{"id":190,"date":"2008-10-08T13:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2008\/10\/hermeneuticswhat-is-it-and-why-do-bible-readers-need-it.html"},"modified":"2008-10-08T13:01:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-08T13:01:00","slug":"hermeneuticswhat-is-it-and-why-do-bible-readers-need-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/10\/hermeneuticswhat-is-it-and-why-do-bible-readers-need-it.html","title":{"rendered":"HERMENEUTICS\u2014WHAT IS IT, AND WHY DO BIBLE READERS NEED IT?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember Hermes? He\u2019s the little guy you see from time to time on the logo at the florist shop, wearing a WWI trench helmet and always on the run. Actually, in Greek tradition he was the messenger of the gods, delivering the word of some deity to humans who badly needed to hear it. Hermes, and the concept of his role, is the basis for the Greek words hermeneutike (first found in Plato Epin. 975C) which refer to the art of interpreting. We find the variant word ‘hermeneia’ for instance in 1Cor. 12.10 where Paul refers to the interpretation of tongues. <\/p>\n

In modern discourse the term hermeneutics normally refers to the art (not science) of interpreting important often ancient or sacred, texts such as the Bible. But why would we need a guide to the perplexed in regard to the interpreting of the Bible? After all, don\u2019t Christians have brains and the Holy Spirit to guide them? Well yes, but all modern brains are affected in the way they think by the modern cultural milieu in which they are immersed. They are affected as well by their whole educational progress (or regress) through school as well.<\/p>\n

And frankly, ancient Biblical cultures, languages, and modes of conveying meaning are often so different from what modern \u2018common sense\u2019 may deduce that we do need some guidelines to help us interpret the Biblical texts which came out of very different cultures and circumstances from our own, ESPECIALLY if we are only trying to interpret the Bible on the basis of one or more English translations, none of which are perfect representations of the original language texts. <\/p>\n

WORD UP— Every translation is already an interpretation of an ancient Biblical text. Once you get this fact through your brain, you realize that all modern persons need some help in interpreting the Bible. We need to give the Holy Spirit more to work with in dealing with the modern thoughts that naturally go racing through our brains when we have a close encounter with the Word of God. What I offer below is just a few of the guidelines or signposts to help prevent misreading of Biblical texts. In this posting I am offering 3 guidelines. There are many more, and sometime later I will bring them up.<\/p>\n

1) \u2018What it meant is what it means\u2019. Meaning comes contextually not from just having words in isolation but words in conjunction with one another in a specific sentence or larger context. For example, the English word \u2018row\u2019 can be a noun or a verb, depending on the context. It is not true that \u2018in the beginning was the dictionary\u2019. Dictionaries are compilations of information based on close studies of how words are used in various contexts. Dictionaries do not define words, they reflect the denotations and connotations they have been discovered to have in texts, conversation and the like. <\/p>\n

When I say \u2018what it meant is what it means\u2019 in reference to any text, but especially the Bible, I mean that the meaning is encoded in the complex of words and phrases we find in the text. Meaning is not something we get to read into<\/em> the text on the basis of our own opinions or ideas. Meaning is something that resides in the text, having been placed there by the inspired author and requires of us that we discover what that meaning is by the proper contextual study of the text. <\/p>\n

\u2018Significance\u2019 however is a different matter altogether. A text can have a significance or even an application for you or me, that the original author could never have imagined. But the text cannot have a meaning that the original inspired author did not place there. Meaning is one thing, significance or application another. The job of hermeneutics is to help us rightly interpret the meaning of these important Biblical texts, and the difference between meaning and significance. <\/p>\n

Let me give you an illustration. The Book of Revelation was written in the first instance for the seven churches in Asia mentioned in Rev. 2-3 to strengthen them and help them get through a rough time of persecution, prosecution, and even execution in the last decade or so of the first century when the evil Emperor Domitian was persecuting Christians. The whole book was written to them in the first place, and it was all meant to have meaning for them. None of it was written in the first place for 21rst century Christians. <\/p>\n

Thus when the book talks about an evil empire, and a beastly ruler named 666, and about flying things with scorpion-like tails, it is not in the first instance referring to some modern world dominator, or the EU, or to Blackhawk helicopters! Those first Christians in the first century could never have understood those texts to refer to such things, because of course such things did not exist in the first century A.D. <\/p>\n

Let me insist once more\u2014\u2018what the text meant for them, is still what it means today\u2019. John was referring to the Roman Empire and Emperor and speaking hyperbolically about plagues of insects, something all too familiar to that world. Now here is what is interesting. Apocalyptic prophecy by its nature uses more generic universal symbols and metaphor to speak about certain historical realities. I am not at all suggesting that the text of Revelation is not referring to things happening in space and time\u2014 John is<\/em> speaking about such things. But he speaks about them in generic and highly graphic metaphorical ways. He uses phrase like \u2018it will be like\u2026 it will be like\u2019 indicating he is drawing analogies, not offering literal descriptions. <\/p>\n

All too often modern interpreters of Revelation don\u2019t understand this. They either assume if its figurative language it isn\u2019t referential, or they assume you are denying the particularity of the text if you deny it refers to one particular person and set of circumstances. But that\u2019s not how generic symbols work— Mr. 666 could just as well be Hitler or Stahlin as Nero or Domitian. It refers to any evil world dominator of a pagan or godless sort. This is precisely why Christians in any and all generations in the last 2,000 years have felt John was speaking to their situation. He was— but there are wars, and rumors of wars, and plagues and cosmic signs in the heavens in every generation of church history, not just the last one. <\/p>\n

