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We continue our study of bibliology or the doctrine of the Bible by taking up that part of our outline under "Part Seven, Uses of Scripture" entitled "Interpreting It." We said that the right use of Scripture involves four things: receiving it, retaining it, understanding it, and applying it. Receiving the Word includes reading it and hearing it preached. Retaining it includes memorizing it and meditating on it. Understanding it includes studying it and interpreting it. Applying the Word (which we will take up afterwards) includes believing it, obeying it, speaking it (teaching and evangelizing), and seeing how its principles apply to us today.

Remember the illustration of your mother giving you some instructions before she leaves the house, say, to clean up your room before she gets back? Suppose you misunderstand or fail to understand her instructions, what then? In that case, you may do something, but it would not be what your mother instructed you to do. It is crucial to the carrying out of a message of instructions that we understand those instructions. And when it comes to the Bible, there are two ways we come to understand what it teaches-by studying it and by interpreting it rightly. We have already covered studying the Bible, and now we will take up interpreting it.

What do we mean by "interpretation"? How do we use the word? When a speaker addresses an audience of listeners who speak a different language than his own, he must use an "interpreter." The speaker says a phrase or short sentence, then the interpreter relays this to the audience in their own language, and so on back and forth until the speaker is finished. This is using the words "interpreter" and "interpret" in the sense of "translator" and "translation." We have before discussed Bible translation. The translator is actually conveying the meaning of what is being said by the speaker to the audience. We also use the word "interpretation" for that which someone gives by the inspiration of the Spirit in response to a public utterance in "tongues" in our church services. Again, the aim is to give the meaning of that which was spoken in an unknown tongue. When we speak of interpreting the Scriptures, we mean seeking to understand the meaning of them.

As we have said many times before, no matter what you are talking about, there always seems to be a specific word for it, and so it is with Bible interpretation. The precise word or term for interpreting the Bible is hermeneutics. Bernard Ramm discusses where this term came from:

"St. Luke, in his...account of the walk of the risen Lord with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, tells us that Jesus, "beginning from Moses, and from all the prophets, interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." The word here translated interpreted is the Greek word diermeneuo. If we take away the two first letters, the prefix, and give a rough breathing to that initial letter "e" we have exactly the word from which our word hermeneutics is derived, meaning, then, the science of interpretation...(p.ix)....The word interpretation occurs in both Testaments....Most of the usages in the OAT refer to the interpretation of dreams for they were usually symbolic in form and their meaning therefore was not obvious. The word occurs many times in many forms in the NT (hermeneia, interpretation; hermenuo, to interpret; diermeneuo, to interpret, to explain...[etc.]). Most of the references are to translations from Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek. The word hermeneutics is ultimately derived from Hermes the Greek god who brought the messages of the gods to the mortals, and was the god of science, invention, eloquence, speech, writing, and art. As a theological discipline hermeneutics is the science of the correct interpretation of the Bible. It is a special application of the general science of linguistics and meaning." (pp.10,11)(Protestant Biblical Interpretation; W.A. Wilde:Boston; 1956)

Another word commonly used in connection with hermeneutics is exegesis, which is applied hermeneutics. Exegesis, getting out of a text its inherent meaning ("ex-" means "out of"), is often contrasted with eisegesis, reading meaning into a text ("eis-" means "into").

Sometimes people react negatively to the idea of interpreting the Bible. "We don't need to interpret it, we just need to do what it says," they say. But interpretation is something we do naturally, even unconsciously, with any speech or writing. Over the years we collect a lot of information about many things and the meaning of many words. Words have more than one possible meaning, and when we listen or read, we are "interpreting" the words we hear or read into thought. Our aim is to understand what the writer or speaker means by what he has written or is saying. One reason our "interpreting" is usually done unconsciously is because the meaning is not too difficult to grasp, for example, in a conversation with a friend or someone in our family, in a letter, or news reports or articles in a newspaper or magazine. Even in these cases, however, sometimes we are not sure what the speaker or writer means and may ask for clarification of certain terms or phrases. The more complex a writing is, the more difficult the task of interpretation becomes. And almost everyone agrees that the Bible is not (relatively speaking) easy to understand. Some would disagree with this, but actually this is their first mistake in interpretation. It is not that God has intentionally made the Bible hard to understand; it's that 1) The subject matter, the things talked about, are often some of the deepest things with which human beings have to deal-social, spiritual, moral, and eternal things. There is abundant opportunity to misinterpret what is written. Peter writes about Paul's epistles, "...His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16). Some parts of Scripture may be easier to understand than Paul's epistles, but surely other parts are far more difficult.

Several other things besides the difficulty of the subject matter make the Bible more difficult to interpret rightly than other writings. 2) The difficult subject matter is not dealt with superficially but in depth; in other words, the level of meaning is deeper and thus more difficult. 3) The languages used by the authors were far different from our own. Though all languages differ from one another, some have more in common with some than they do with others. Spanish is related to Portuguese, French, Italian and Latin. English is related to Dutch and German. English has much more in common with Spanish, despite the great difference, than it does Chinese or Japanese. The Bible was written mainly in Hebrew and Greek, languages far different, especially Hebrew, a Middle Eastern (Asian) language, from English. The task of understanding the Bible authors lies primarily with the translators, but in seeking to interpret them, one must often consider the original language of the authors. 4) The problem of language is compounded by the great antiquity of the languages-modern Hebrew and Greek are not the same as Biblical Hebrew and Greek. 5) That the times themselves in which the Bible was written are at such a great distance from us in itself poses a problem. The world has changed a lot since those times. 6) The cultures in which the authors and their audiences lived were far different. Again, countries have much more in common with certain other ones, due to language, geography, and history, than they do others. For example, the United States and Canada, Mexico and Guatemala, Czechoslovakia and Poland. There would be far more similarity between the United States and France, despite the great differences, than there is between us and the ancient Hebrew people. The books of both the Old and New Testaments were all written by Hebrew authors. 7) The kinds and varieties of literary types found in the Bible-poetry, prophecy, parables, apocalypses-make interpretation more difficult. Narratives or stories are relatively easy in comparison with these. For all of these reasons, the task of interpreting the Bible, coming to grips with the meaning of the authors, is more difficult than with most other writings and therefore calls for careful and earnest work.

