important, how tin can we develop our skills in this surface area? Hither are some suggestions:
- Do it for yourself. Rather than reading the fragmented lectionary morsels, one time a week sit down down and read through a whole book.
- Make sure you accept 'pew Bibles' in your church building—never put Bible readings on a screen or printed in a news sheet. Extracting readings in this style removes them from their context; by contrast, if people need to pick up a Bible for the reading, they immediately come across what comes before and subsequently, and whereabouts the reading is within the whole story of Scripture.
- When preaching, make a habit of commenting on where this reading comes from and how that shapes our understanding of it.
- Preach single sermons on longer passages, perhaps even of 2 or iii chapters, rather than focussing on a few verses.
- You might similar to write your own summary of What the Bible's All Virtually to help you lot understand the whole story of the Bible.
- I've offered a range of other resources in my earlier post Seeing the Big Picture
Happy canonical reading!
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