2) \u2018Context is king\u2019. One of the great, great dangers in modern interpretation of the Bible is proof-texting. What this amounts to is the strip-mining of certain key terms and ideas, linking them together with similar or the same words in other texts and contexts, and coming up with a meaning which none of the original texts had. Let\u2019s take a perfect example\u2014the word perfect in the NT. Jesus said \u201cBe perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect\u2019 in Mt. 5.48. Paul says in 1 Cor. 13.10 Paul says that \u201cwhen the perfect comes, the partial disappears.\u201d Are they talking about the same thing just because they use the same term? Well, no. <\/p>\n

The context of Mt. 5 indicates that Jesus is referring to that sort of whole-hearted loving of others that characterizes God. \u2018Be perfect\u2019 means be loving like the Father is loving. Paul on the other hand is talking about when the eschaton (the final perfect condition) comes, and we see Jesus face to face and understand all things perfectly and clearly. Words only have meaning in contexts, and plucking words out of contexts and linking them to other uses of the same word is often a recipe for disaster and misinterpretation. Each verse of Scripture, indeed each key term in Scripture should be interpreted in its historical, literary, religious, theological, ca
\nnonical contexts, to mention but a few. This of course means that the modern interpreter of the Bible must be a student of Biblical interpretation, must study to find themselves approved. Treating the Bible like a Ouija board, and just opening it up and thinking the meaning will leap out of the verse on the page into one\u2019s brain, especially if we keep thumbing through and looking for other examples of the same word, is simply laziness and not careful contextual study of God\u2019s word. Read Ps. 119 and how it talks about the diligent study and meditation on God\u2019s Word that is required.<\/p>\n

Let me give you an illustration. I had a phone call over twenty years ago from a parishioner from one of my four N.C. Methodist Churches in the middle of the state. He wanted to know if it was o.k. to breed dogs, cause his fellow carpenter had told him that it said somewhere in the KJV that God\u2019s people shouldn\u2019t do that. I told him I would look up all the references to dog in the Bible and get to the bottom of this. There was nothing of any relevance in the NT, but then I came across this peculiar translation of an OT verse\u2014\u201cthou shalt not breed with the dogs\u2019. <\/p>\n

I called my church member up and told him \u201cI\u2019ve got good news and bad news for you.\u201d He asked for the good news first. I said \u201cwell you can breed as many of those furry four footed creatures as you like, nothing in the Bible against it.\u201d He then asked what the bad news was \u201cwell\u201d I said, \u201cthere is this verse that calls foreign women \u2018dogs\u2019 and warns the Israelites not to breed with them.\u201d There was a pregnant silence on the other end of the line, and finally Mr. Smith said \u201c Well, I am feeling much relieved, my wife Betty Sue is from just down the road in Chatham county!\u201d<\/p>\n

3) Genre matters. Before we can interpret a particular type of literature we need to understand what literary type or kind of literature it is. Prose should be interpreted according to the kinds of information prose is meant to give, poetry should be interpreted as poetry, historical narrative as narrative, parables as the literary fictions that they are, and apocalyptic prophecy must be interpreted as the highly metaphorical literature it is, and so on. As C.S. Lewis once said, until you know the purpose and kind of a text, what it intends to say or convey, you don\u2019t know how to read it, properly. And frankly no one should ever start reading the Bible with its last book. That\u2019s not because its unfair to peek at the conclusions before you read all the rest. It\u2019s because Revelation, as apocalyptic prophecy is the most complex material in the canon, the literature most likely to be misinterpreted by modern persons. Let me give one more illustration <\/p>\n

1967-68 was an interesting time. Neil Armstrong actually landed on the moon and hit a golf ball a mile! If only my driver would do that. But seriously folks, I was riding with a friend on the Blue Ridge Parkway when the clutch blew out of my Dad\u2019s 1955 Chevy. As the Bible says \u2018my countenance fell\u2019. There are no gas stations, or really any kind of help of that sort to be found on that beautiful mountain parkway. Luckily my friend Doug and I got a push off the parkway into a Texaco station, and then, on that hot July day we decided to hitch hike back to High Point in the middle of the state. Almost immediately we were picked up by a really ancient couple dressed in black driving a black 48 Plymouth. Doug, now a lawyer in Greensboro, decided to strike up a conversation and referring to the moon walk of Neil Armstrong. The elderly man driving said that was all fake\u2014a TV hoax. Doug, not recognizing invincible ignorance when he saw it, decided to argue with the man. Meanwhile, picture me elbowing him and whispering for him to shut up, since we needed the ride. Turns out we had been picked up by genuine Flat Landers from the N.C. mountains. Doug however persisted and asked \u201cWhy don\u2019t you believe they went to the moon, and why don\u2019t you believe the world is round?\u201d The man retorted \u201cIt says in the book of Revelations that the angels will stand on the four corners of the earth. World couldn\u2019t be round, could it, if its got four corners to stand on.\u201d <\/p>\n

Now what was wrong with this man’s comment, other than that Revelations (plural) is not the name of the last book of the Bible. The problem was he had mistaken the genre of that book. He had assumed it was teaching him cosmology and geography, when in fact it was teaching theology and eschatology. It was saying in a metaphorical way that God\u2019s angels will come from all points on the compass to do his will and span the globe. If you don\u2019t grasp the kind of literature you are reading, you aren\u2019t going to know what kind of information it is trying to convey. Interestingly, the problem with that Flat-Lander\u2019s interpretation is not either that he took the book of Revelation seriously, or that he thought it was referential. It is indeed referential. But the realities it is describing, it describes in metaphorical terms. <\/p>\n

Well, I think I hear ole Hermes calling me to move on to other floral venues. So we will leave it at that for now. Think on these things. BW3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember Hermes? He\u2019s the little guy you see from time to time on the logo at the florist shop, wearing a WWI trench helmet and always on the run. Actually, in Greek tradition he was the messenger of the gods, delivering the word of some deity to humans who badly needed to hear it. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}