Tag-Archive for » Exegesis «

That Was Then

Thursday, December 03rd, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

“But this I admit to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law, and that is written in the Prophets;” Acts 24:14

Everything – Brevard Childs was a very influential teacher at Harvard.  His approach to biblical interpretation has affected many professors today.  Childs believed that the way to understand the Scripture was to read it through the eyes of the Church.  He called this “canonical” theology.  What it means is this:  each generation must reinterpret the meaning of the text in contemporary application even though the words of the text are understood in their historical-culture context.  In other words, the key is what does the Bible mean to me.  I’m guessing that you have heard this type of interpretation many times.  In fact, you may even unconsciously read the Bible in this way.  Childs’ influence permeates hundreds of pulpits.

Of course, this raises an enormous problem.  What standard do I use to determine the correct interpretation of the text.  It simply cannot be how I feel about the text since personal feelings are notoriously bad judgments of truth.  This is why Childs suggests that the Church tradition sets the standard.  It’s not one person.  It’s the history of many people, all wrapped up in the Creeds, doctrines and dogmas of the Church.

Scot McKnight’s book, The Blue Parakeet, follows Childs.  McKnight says that “ordinary people need to learn to read the Bible through tradition or they will misread the Bible.”[1] “We may learn to read the Bible for ourselves, but we must be responsible to what the church has always believed.”[2] He cites the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed and the doctrines of the Reformation as examples of the standard.  Did you notice the sleight of hand here?  The “church” did not always believe these things.  The “church” only began believing the content of the Creeds after it tossed away its Hebrew heritage.  What the “church” believes today is based on doctrinal formations that were developed after 300AD when the church was well on its way toward Greek metaphysics.  Childs, McKnight and many others have ignored what the text actually says.  Paul believed everything in accordance with Torah, not in accordance with the popes, the bishops and the church councils.  Paul believed what the Hebrews taught, not what Tertullian, Irenaeus and Chrysostrom taught.  Paul was a Jew, not a Greek.

If you learn to read the Bible through the interpretive history of the church, you will read it as a Greek.  You will incorporate centuries of Greek thinking into your view of Scripture.  You will apply “universal” principles to contemporary society without considering the eternal commands of YHWH found in Torah.  So, you will say things like “the first Jewish Christians probably kept kosher.  That’s not for today.”[3] Really?  Says who?  The “church”?  The idea that there were Jewish Christians in the first century is itself an anachronism.  How many other instructions of Torah have we put on the shelf because the “church” no longer believes what Paul believed?  Are we going to be people of the Book or people of the pew?

Topical Index:  everything, Torah, interpretation, exegesis, Childs, McKnight, Acts 24:14

[1] Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, p. 29.

[2] McKnight, p. 31.

[3] McKnight, p. 28.

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Chain Letter

Tuesday, October 06th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia: Galatians 1:2

Churches – When you read the Bible, do you pay attention to the proper context, culture and historical circumstances behind the text? Or do you read the Bible as if it was written for you yesterday? This is not a trivial question. I wrote about this on April 16, but it is worth repeating many times. Nothing is more important for understanding God’s Word!

One of the biggest problems in Christian practice is the lack of a proper understanding of Biblical exegesis. More theological mistakes occur due to a lack of proper exegesis than any other methodological errors. Why? Because a great number of believers treat the Bible as though it has no cultural bias and was written in its entirety last week. Neither of these assumptions is true. Just like any other document, the Bible comes to us in a cultural context (in fact, in several cultural contexts) and it is the progressive revelation of God over the course of thousands of years. These facts must become part of any attempt to interpret the text.

Imagine trying to understand the meaning of The Iliad without any reference to Greek history, mythology or culture. Imagine reading The Iliad as if it were written last week, applying it to today’s issues without any attempt to understand what the original audience received. That would be equivalent to how most Christians treat the Bible. We have this tendency to pull a verse from some book, make a direct application to our lives and act as though God’s Word was written for us and no one else. This is the “God spoke to me” variety of exegesis. This is naïve and dangerous (just ask any woman of God who has been told that Scriptures teach she cannot preach or teach men).