Most of the differences between denominations or churches stem from differences in interpretation. Most of the false teaching or errors in teaching among groups that believe in the full inspiration of the Scriptures arises from faulty interpretation. Sometimes the errors in interpretation are unintentional, but many times they are a deliberate twisting of the text. No matter how strongly we insist upon the inspiration and authority of Scripture, if we interpret it wrongly, God's message is lost or distorted. Many oppose modern translations as being based on corrupt manuscripts, but there is probably more corruption of God's Word through wrong interpretation than through all manuscript variants or errors of translation combined. Bible interpretation is a subject certainly worthy our serious consideration.

In their book Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, the authors Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard write:

"When we communicate, we seek to convey a message to others. Implicitly, those who hear or read that message will seek to understand its meaning. We usually say that communication succeeds when the meaning received corresponds to the meaning sent....[N]ormally the goal of the recipient in communication is to understand what the author/speaker intended....Each individual text was written at some time in history in a specific culture by a person with a personal framework or preunderstandings. The author or editor intended to communicate a message to a specific audience. Our goal is to discover that message in the text. So the common-sense approach to interpreting assumes that meaning resides in the message or text and that the author or speaker encoded this meaning in that text.....[I]nterpreters seek to understand what the author had to say, not to take the text and do something inventive with it that the author never intended...."(pp. 117,118)

On the other hand, there are many today who subscribe to a different approach to interpretation of any text including the Bible. They insist that all readers supply their own meaning to a text and that this is perfectly legitimate. In other words, what a text means depends upon who is reading and understanding it, not what the author intended. It is easy to see that such a viewpoint would lead to chaos and confusion, just as it has done in our modern culture.

The authors continue:

"[Some maintain that] A later reader could simply invent or read into a biblical text a meaning not intended by the original author."...Some interpreters believe this is the only way to understand how people actually read texts. Once texts exist in writing, readers do with them what they please. Understanding involves text plus reader, and each reader produces a different reading." (pp. 123,124)

Unfortunately this is an approach that is having disastrous effects in government, education, and religion as well today. The U.S. constitution, for instance, no longer means what the founding fathers meant it to, but whatever liberal judges want it to mean today. Modern ideas and philosophies are thereby imposed upon and read into the ancient documents. The true message of the author is lost.

Henry A. Virkler writes:

"E.D. Hirsch, in his volume Validity in Interpretation, discusses the philosophy that has been gaining acceptance since the 1920's-that 'the meaning of a text is what it means to me.' Whereas previously the prevailing belief had been that a text means what its author meant, T.S. Elliot and others contended that 'the best poetry is impersonal, objective and autonomous; that it leads an afterlife of its own, totally cut off from the life of its author.' Such a belief, fostered by the relativism of our contemporary culture, soon influenced literary criticism in areas other than poetry. The study of 'what a text says' became the study of 'what it says to an individual critic.' Such a belief was not without its difficulties, as Hirsch cogently points out:

"...If we accept the view that the meaning of a text is what it means to me, then God's Word can have as many meanings as it does readers. We also have no reason for saying that an orthodox interpretation of a passage is more valid than a heretical one: indeed, the distinction between orthodox and heretical interpretations is no longer meaningful." (Hermeneutics, Henry A. Virkler; Baker Book House: Grand Rapids,MI; 1981, pp.23,24)

Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard continue:

"The meaning of a text is: that which the words and grammatical structures of that text disclose about the probable intention of its author/editor and the probable understanding of that text by its intended readers. It is the meaning those words would have conveyed to the readers at the time they were written by the author or editor. (133)....[But] can we demonstrate that all NT uses of the OAT disclose what the original OAT author actually intended?...[W]e doubt that...it is possible to demonstrate that the OAT writers did in fact intend all the meaning that NT writers found." [For example, Heb.1:8,9 and Ps.45:6,7; Matt.2:15 and Hos.11:1.] (pp.121,133)

It is obvious that NT writers often used the OAT in ways that the original writers did not intend. This is most evident in prophecy and typology. Clearly, OAT prophecies were capable of having more than one fulfillment, but whether or not this constitutes another meaning is open to debate. The authors continue:

"Typology may be the best way to explain how NT writers often used the OT. R.T. France sets out a clear definition: 'the recognition of a correspondence between New and OT events, based on a conviction of the unchanging character of the principles of God's working.'...[The NT writers] believed that many of God's former actions with Israel (or in the OT) were 'types' of what he was now doing in Christ. This need not imply that the OT authors actually intended, in a prophetic way, the type that the NT writer later discovered....[T]he OT writers were not always, if ever, conscious that what they were writing had typological significance. At the same time, God intended that his actions on behalf of Israel would one day find a kind of analogy or fulfillment in Christ and the Church. Humanly speaking, these typological OT texts only had one level of meaning: the single meaning the human authors intended to convey. Yet God was at work, too, and his actions set the stage for what later writers would see as patterns of his working with people. This does not mean that the OT authors intended more than one meaning, nor even that the texts they wrote contained more than one meaning. Rather, it means that the OT as a whole had a forward-looking dimension to it, sometimes unknown to the writers....We may assume that the writers or editors of the Bible intended to communicate to all people in the same way. Thus, for the most part, they intended their words to have only one sense. They may have encoded their message in metaphor, poetry, allegory, or apocalypse, in addition to more straightforward techniques, but they selected appropriate ways to convey their intended meaning. The historical meaning of these texts remains the central objective of hermeneutics." (pp. 130-132; Introduction To Biblical Interpretation, Dr. William W. Klein, Dr. Craig L. Blomberg, and Dr. Robert L. Hubbard, Jr.; Word: Dallas; 1993)

The goal of interpretation, then, remains, despite the exceptions of prophecy or typology, to understand the meaning of the author. Acknowledging that Scripture has "dual" authorship, that is, the Divine Spirit inspired human authors, it is legitimate to ask what was and is the intended meaning of the original author both human and Divine. The Holy Spirit may have intended something the human author was not aware of. However, we must be cautious in how we use this principle. How can we know what the Holy Spirit intended? Is there any objective way to determine this?

One's approach to or method of interpretation will depend upon 1) his view of the goal of interpretation (as discussed above), and, perhaps even more importantly, on 2) his view of Scripture. Does he believe the Bible is inspired of God? In other words, are there two authors, human and divine? Sometimes among those who do believe the Bible is God's Word, there is little or no regard for the meaning of the human author, which leads to many errors of interpretation. In addition, one's approach to interpretation will be determined by whether or not he believes the Bible is inerrant. We will see these things more clearly as we continue our discussion of methods of interpretation.

