As Greek As It Gets

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15

Handling Accurately – Some days I just want to throw up my hands in frustration. Here’s a perfectly good Hebrew instruction, but when it gets translated, it takes on a completely different life. Suddenly it’s changed to something about accuracy instead of intricacy. Oh, orthotomeo is a Greek verb that means “to handle correctly or skillfully,” but the King James captures the Hebrew idiom much better – rightly dividing. What’s the difference between “rightly dividing” and “handling accurately?” Let’s think about it.

What comes to mind when you think about accuracy? If you’re a well-trained Greek thinker, accuracy will lead to concepts like correct, exact, error-free and precise. The processes of accuracy include meticulous care, conscientiousness, attention to detail and work without errors. In other words, one right way, one correct answer, one perfect interpretation. The Greek-trained mind wants the Truth (with a capital T) and that means no mistakes, no debate and no “opinions.” But is this what Paul has in mind? Does Paul instruct Timothy to get to the one right answer through exhaustive exegetical methods? I doubt it.

Sha’ul (Paul) is a Hebrew thinker. That means he employs the seven principles of Hebrew-rabbinic interpretation. To “rightly divide” is to understand the intricacies of the text at all of its different levels. And some of those levels are filled with opinion, debate and tension. That’s part of what it means to “divide” the text. I have to be able to cut it apart in ways that help me see everything that’s there. I simply cannot come up with one right answer. That’s impossible. God’s Word is far more complex, far deeper and far too mysterious to allow me to discover one answer. Only Greeks wants everything neatly tied down. The Hebrew people are too busy reveling in the magnificence of God to worry about tying everything down. They have a much better appreciation for human finitude.

OK, so Sha’ul wasn’t Greek. So what? Well, it might help if we understood the seven principles of rabbinic interpretation that he used before we start plowing through the words he wrote. After all, if we really want to understand Paul, we need to read him as Sha’ul, the Jewish theologian.

So, what are the seven principles? They are nothing like the kind of principles that you will find in most seminary classes on proper exegesis. Those classes are almost universally based on a Greek epistemology (how we know things). Hebrew doesn’t work that way. Here are the seven rabbinic principles:

1. Kal va-chomer (simple and complex, literally “light and heavy”) – reasoning from something known to something less known, from something obvious to something less obvious. This principle often employs the phrase “how much more.” You can see this principle at work in Yeshua’s statements about a father who gives to his son (Matthew 7:9-11) If an earthly father knows how to give good gifts, how much more will your heavenly Father know what to give.

2. Gezerah shavah (“equally cut”) – reasoning from an analogy of inference from one verse to another. A similarity in one passage is connected to the similarity in another passage.

3. Binyan av mikatuv echad (“building a teaching principle based on a verse”) – reasoning from a verse to a main proposition. In other words, finding a larger principle on the basis of a verse.

4. Binyan av mishnaic ketuvim (“building a teaching principle based on two verses”) – reasoning from two verses to a larger principle.

5. Kelal uferat-perat vekelal (“general and specific-specific and general”) – teaching from a general principle to a specific application, or from a specific application to a general principle.

6. Keyotza bo bamakom acher (“as comes from it in another place”) – teaching based on what is similar in another passage.

7. Devar halamed meinyano (“a word that is learned from its own issue”) – something that is learned from its own subject.

When Sha’ul instructed Timothy to “rightly divide”, what do you think he had in mind? Was it Greek logic, contextual historical-tradition analysis, form or source criticism? Hardly! Sha’ul wanted Timothy, a Greek proselyte, to learn the Hebrew way of thinking, to know how to use the seven principles through the four levels of Scripture (the PaRDeS – Pashat (simple), Remez (hint), D’rash (search) and Sod (hidden)). What has happened to us? We are so Greek that we think Scriptural interpretation is about clinical exegesis.

Boy, do we have a lot to learn.

Now you have a little hint (remez), so let’s look at these during the next week.

Topical Index: exegesis, hermeneutics, seven principles, orthotomeo, 2 Timothy 2:15