Walter Kaiser emphasizes one other critical point about proper exegesis. The Scriptures are progressive revelation. That means they were not all available at the same time. The fact that we have all the books now doesn’t mean the authors had all the books available when they wrote their volumes. Kaiser’s point is that if we are going to understand the writing of any particular author, we cannot use material written after the passages we want to interpret. We can’t use Revelation to help us understand what John was thinking when he wrote his gospel because Revelation didn’t exist when he wrote the gospel. But we can use Psalms, Deuteronomy, Genesis, etc. because those works were available to John when he wrote his gospel. This might seem like an obvious point until we consider the chronology of authorship in the New Testament (in Hebrew the Ketuvim Netzarim). The order of the books in our New Testament is not an authorship chronology. In fact, the order is completely arbitrary, established by some church council without any regard to events or authors. Why does this matter? Well, when we look at authorship chronology, we discover Galatians was written before any other Pauline letter. Therefore, what Paul (Rabbi Sha’ul) writes in Galatians cannot be interpreted according to what he later writes in Romans or Thessalonians. Galatians is the foundation for the rest, not the result of a long process of theological reflection from the rest. The letter to the Romans does not come first.

We know that Paul wrote Galatians with the intention of having the letter circulated among the churches in that province. And we know he wrote it after the Jerusalem council (Acts 15). We know the real issue among assemblies in Galatia is the relationship between law and grace. But what we can’t do in order to understand Sha’ul’s thinking in Galatians is to run to Romans 6-8 and use that to explain Galatians.

For a fuller discussion of this issue, go here.  But even if you don’t look at the rest of the picture, start treating Scripture as if it were a screen play. Take it in the order that it was written. Your exegesis will improve. You will be able to see the relationship between historical events and the words of Scripture. Things will make a lot more sense. And you won’t make so many mistakes when it comes to understanding the context before the application.

Topical Index: exegesis, Galatians 1:2, church, history

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Genesis, Again?

Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

Writing Today’s Word leaves me with an enormous problem.  Scripture isn’t bits and pieces.  It’s a whole unit, an extended story of God’s interaction with the world, in particular, with the people He calls Israel.  How it all fits together is really the job of exegesis.  Dealing with one tiny piece at a time often obscures the whole forest among the leaves of a single tree.  So, when I write about one small word, or one part of one small word, it might lead the reader to conclude that bigger things have gone amiss.  Where is the illumination of the cross or the blood, the glorification of God or the final victory celebration?  Where do we find the grand themes of justification, sovereignty, ecclesiology and eschatology?  They are there, but hidden from view in the microscopic detail of an individual leaf.

I firmly believe that without a deep grasp of the beginning – Genesis – we will quickly get lost in the rest of the plot.  Everything depends on what God orders at the beginning.  Everything moves from and elaborates the deep themes of the beginning.  If you can’t find it in Genesis, then you are probably looking for the wrong things.

But what a huge problem this is!  The last time I taught Genesis as a group study (not as a quick seminar) it took 18 months to go through the text, 2 hours a week.  That’s about 150 hours of study.  We could easily have doubled that, but we had to hurry!  Today’s Word could spend the rest of my life just in Genesis, one word at a time.  We would be far, far richer for the experience.  We would know our Lord much, much better.  But then what do we do with all the rest?  Wait for eternity, I suppose.

So, Today’s Word jumps around.  It picks a word here, a phrase there.  That might leave you thinking that the WHOLE doesn’t matter, or that it is disconnected from the big issues.  Please don’t draw that tragic conclusion.  The only reason Today’s Word moves across the biblical geography is to give you a little hint about the depth of every passage.  But if I had my choice, we would spend twenty years on Genesis.

Exegetically, Today’s Word deliberately commits a big mistake.  We should provide much more background.  We should look at the bigger setting of each verse.  We should do a lot more work before we pick up a single word.  But we can’t – at least not in this format.  All we can do is point.

This is extremely frustrating for me.  I want to follow a single verse, a single word, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.  Where is the time to do that, or the audience who would follow such a path?  So, if I haven’t touched on something near and dear to your heart, if you think Today’s Word wanders too much, remember that I came to point.  Look here.  See what you find.  Then go seek.

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As Greek As It Gets

Sunday, September 06th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

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

From Brad Young, Meet The Rabbis, p. 169.

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Speechless

Friday, July 10th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, he would look at the copper serpent and recover.  Numbers 21:9

Copper Serpent – Many people believe that the common symbol of medicine, two serpents on a cross, originated with this event.  But a careful reading suggests otherwise.  There is something else going on here that is grounded in ancient cultural thinking, not in the Greek symbols of medicine. 