Our view of Scripture as we have already stated earlier in our study of bibliology is that the inspiration of Scripture is plenary ("full" or equally inspired in all its parts) and verbal (not only the ideas but the very words), so that what Scripture says, God says, through human agents and without error. A disregard for the human agents, what their intention was in writing what they wrote, leads to extreme literalism and therefore error. Of course, we need to take the Bible in its natural or literal sense, but "literalism" is more than this. Literalism disregards the use of figurative language and the historical and literary context in which Scripture was written; therefore, current views are often superimposed on the text as though God were addressing certain current issues or speaking in terms of modern ideas about things. Verses are chosen to prove or disprove some current idea or controversy without any regard for what the words meant at the time they were written.

Liberal views of Scripture, on the other hand, see the Bible only as a human book, man's word only, that includes errors and myths. Rudolph Bultmann, as we saw in an earlier section, sought to "demythologize" the Bible by seeking only a higher philosophical meaning to miraculous accounts. If the Bible contains errors, then something besides a literal interpretation is necessary of those passages which are viewed as being in error.

Some who regard the Scriptures as divinely inspired nevertheless have a rather superstitious view of it, that, since it is inspired of the Spirit of God, everything it says must have a "spiritual" meaning quite different from the obvious one. This view has given rise to allegorical interpretation, looking for hidden or deeper meanings in the Bible rather than simply taking it in its natural sense. Many evangelicals fall prey to this approach as well as more mystical groups. For example, E.W. Kenyon, the real father and founder of the charismatic "faith movement," wrote:

The Bible is a sealed mystery book whose message remains closed to us until we find the "keys." This and the idea that it is a spiritual message and must therefore be "revealed to our spirits" and not our minds for us to get its real message is the source of most of the crazy teachings in the faith movement. This is the mystical method of interpretation employed by a group that otherwise claims to be conservative and fundamental.

Sometimes these texts are cited to support this approach to interpretation:

1 Corinthians 2:6-14. "We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'-but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

2 Corinthians 3:6. "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant-not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

These texts are popularly taken to mean, respectively, that the Holy Spirit reveals the true meaning of Scripture, one which is hidden from the unsaved, and that the apparent, natural meaning of Scripture is only the "letter," beyond which one must get to the spiritual revelation in order to arrive at the true meaning. But this is not the case at all. It is not that Scripture has a hidden meaning that cannot be grasped by the unsaved, but that its plain meaning is thought to be foolishness to him, absurd, incredible, and therefore not to be believed. And the "letter" referred to here is not the natural meaning as opposed to the spiritual or hidden one, but the Law contrasted with the New Gospel Covenant, as the context shows.

Probably most Christians subscribe to this "spiritualization" of Scripture in some form. Because the Bible is the inspired Word of God, they reason, it must have some deep spiritual meaning that is only loosely connected to the obvious natural meaning. The goal is to get beyond or behind what the Word of God appears to say to some deeper spiritual meaning that lies beneath the surface. Reading or studying is the search for this deeper meaning, and preachers are prized who can "mine out" these hitherto undetected meanings. The prevalence of this idea among so many people may be one great reason why it is commonly thought that it is useless to read the Bible. It doesn't really mean what it obviously says; the real meaning may be something else entirely, so why bother?

Recounting the history of interpretation in the Jewish dispensation and in the Church is a good way to study the various methods of interpretation. M.S. Terry, quoted in Ramm's book, says:

"A knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation is of inestimable value to the student of the Holy Scriptures. It serves to guard against errors and exhibits the activity and efforts of the human mind in its search after truth and in relation to noblest themes. It shows what influences have led to the misunderstanding of God's word, and how acute minds, carried away by a misconception of the nature of the Bible, have sought mystic and manifold meanings in its content." [M.S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics (revised edition), p.31, quoted in Ramm]

Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard write:

"A brief survey of the history of Bible interpretation is beneficial in several ways. First, it introduces key issues that are pertinent to Bible interpretation....Second, it sensitizes readers to the opportunities and pitfalls involved in trying to contextualize Bible teachings in the present....Finally, [it] cultivates an attitude of humility toward the interpretive process. Certainly we want to avoid the methods that history has judged as mistaken or faulty. At the same time, the history illustrates how complex the process is and how inappropriate is arrogance in the pursuit of it." (Klien, op.cit., p.21)

Before we consider the Jewish approach to Bible interpretation, we might, according to Ramm, first look at the Greek approach to interpreting their sacred writings:

"The Greeks were not concerned with Sacred Scripture but with their own writings, and in this sense it is improper to classify them within the context of Biblical interpretation. But in that their allegorical method was adopted by both Jew and Christian they deserve this special attention. The Greeks had two noble traditions. (i) They had a religious heritage in Homer and Hesiod. Homer's influence seemed to increase with the extension of time rather than diminish. The 'Bible' of the Greek was the writings of Homer and Hesiod. To question or to doubt them was an irreligious or atheistic act. (ii) They had an astute philosophical (Thales, et. al.) and historical tradition (Thucydides and Herodotus), which developed principles of logic, criticism, ethics, religion, and science. The religious tradition had many elements which were fanciful, grotesque, absurd, or immoral. The philosophical and historical tradition could not accept much of the religious tradition as it lay in the written documents. Yet, the hold of Homer and Hesiod was so great, popularly and with the thinkers, that Homer and Hesiod could not be declared worthless and forsaken. How was the tension of the two traditions to be resolved?... by allegorizing the religious heritage. The stories of the gods, and the writings of the poets, were not to be taken literally. Rather underneath is the secret or real meaning....Allegorical interpretation believes that beneath the letter...or the obvious...is the real meaning...of the passage. Allegory is defined by some as an extended metaphor. There is a literary allegory which is intentionally constructed by the author to tell a message under historical form. [John] Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is such a one and such allegories occur in Scripture too. If the writer states that he is writing an allegory and gives us the cue, or if the cue is very obvious (as in an allegorical political satire), the problem of interpretation is not too difficult. But if we presume that the document has a secret meaning and there are no cues concerning the hidden meaning, interpretation is difficult. In fact, the basic problem is to determine if the passage has such a meaning at all. The further problem arises whether the secret meaning was in the mind of the original writer or something found there by the interpreter. If there are no cues, hints, connections, or other associations which indicate that the record is an allegory, and what the allegory intends to teach, we are on very uncertain grounds....The important item to notice here is that his Greek tradition of allegorizing spread to Alexandria [Egypt] where there was a great Jewish population and eventually a large Christian population. [In fact, Alexandria was one of the greatest learning centers of the entire world, boasting of the world's greatest library containing everything of any note that had ever been written in all the world. It was also a great learning center for its large Jewish population; the Septuagint or Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was made there. Later the gospel spread there and it became a great learning center for Christianity as well, having the first formal Christian theological school.] The Alexandrian Jew faced a problem similar to his fellow Greek. He was a child of Moses instructed in the law and the rest of a divine revelation. But as he mingled with the cosmopolitan population of Alexandria he soon learned of the Greek literature with its philosophical heritage. Some of these Jews were so impressed that they accepted the teachings of Greek philosophy. The Greek faced the tension of a religious-poetic-myth tradition and a historical-philosophical tradition. The Jew faced the tension of his own national Sacred Scriptures and the Greek philosophical tradition (especially Plato). How could a Jew cling to both? The solution was identical to the Greek's solution to his problem. In fact, the Jew even got it from the Greek for Farrar writes, 'The Alexandrian Jews were not, however, driven to invent this allegorical method for themselves. They found it ready to their hands.' Here is one of the strange fates of history. The allegorical method arose to save the reputation of ancient Greek religious poets. This method of interpretation was adopted by the Alexandrian Greeks for the reasons stated above. Then it was bequeathed to the Christian Church. 'By a singular concurrence of circumstances,' continues Farrar, 'the Homeric studies of pagan philosophers suggested first to the Jews and then, through them, to Christians, a method of Scriptural interpretation before unheard of which remained unshaken for more than fifteen hundred years [until the Reformation]." (Ramm, op.cit., 24-26)

