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Question: Could you explain further your statement that "hermeneutics" is a bad Bible Study method?
DC
ATP: Great question DC, and I'm glad you asked. For those who wonder where this question came from it is from a line in yesterday's blog where I said:
There are those who have taken part of a passage in Jude 9 and with good intentions, but bad Bible study methods, (also called "hermeneutics") come up with the idea that there was a special resurrection of Moses.
I have since deleted the portion in parentheses to eliminate any confusion about this, because hermeneutics aren't bad Bible study methods, they are just Bible study methods. Hermeneutics can be either good or bad. My wording yesterday was the problem.
And let me be clearer on the general definition on hermeneutics I used yesterday and in the above paragraph. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation, and is most often connected with the science of Bible interpretation. I described it as "Bible study method" which is technically correct, but perhaps not as clear as it could have been.
You have often heard it said, no doubt, and most often by skeptics, that "the Bible is open to interpretation, so you can't really know what it means." The first half of that statement is correct, but not the last half, with some exceptions.
Yes there are passages in the Bible the meaning of which we struggle to unravel. It will always be so. But those passages are the exception rather than the rule.
And while the Bible is "open to interpretation", it is not "open to interpretation" in the sense that is usually meant, which is "one interpretation is a good as the next." One interpretation is not as good as the next.
Let me explain.
When I was in college right out of high school, I took a communications class from a professor at the University of Northern Iowa who made a great point regarding interpreting word meaning. He asked the class,
"If I say to you that Larry here, your fellow student, is a 'roughneck,' what do you think I mean?"
Interesting question, but simple we thought.
"Prof, you mean that Larry is a tough guy, maybe even a bully; a rugged kind of person. You probably mean that he is a bit uncouth."
"Not at all," the prof said. "You see what you don't know that I know, is that Larry is from Oklahoma. In Oklahoma if you call some one a roughneck, you most likely mean that he is a person who works in the 'oil patch,' that is the oil fields."
He went on to say that while we as listeners may attach our own meaning to the word roughneck, that does not make our interpretation of the term the correct one. Words mean what their speaker/writer intends for them to mean.
In the same way if we are to interpret the Bible correctly, we must do all we can to discover what the writer intended to communicate, rather than read into the text our 21st century perceptions.
How do we do that? The same way we would do so with any document: understand the historical setting, understand the cultural setting; know who the author is and who they are writing to. We need to find out if there is a specific purpose for the writing of a document. Was it written to answer a question? What is the relationship between the writer and the receiver of the message, and so on.
In addition we need to understand the language the document is written in. That is particularly important for those of us in the English speaking world as we try to interpret the Bible. The Bible wasn't written in English. It was written in languages of the Middle East: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.
We need to know the rules that these languages follow to communicate their meaning. We need to know vocabulary, word tenses, syntax and so on.
And in interpreting we need to keep words and passages in their context. In other words to interpret passages properly we must recognize that words are in specific sentences and sentences are in specific paragraphs and paragraphs are in specific chapters, and that chapters are in specific books; all of these working together to communicate specific things.
To interpret any document properly, we are not at liberty to view sentences as stand alones. Their meaning is attached to the words and structure around them. This may not be obvious to everyone so let me give you an example.
If while praising the great football legend Dick Butkus I were to say:
"Dick Butkus was a great linebacker for the Chicago Bears, probably the greatest who ever played the game. Butkus was a beast of a man. When it came to playing the game he was amazing. In fact Butkus was a monster. Maybe that is why they called the Bears 'the Monsters of the Midway.'"
what I mean by that is entirely a compliment to Butkus. There is nothing derogatory intended. As I noted, these words are in the context of praise.
That being the case, it would be inappropriate and an error for some one to take two of the sentences out of context and turn them into criticisms of Butkus, by interpreting them to mean,
"Gordon really ripped Dick Butkus to shreds! He said, 'Butkus was a beast of a man.' Worse than that he also said, 'In fact Butkus was a monster.'
Did I say those things? Of course. But what did I mean by them? I meant the exact opposite of the out-of-context interpretation.
As a friend of mine likes to say, "Some truth isn't true." What he means is what I have pointed out: Did I say those things about Butkus? Yes. It is true that I said he was a beast and monster. Did I criticize him? Absolutely not. When taken in context my words were praise, not criticism. Sometimes truth isn't true.
What we learn from this about Bible interpretation is what we already know, but that some have a hard time accepting: One interpretation is not as good as another. There are logical, common sense rules for Bible interpretation, the same ones that you use with your own speech.
Most often it is the ill-informed critic of the Bible that chooses to use the "one interpretation is as good as another" argument. They don't accept that kind of thinking with their own speech but they kind of like it as an approach to the Bible because they think it absolves them from responsibility and consequences. It doesn't.
A person may choose to look at the flashing lights and the lowered bar of a railroad crossing, and say, "I interpret that to mean that no train is coming." No problem. They have the perfect right to interpret those signals any way they would like to.
But believe me, one interpretation of what those signals mean is NOT as good as another! The person communicating through the flashing lights and the lowered bar, has a very specific message in mind, and one that ought to be heeded.
The same is true with the Bible. It is crystal clear that putting one's faith is Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is required to enter heaven. Jesus himself said, "You must be born again." John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
We are quite free to ignore the "must" and ignore the injunction that believing in Christ is how we avoid perishing. No problem. Its a free world and no one can stop us from interpreting things that way. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that one interpretation is as good as another.
That doesn't work with railroad crossing signals and it doesn't work with the Bible either.
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