Notice that Moses makes a single copper serpent, not two snakes intertwined.  Furthermore, Moses’ choice of material (copper) is really a word play in Hebrew.  Copper is the word nehoshet.  The word for serpent is nehash.  Moses makes a nehash nehoshet.  Why?  Why not make it of gold or silver or any other material?  Because in the thinking of ancient Egypt, the culture where these people have spent the last several hundred years, word similarities were powerful.  It is as if the power of the real serpent can be drawn off by the word connection to the metal.  The reality behind this strange story is lodged in the culture of ancient Egypt and Semitic thinking. 

Several Jewish Targums add commentary to this text.  One suggests that God used serpents because its speechless existence as a result of the curse is now the punishment for those who speak against the Lord.  That’s why the serpents attack in the first place.  The people complain against God and God sends a cursed creature who cannot complain to test the people.  Another Targum suggests that those who trusted in God’s word through Moses were saved because they had to act on the basis of a spoken word, the very thing that brought their trouble in the first place.

Some word pictures offer additional insights.  The word picture for serpent is “what destroys the fence around life” (N-H-Sh).  The serpent is cursed because the serpent refused to acknowledge God’s boundaries and convinced Havvah to do the same.  The word picture for copper (N-H-Sh-T) is “a covenant concerning what destroys the fence around life.”  In other words, the word picture of “copper” actually removes, by covenant promise, what the serpent initiates.  Did you ever wonder why so many New Age adherents claim mystical powers for copper bracelets?  Perhaps they are more Jewish than they think.

What is the application for this little lesson in ancient cultural thinking?  First, we discover that the stories of the Bible can only be understood within the original culture.  When we pull these stories out of their original environment and language, we often inadvertently add our own cultural perspective.  Just think about Christian sermons that claim this story is about the cross of Christ.   Secondly, we find that many of our contemporary fables, mythical beliefs and practices are really rooted in ancient biblical events.  We are products of the Hebrew culture without recognizing it.  Finally, we see the hand of God, working deliberately within the cultural context of His people, to reveal Himself in ways that they would understand – ways that we perhaps no longer see without serious investigation.  If this is true of the story of the serpents, how much more diligent must we be when it comes to the Genesis stories or the miracles of the prophets?  When Yeshua taught those two men on the road about His presence in Scripture, He helped them see the world through the eyes of the ancient audience.  Don’t we need to do the same? 

The Christian church has practically given away its Hebrew heritage.  It converted the Old Testament into a platform for proof-texts about Christian theology.  Maybe it’s time to return to the roots and become citizens of an ancient Kingdom.

Topical Index:  serpent, copper, Targum, Numbers 21:9, culture

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Chronological?

Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

Just a brief note about the importance of understanding the Word of God chronologically.  While it is entirely appropriate to discuss themes across the entire text (such as the role of women), it is not appropriate to explicate a text outside of its historical setting.  For example, since Galatians was written years before Romans, it is not proper to explicate the meaning of a text in Galatians by referring to passages in Romans.  Romans did not exist when Paul wrote Galatians.  Paul might use some of the same vocabulary, but what he means in Romans cannot be retroactively applied to Galatians.

In class, I illustrate this point by giving the following assignment.  ”Write a paper that explains what you believe about the character of God ten years from now.”  You see the issue, don’t you?

When you read the New Testament chronologically, a whole lot of insight arrives.  Each letter and book is set in the historical context of the events of the time.  As persecution, division and expansion occurred, so the documents written during those time reflect these situations.  Now we see why there is a development of doctrine from one letter to the next.  Now we see how the historical situation affects the audience of the letters.  To read them without this is to pretend they were all written yesterday.  Without chronology, it appears as if all the doctrines come completely formed.

Unfortunately, there is no chronological Bible.  And there is considerable debate over when exactly these books were written.  But there is general agreement about most of the time frames, which you can find by an internet search of “chronological books of the Bible.”  Once you move to this orientation, the flow of history helps you see why the books were written and what they are about.

So, why is the Bible in our present mixed-up order.  It’s really simple – and astounding.  The New Testament is in the current order because the church decided to put the gospels first and then proceeded from the biggest letter (in number of pages) to the smallest, by author.  There is NO theological, practical, spiritual or exegetical reason for the current order.  It is simply TRADITION.

The Old Testament in Christian form is not even the same as the Hebrew Scriptures.  The Hebrew Scriptures follow the pattern of Torah, Prophets and Writings, but even these are not chronological.  

The only way around this is cut and paste. 