Virkler writes:

"A discussion of the history of biblical interpretation usually begins with the work of Ezra. On their return from the Babylonian exile, the people of Israel requested that Ezra read to them from the Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8:8 recalls: 'They [Ezra and the Levites] read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.' Since the Israelites had probably lost their understanding of Hebrew during the exilic period, most biblical scholars assume that Ezra and his helpers translated the Hebrew text and read it aloud in Aramaic, adding explanations to make the meaning clear. Thus began the science and art of biblical interpretation. The scribes that followed took great care in copying the Scriptures, believing every letter of the text to be the inspired Word of God. This profound reverence for the scriptural text had both its advantages and disadvantages. A chief advantage was that the texts were carefully preserved in their transmission across the centuries. A major disadvantage was that the rabbis soon began interpreting Scripture by methods other than the ways in which communication is normally interpreted. The rabbis presupposed that since God is the author of Scripture, (1) the interpreter could expect numerous meanings in a given text, and (2) every incidental detail of the text possessed [hidden] significance. Rabbi Akiba, in the first century A.D., eventually extended this to maintain that every repetition, figure of speech, parallelism, synonym, word, letter, and even the shapes of the letters had hidden meanings. This letterism (undue focus on the letters from which the words of Scripture were composed) was often carried to such an extent that the author's intended meaning was overlooked and fantastic speculation introduced in its place." (Virkler, op.cit., 48,49)

Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard write:

"By the NT period,...hermeneutical activity had already coalesced into three distinctive approaches to Scripture. Each approach was associated with a geographical center of Jewish religious life and a different school of thought. For our purposes, their importance lies in the background they provide on the way NT writers interpreted the OT.

"Centered in Jerusalem and Judea, this branch of Judaism promoted obedience to the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the Torah (Law), in the face of mounting pressure to accommodate to Greco-Roman culture....Rabbinic Judaism produced three main literary works. The Mishnah presents the once-oral teachings of leading rabbis as early as the famous competitors, Hillel and Shammai (late first century B.C. to early first century A.D.). Published about 200, the Mishnah presents many individual tractates arranged under six topics (e.g., feasts, women, holy things, etc.). About fifty years later, another document called Abot (lit., "the Fathers") affirmed that what the Mishnah writers taught was part of the oral law received by Moses at Mt. Sinai....The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds (ca. A.D. 400 and 600, respectively) essentially offer commentary...on the Mishnah by later rabbis....The frequent citation of Scripture implies that the Talmud's purpose was to give biblical support for the interpretations of the Mishnah....Though written no earlier than the second century A.D., some of their interpretive material probably derives from the pre-Christian era....

"The interpretation of Scripture in rabbinic Judaism shows several distinct features. First, it depends heavily upon rabbinic interpretive tradition. Interpretation amounts to citing what earlier revered rabbis say about a passage....Second, rabbinic commentators often interpret Scripture literally....At times, taking the plain sense of Scripture produced a rather wooden interpretation. For example, Deuteronomy 21:18-21 legislated the legal recourse of Israelite parents who have a rebellious son. By taking the text quite literally, the Mishnah defined the circumstances under which an accused son would escape condemnation:

"The central feature of rabbinic interpretation, however, is the practice of midrash. Basically, midrash aims to uncover the deeper meanings that the rabbis assumed were inherent in the actual wording of Scripture. Ultimately, their motives were...to give logical biblical teaching for situations not covered directly by Scripture. To do so, rabbis followed a system of exegetical rules...carefully worked out over the years....As the Mishnah and Midrashim attest, the application of these rules resulted in an atomistic approach to exegesis. First, the interpreter breaks up the Scripture quotation into separate short phrases. Then he interprets each one independently without regard for its context....Notice how one [commentary] biblically defends Jewish agricultural practices. The Mishnah says,

"By breaking down Isa.61:11 into parts, the [commentary] explains why Jews should sow five kinds of seed in the same small garden:

"Such interpretations may strike modern readers as ingenious manipulations of Scripture....On the other hand, the rabbis were the first to model the cross-reference strategy in biblical interpretation. In that respect, modern Bible students remain in their debt. More important, NT writers interpret the OT in ways not unlike the ancient rabbis. Thus, knowledge of their methods illumines the NT use of the OT.

"In 333 B.C. Alexander the Great completed his conquest of the Persian Empire including Palestine. He and his successors began to impose Greek culture throughout their domain. Greek influence proved to be particularly strong on the large Jewish community in Alexandria, the city in Egypt named for the great emperor. There, Hellenistic Judaism flourished, a movement which sought to integrate Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato, with Jewish religious beliefs. Eventually, Greek replaced Hebrew as the common language among Jews outside of Palestine. So about 200 B.C., Alexandrian Jewish scholars produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint. More important for our purposes, in the fertile intellectual soil of Alexandria flowered a major school of biblical interpretation, one which enjoyed wide influence among Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire and in Jerusalem itself. The major distinctive of this school of interpretation was its allegorical method, which was rooted in platonic philosophy. Plato taught that true reality actually lay behind what appeared to the human eye. Applied to literature, this view of reality suggested that a text's true meaning lay behind the written words. That is, the text served as a kind of extended metaphor which pointed to the ideas hidden behind it. With respect to the Hebrew Scriptures, the master practitioner of allegory was the brilliant Alexandrian Jewish thinker, Philo (20 B.C.-A.D. 54) who sought to reconcile Hebrew Scriptures with the philosophy of Plato. For Philo, a Bible passage was like a human being; it had a body (i.e., a literal meaning) and a soul (an allegorical meaning). He accepted the literal meaning of many Scriptures, but he also believed that only the allegorical method could reveal the true inner meaning that God had encoded in them....In his view, one could disregard a text's literal meaning when it (1) said anything unworthy of God, (2) contained some insoluble difficulty, unusual grammar, or unique rhetoric, and (3) was an allegorical expression. Further, Philo believed that hidden meaning lay behind numbers and names. More ingeniously, he also found it by playing with the many possible meanings of the same word and by regrouping the words of a biblical passage. Consider, for example, how he handled Gen.2:14 ("A river flowed through Eden and watered the garden. From there the river branched out to become four rivers" NCV). He determined that the Edenic river represented goodness, while the other four represented the four great virtues of Greek philosophy-prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. In other words, the number four in the biblical text suggested to him four items from Greek philosophy....[H]e attempted to integrate biblical ideas with those of the dominant philosophy of his day in order to relate biblical faith to contemporary culture....Philo's approach suffers from subjectivity, arbitrariness, and artificiality. One might ask Philo, for example, why the Edenic river represents goodness and its tributaries four other virtues. To someone else, the former might represent the stream of human life and the latter four major ethnic groups of humanity. Again, Philo ignores the real difference between biblical ideas and those of Greek philosophy. It is hard to escape the conclusion that ultimately Philo's interpretation depended more upon platonic philosophy than upon the Bible." (Klein, op.cit., 23-27)

Ramm adds this concerning Philo:

"[Philo] was a thoroughly convinced Jew. To him the Scriptures (primarily the Septuagint version) were superior to Plato and Greek philosophy. He teaches practically a dictation-theory of inspiration he so emphasizes the passivity of the prophet. Yet, he had a great fondness for Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Pythagoras. By a most elaborate system of allegorizing he was able to reconcile for himself his loyalty to his Hebrew faith and his love for Greek philosophy....Philo did not think that the literal meaning was useless, but it represented the immature level of understanding. The literal sense was the body of Scripture, and the allegorical sense its soul. Accordingly the literal was for the immature, and the allegorical for the mature. Nor did Philo believe that the allegorical method denied the reality of the historical events....Some of [his method] is sound...for there are allegorical and figurative elements in Scripture. But most of it led to the fantastic and absurd. For example, Abraham's trek to Palestine is really the story of a Stoic philosopher who leaves Chaldea (sensual understanding) and stops at Haran, which means 'holes,' and signifies the emptiness of knowing things by the holes, that is the senses. When he becomes Abraham he becomes a truly enlightened philosopher. To marry Sarah is to marry abstract wisdom." (Ramm, op.cit., 27,28)

Returning to Klein, et.al.:

"This branch of Judaism flourished at Qumran, a site on the northeastern shore of the Dead Sea, about 150 B.C.-A.D. 68. Its now famous literary legacy, the Dead Sea Scrolls, reveals the community's self-identity and reason for being. It regarded the Judaism centered in Jerusalem as apostate. So, led by its founder, a mysterious figure called the Teacher of Righteousness, its members withdrew to the wilderness of Judea to form a monastic community to prepare for the coming of the messianic age. Specifically, they awaited God's imminent judgment, which they expected to fall on their apostate religious competitors, and they anticipated his renewal of the covenant with the only true, pure Israel-themselves. They saw themselves as the final generation about whom biblical prophecy speaks....If the law of Moses entranced the rabbis, the OT prophets preoccupied the Qumranians. Alleging special divine inspiration, the Teacher of Righteousness claimed to show that events of that day, especially those involving the Qumran community, fulfilled OT prophecies. This explains why so many of the scrolls consist of copies of OT books and why Qumran produced so many commentaries on them....To be specific, the community practiced a method called pesher. Three interpretive techniques typified this approach. The interpreter might actually suggest a change in the biblical text (textual emendation) to support an interpretation. He would select a known alternate textual reading of the phrase in question and offer the interpretation. Lacking an existent variant, the clever interpreter was not averse to creating one that suited his interpretive purposes!...Again, the commentator might contemporize a prophecy....For example...Hab.1:6... predicted that the Babylonian army would come to punish sinful Judah. But according to the Pesher, 'this refers to the Kittim [Romans]....' In other words, the commentator interpreted the ancient prophecy about the Babylonians as predicting the coming of Qumran's enemies, the Romans. Finally, the interpreter might use an atomization approach. He would divide the text into separate phrases, then interpret each one by itself regardless of the context....

"In sum, Judaism sought to relate its ancient Scriptures to the realities of its contemporary experience. Rabbinic Judaism found in the application of the Mosaic Law a refuge to protect Jewish identity. Rather than resist outside influences, Hellenistic Judaism tried to accommodate its beliefs to those of the platonic philosophy. And the ascetic Qumranians mined OT prophecies to explain the events of their own day. Out of this rich, complex stream of interpretation flowed a new interpretive current-