Skip

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Some Notes on Biblical Exegesis

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

One of the biggest problems in Christian practice is the lack of a proper understanding of Biblical exegesis.  More theological mistakes occur due to a lack of proper exegesis than any other methodological errors.  Why?  Because a great number of believers treat the Bible as though it has no cultural bias and was written in its entirety last month.  Neither of these assumptions are true.  Just like any other document, the Bible comes to us set in a cultural context (in fact, in several cultural contexts) and it is the progressive revelation of God over the course of thousands of years.  These facts must become part of  any attempt to interpret the text.

Imagine trying to understand the meaning of The Iliad without any reference to Greek history, mythology or culture.  Imagine using The Iliad as if it were written last week, applying its declarations to today’s issues without any attempt to understand what the original audience perceived.  That would be equivalent to how most Christians treat the Bible.  We have this tendency to pull a verse from some book, make a direct application to our lives and act as though God’s Word was written for us and no one else.

Since this is such a big problem, it might be helpful to outline the proper method of exegesis.  Here are some of the steps that need to be taken.

1.     Place the text in its historical context.  Psalms wasn’t written for contemporary American society.  It was written 3000 years ago in a very different world.  Place the text in the historical events when the writing was produced.  When Paul wrote to Timothy, certain events were happening in the Roman empire that contributed to the issues Paul addresses.  Unless we know the historical context, we can’t understand what he has to say.

2.     Recognize that revelation is progressive.  Galatians was not written after John.  Therefore, concepts found in John cannot be used to interpret Paul’s statements in Galatians.  Paul wrote Romans after he wrote 1 Thessalonians (in spite of the incorrect chronological order of the books in the New Testament).  Therefore, what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians cannot be interpreted as if he already said everything that is found in Romans.  The same principle holds for the Old Testament (which is also not in chronological order).  This is perhaps the biggest exegetical mistake we make.  We treat the Bible as though it was all written at the same time.  We forget that God revealed His plan over a long period and that what was happening in the historical sequence has a direct bearing on what the text says.

3.     Understand the language of the people who first heard the message.  Moses wrote the Pentateuch, even though the story reaches back to the beginning.  That means that the language, and the meanings of the words Moses uses, are set in the culture of Israel after the exodus from Egypt.  What the words mean to that audience is what the words mean.  We are not allowed to redefine the words from another culture, time or place.

4.     Relate the text to the culture of its origin.  When Paul writes the letter to the believers in Corinth, there is a specific culture woven into the letter.  Paul did not write for First Baptist of Middletown, New Jersey.  He wrote to specific people in a specific place at a specific time about specific issues that they had.  Unless we know the who, where, when and what of his audience, we will not understand his meaning.

5.     Pay attention to the literary style and type.  Poetry is not prose.  Words have a lot more flexibility in poetry.  Narrative is not the same as letter writing.  Apocalyptic literature has a certain pattern and style all its own.  Proper exegesis recognizes these differences and treats the subject accordingly.  Not everything David says in the psalms has the same theological weight as Moses’ declarations in Deuteronomy.

6.     Apply principles, not propositions.  Since every statement in the Bible comes with a cultural bias, any contemporary application must first discover the principle involved, not necessarily the specific words written to the first audience.  Head covering involves a particular cultural problem.  The principle might be applicable today but it does not automatically follow that the same cultural issues are in play today.

7.     Know the language of the text.  No one can be a theologian unless he is first a grammarian.  Exegesis starts with Hebrew and Greek, not English.  There is no substitute for proper linguistic analysis.  That means that if you want to know what’s happening in Matthew, you will have to find a way to get at the Hebrew expressions that have been translated into Greek.  Of course, you will also have to know how to handle the Greek.  This requires a lot of work.  Exegesis is a translation process, moving from the original language to contemporary explanation.  There is simply no way around this.

8.     Listen to the Spirit.  In the end, exegesis is not simply technical expertise with language, culture and history.  It is about hearing what God is saying.  Actually, I hate to even include this step, as important as it is, because some people jump right here and ignore all the rest.  These are the ones who proclaim that they have “a word from the Lord” on such-and-such a verse.  Avoid them like the plague.  Exegesis does not arrive by direct messenger from God (unless you are Hosea or Isaiah).  Exegesis takes long, hard work.  You might have a flash of insight, but you can’t get the meaning of a text by simply “hearing” what the Lord told me about this.

Well, this will get us started.  The reason understanding the Bible is so much fun is that it takes you into another world – AND you get to see what God has been doing all along.  It is a goldmine.  There are incredible treasures here.  But you have to DIG!

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