"...As devout Jews, the first Christian interpreters- the apostles-regarded Jesus as Israel's promised Messiah and the small religious community he left behind as the true fulfillment of Judaism's ancient hopes. They appealed to the OT Scriptures to support their beliefs, interpreting them by many of the same principles as other Jewish religious groups. On the other hand, they revered Jesus as the new Moses and the authority of Jesus as superior even to that of the law of Moses-a decisive departure from their Jewish roots. Also, they interpreted the OT from a radically new perspective-in light of the Messiahship of Jesus and the new age inaugurated by his coming. Indeed, Jesus' literal fulfillment of OT prophecy was their fundamental hermeneutical principle. In this they followed the example of Jesus himself....In other words, they understood the OT christologically [in light of what it said about Christ]....[H]owever, the apostles did not limit themselves to the literal interpretation of OT prophecies....[T]hey employed at least three other interpretive approaches. First, they often mined OT historical and poetic sections to find predictions of the work of Christ and the Church. Their method was that of typological interpretation....Two NT books, Matthew and Hebrews, best illustrate the typological approach....A second apostolic approach was that of literal-contextual interpretation. This approach interpreted OT Scriptures according to their normal meaning. Here again they followed Jesus' example....The epistles offer several examples of this approach. Primarily, the apostles cited OT texts interpreted literally to support their instructions on Christian morals....A third apostolic method is principle/application. In this method they did not take an OT passage literally; rather, they interpreted it by applying its underlying principle to a situation different from, but comparable to, the one in the original context. [Rom.9:25, 26 and Hos.2:1,23; 1 Cor.9:9 quotes Deut.25:4 ('When an ox is working in the grain, do not cover its mouth to keep it from eating'), arguing that God actually had Christian clergy, not real oxen, in mind.] In summary, apostolic interpretation both compares with and departs from the contemporary Jewish interpretive method. The apostles' primary method is typology....From here on, Greco-Roman influences displace Jewish ones and dominate Christian biblical interpretation.

"...We call it the 'patristic period' because it features the contribution of the so-called Church Fathers-the leaders during the initial four centuries after the apostolic period....[D]uring this period another authority-church tradition-began to exercise significant influence on the definition of church doctrine. Indeed, this development definitely shaped the practice of biblical interpretation until the Protestant Reformation fourteen hundred years later...."

"The Patristic Period can be divided into three main subperiods. The first, that of the apostolic fathers [covers] the first half-century after the apostle John's death.... Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp....Barnabas....the Didache...the Shepherd of Hermas...the Epistle to Diognetus....The fathers address two primary audiences-Christians in the churches and Jews opposing them. Hence, their writings serve two corresponding purposes: (1) to instruct believers in Christian doctrine, and (2) to defend the faith against Jewish arguments. Several methods of interpretation are evident among the early Church Fathers. Occasionally they use typology to relate the OT to the NT, especially with regard to teachings about Jesus. [The Epistle of Barnabas sees the cross of Christ in the outstretched arms of Moses in Israel's victory over Amalek (Ex.17), and Moses' prohibition against eating pork is a warning against associating with inconsistent Christians; Clement of Rome sees the blood of Jesus in the scarlet color of the cloth that Rahab hung in Jericho.] The most popular interpretive approach among the fathers was that of the allegory....They wanted to support their teachings from the OT Scriptures, presumably to give their doctrine more credibility. Also, at the time, the allegorical method was the most popular way to interpret literature in general....[Barnabas says the red heifer (Num.19) represent Jesus, and the children who sprinkle its ashes the apostles who spread the gospel; the six days of creation symbolize the 6,000 years of world history culminating in the coming of Christ and the millennium followed by the new heavens and earth, the eighth day.] At times the early fathers employ a midrashic interpretive approach reminiscent of the rabbis and the Qumran sectarians. [For example, Barnabas' treatment of the 318 servants Abraham had circumcised at the inauguration of that rite in Gen.17:14. 'Now the (number) 18 (is represented by two letters, J=10 and E=8-thus you have "JE," (the abbreviation for) "Jesus." And because the cross, represented by the letter T (=300), was destined to convey special significance, it also says 300. He makes clear, then, that JEsus is symbolized by the two letters (JE=18), while in the one letter (T=300) is symbolized the cross.' (Barn.9:8,9)] Finally, the fathers show early signs of an interpretive principle that was to dominate biblical interpretation until it was rejected during the Reformation. In the second century, an increasing number of heretical groups arose within the Church. Most prominent among them were the Gnostics who, like the others, supported their unorthodox views by appealing both to the Scriptures and to so-called sayings of Jesus-sayings they claimed Jesus taught his disciples in private. The lack of a finished, canonical collection of apostolic writings placed leaders of the orthodox branch of the Church at a disadvantage. They felt that their only recourse to rebut the heresies was to appeal to the authority of tradition handed down from the apostles. This established a new hermeneutical principle in the Church: traditional interpretation. The Church came to regard the traditional interpretation of a biblical passage (that which the churches taught) as its correct interpretation. Now at first glance that step seems a small one; however, it subtly advanced church tradition to a status almost equal with that of Scripture as the Church's ultimate authority for doctrine. More importantly, church leaders assumed the role of official keepers and adjudicators of the apostolic tradition. Their doctrinal rulings defined the correct interpretation of many biblical passages. Eventually, the dominating influence of this principle led to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the papacy and, many centuries later, ignited the Protestant Reformation.

"As the early church fathers passed from the scene, two centers of Christian instruction came to dominate biblical interpretation in the Church....Alexandria had long been a center promoting allegorical methodology among Jews and neo-platonic philosophers. Thus, it is not surprising that the Christian catechetical school at Alexandria practiced allegorical interpretation. By adopting the interpretive methods of their contemporaries, Christian teachers at Alexandria undoubtedly hoped to gain credibility for their interpretations among their non-Christian peers. Two articulate spokesmen present the case for reading the Bible allegorically. The first is Clement of Alexandria who taught there from A.D. 190 until 203 when the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus drove him into exile. Like Philo, Clement taught that Scripture has a twofold meaning. Analogous to a human being, it has a body (literal) meaning as well as a soul (spiritual) meaning hidden behind the literal sense. Clement regarded the hidden, spiritual sense as the more important one. [Example: in the parable of the prodigal son, the robe represents immortality, the shoes the upward progress of the soul, the fatted calf represents Christ as spiritual nourishment.] The second spokesman is Clement's successor, the distinguished scholar Origen (A.D. 185-254)....[He] argued that just as humans consist of body, soul, and spirit, so Scripture has a threefold meaning...adding a third or 'moral' meaning: ethical instructions about the believer's relationship to others. He also refined the idea of a spiritual sense into a doctrinal sense, i.e., truths about the nature of the Church and the Christian's relationship to God. Thus, said Origen, the wise interpreter of Scripture must move from the events of a passage (its literal sense) to find the hidden principles for Christian living (its moral sense) and its doctrinal truth (its spiritual sense....Origen contended that God had inspired the original biblical writer to incorporate the allegorical meaning into his writing. Thus, what Origen considered the highest meaning of Scripture-its deeper spiritual truth-was already implicit in Scripture, not something invented by the interpreter.

"Not surprisingly, Origen's extreme allegorical approach sparked a reaction among other early church leaders. They rejected allegory as a legitimate, reliable method for interpreting Scripture. As a result, they founded a second Christian catechetical school at Antioch in Syria in the fourth century A.D. Instead of allegory, its curriculum taught the historical-grammatical understanding of Scripture: that every passage has one plain, simple meaning conveyed by its grammar and words. The chief instructors were Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. A.D. 350-428) and Theodoret (ca. A.D. 393-460). The sermons of John Chrysostom (ca. A.D. 347-407) show the application of this method to preaching. As the intellectual climate of Alexandria had profoundly shaped the approach of Clement and Origen, so the Antiochene school felt the influence of its intellectual neighbors-the Jewish community in Antioch....For the Antiochenes, the key to finding the deeper meaning in Scripture was what they called theoria (Gk. 'insight'). This was the ability to perceive both a text's literal historical facts as well as the spiritual reality to which these facts pointed....Their radical rejection of allegory led the Antiochenes to depart from some interpretations widely accepted by the church....[T]hey still did not escape the grip of allegory completely. At times, they practiced a kind of typology that bordered on the allegorical approach they so strongly rejected.

"With the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in A.D. 312, politics exercised a profound influence on the Church's interpretation of Scripture. In the emperor's view, doctrinal disputes between the orthodox mainstream and its heretical tributaries threatened the empire's political stability. So he pressured the Church to settle differences and to standardize its disputed doctrines. This proved to be a difficult task for two reasons. First, simple appeals to Scripture in defense of orthodoxy produced nothing but a doctrinal stalemate. The reason was that unorthodox groups also supported their views from Scripture, often very persuasively. Second, orthodox theologians themselves could not agree on the proper way to interpret Scripture. The conflict between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools undermined all appeals to Scripture. At one point, the early church father Tertullian (ca. A.D. 200) recommended that defenders of orthodoxy not appeal to Scripture since such appeals rarely would win the argument. The Church desperately needed some authority to determine with finality the meaning of Scripture. It found the answer in the apostolic succession of church leadership. Above, we noted how the apostolic fathers appealed to traditional interpretation in response to heresies like Gnosticism. Under Constantine, orthodox church leaders argued that only they, the apostles' successors, were the true interpreters of Scripture since only they had directly received the apostolic teaching. To implement this principle, church leaders convened a series of church councils to define official church doctrine. By defining correct Christian beliefs, the doctrinal decisions of councils gave church tradition even greater authority than it had before. In effect, it raised the authority of tradition above that of Scripture. Increasingly, the Church's official pronouncements on doctrine came to determine the interpretations of Scripture the Church deemed correct, not the other way around. Early in this period, the great church leader Augustine articulated the prevailing view in his On Christian Doctrine (A.D. 397). According to Augustine, to interpret the Bible properly one must find out what the original writer intended to say. Now this principle works well when the teaching of Scripture is clear. But what does one do when it is not? In reply, Augustine offered three criteria for finding correct meaning of obscure texts. First, one consults the 'rule of faith' (what clearer passages of Scripture say on the subject) and second, one consults the 'authority of the Church' or the church's traditional interpretation of the text. Third, if conflicting views meet both criteria, one should consult the context to see which view commends itself best. In other words, plainer passages and church tradition take precedence over the contexts of obscure passages. Thus, the accepted church tradition, not a seasoned study of Scripture, became the ultimate interpreter of the Bible. Another event toward the close of the patristic period solidified the grip of tradition on interpretation even more. Church leaders finally persuaded the learned scholar, Jerome (A.D. 331-420), to translate the OT and NT, as well as the Apocrypha, into Latin. This translation from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, known as the Vulgate (from the Latin word for 'common'), became the official Bible of the Church. Unfortunately, from that time the study of the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek ceased for all practical purposes. Instead, the Church came to depend upon the Vulgate translation for all doctrinal discussions. In some instances, its translations were not as accurate in reflecting the original languages as they could have been (e.g., in Lk. 1:28, 'Hail Mary, full of grace...[contrast NIV, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored!'] Thus the Church moved still another step away from dependence upon the Scripture itself for its teachings.

"...Three approaches typify biblical interpretation in the Middle Ages. Interpreters continued to depend heavily upon traditional interpretation-the views of the fathers passed down over centuries. The primary source for this method remained the written catena or chain of interpretations compiled from commentaries of the Church Fathers. Significantly, while pre-medieval catenas cited a variety of commentators, medieval ones featured Fathers like Augustine and Jerome, who expressed the Church's doctrinal norms. As McNally puts it, during this period '[e]xegesis became almost synonymous with tradition, for the good commentator was the scholar who handed on faithfully what he had received. The catena spawned one important interpretive offspring during the Middle Ages. Medieval Bible scholars developed the practice of the interpretive gloss. Glosses were Scripture annotations or commentaries from the Fathers that were written in the margins or between the lines of the Bible. This practice became widespread in medieval schools. Eventually, editors compiled glosses on individual biblical books into the Glossa Ordinaria, the standard medieval commentary on the Bible.

"Of all the methods of biblical interpretation in the Middle Ages, the allegorical method dominated. Indeed, in contrast to Origen's threefold sense of Scripture, many medieval scholars believed every Bible passage had four meanings. A popular rhyme that circulated widely in the Middle Ages summarizes them:

This practice viewed the Bible as having four senses: literal (or historical), allegorical (or doctrinal), moral or tropological), and anagogical (or eschatological). For example, medieval Bible scholars commonly took the word 'Jerusalem' to have four senses: Literal, the ancient Jewish city; Allegorical, the Christian church; Moral, the faithful soul; Anagogical, the heavenly city.

"The third method of medieval interpretation was historical interpretation. Some medieval interpreters sought to find the historical sense of Scripture by consulting Jewish authorities....Eventually a more influential proponent of the literal approach emerged, the movement called scholasticism....Its main concern was to sort out the relationship between the Christian faith and human reason....The most articulate spokesman for scholasticism...was the brilliant Christian thinker, Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth cent.). His massive Summa Theologica synthesized the intellectual fruits of three centuries of intense academic discussion. It...eventually became the standard summary of theology in the Roman Catholic Church....

"The Protestant Reformation introduced a revolution in the interpretation of Scripture, a revolution whose effects continue to the present....During the late Middle Ages, conflict broke out between the frozen traditionalism of the scholastics and the so-called new learning of Christian humanists like Erasmus. With some justification, the latter derided the hair-splitting, convoluted logic of scholastic theology. According to the humanists, such theology offered no spiritual food for hungry Christian souls....Further, a renewed interest in studying the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek languages provided scholars with a fresh glimpse of the Scriptures....This increasing interest in the early manuscripts exposed many translation errors in the Latin Vulgate and undermined the absolute authority it had enjoyed in supporting church doctrine....Again, growing dissatisfaction with the allegorical method fueled a desire for a better interpretive approach. At the end of the fifteenth century, a man named Geiler of Kaiserberg observed that abuse of the allegorical method had made Scripture a 'nose of wax' to be turned interpretively any way the reader wanted....Martin Luther was one of two figures who led the hermeneutical revolution of the sixteenth century." (Klein, et.al., pp.21-40)

Ramm writes:

"Luther's hermeneutical principles were:

(1) The psychological [or spiritual] principle. Faith and [the] illumination [of the Holy Spirit] were the personal and spiritual requisites for an interpreter....(2) The authority principle. The Bible is the supreme and final authority in theological matters, and is therefore above all ecclesiastical authority....(3) The literal principle....[He] maintained strongly the primacy of the literal interpretation of Scripture [in place of the four-fold allegorical system of the scholastics]....The literal principle implies three sub-principles: (i) Luther rejected allegory. He calls allegorical interpretation 'dirt,' 'scum,' 'obsolete loose rags,' and likens allegorizing to a harlot and to a monkey game....[Yet] he was not adverse to allegory if the content were Christ [as in typology]....(ii) Luther accepted the primacy of the original languages....[He] did a great deal to sponsor the revival of Hebrew and Greek studies. (iii) The historical and grammatical principle....The interpreter must give attention to grammar; to the times, circumstances, and conditions of the writer of the Biblical book; and to the context of the passage. (4) The sufficiency principle. The devout and competent Christian can understand the true meaning of the Bible and thereby does not need the official guides to interpretation offered by the Roman Catholic Church. The Bible is a clear book (the perspicuity of Scripture). Catholicism had maintained that the Scriptures were so obscure that only the teaching ministry of the Church could uncover their true meaning. To Luther the perspicuity of the Bible was coupled with the priesthood of believers, so that the Bible became the property of all Christians. The competent Christian was sufficient to interpret the Bible, and the Bible is sufficiently clear in content to yield is meaning to the believer. Further, the Bible was a world of its own and so Scripture interprets Scripture. At points where the Bible was obscure the Catholic referred to the unwritten tradition of the Church. But Luther shut the interpreter up within the Bible and made the obscure passage yield to a clear passage. Much of Catholic exegesis was nothing more than studies in patristics. This Luther rejected: 'I ask for Scriptures and Eck [his debate opponent] offers me the Fathers. I ask for the sun, and he shows me his lanterns. I ask: 'Where is your Scripture proof?' and he adduces Ambrose and Cyril....With all due respect to the Fathers I prefer the authority of the Scripture.' A corollary at his point is: the analogy of faith. The scholastics interpreted by glosses and catena of citations from the Fathers. This was arbitrary and disconnected. Luther insisted on the organic, theological unity of the Bible. All of the relevant material on a given subject was to be collected together so that the pattern of divine revelation concerning that subject would be apparent. (5) The Christological principle....The function of all interpretation was to find Christ...This is Luther's method of making the entire Bible a Christian book. The Fathers did it with their allegorical method. Luther does it with his Christological principle....(6) The Law-Gospel principle....[He] taught that we must carefully distinguish Law and Gospel in the Bible [even in the NT!]...." (Ramm, op.cit.,pp.53-57)

As Klein says, "The other figure who led the hermeneutical revolution [of the Reformation] was John Calvin" (p.41)

Ramm writes:

"(i) Calvin insisted that the illumination of the Spirit was the necessary preparation for the interpreter of God's Word. (ii) Calvin, with Luther, rejected allegorical interpretation....(iii) 'Scripture interprets Scripture' was a basic conviction of Calvin. This meant...literalism...with a rejection of the four-fold meaning [of scholasticism]....Calvin wrote: 'It is the first business of an interpreter to let his author say what he does, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say' [although scholars are not sure that Calvin escaped doing this himself]....Calvin [made] a strong emphasis on grammatical exegesis, philology, the necessity of examining the context, and the necessity of comparing Scriptures which treated common subjects.... (iv) ...Calvin anticipated much of the modern spirit with reference to the interpretation of Messianic prophecy. He showed caution and reserve in these matters, and stated that the exegete ought to investigate the historical settings of all prophetic and Messianic Scriptures." (Ramm, op.cit., pp. 58,59)

Returning to Klein:

"Ironically, the spiritual children of Calvin and Luther seemed to lapse back into a Protestant form of scholasticism. In the late sixteenth century, esoteric doctrinal disputes bordering on hair-splitting tended to preoccupy the emerging Lutheran and Calvinistic churches.... [T]hey appeared to place more importance on intellectual agreement with Protestant dogma than on the practice of warm, lively, personal piety....

"From the Reformation emerged the movement called pietism. Pietism began in Germany in the seventeenth century and later spread to Western Europe and America. It represented a reaction to the arid intellectual dogmatism of Protestant scholasticism and the sterile formalism of Protestant worship services. Pietism sought to revive the practice of Christianity as a way of life through group Bible study, prayer, and the cultivation of personal morality. Its leader was Philip Jacob Spencer (1635-1705), a German pastor who preached the necessity of personal conversion to Christ and an intimate, personal relationship to God.... Spencer and the German pietists stressed the devotional, practical study of the Bible. Their method featured careful grammatical study of the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, always, however, with an eye for their devotional or practical implications. In England, another pietistic movement, the Methodism of John Wesley (1703-1791), also sought to recover a vibrant personal piety and holy life through Bible study and prayer. The renowned New England preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) represents pietism in America....Edwards resorted to typology to draw out practical applications from Scripture....

"The spirit of the Renaissance gave birth to the important intellectual movement called rationalism. Rationalism regarded the human mind as an independent authority capable of determining truth....The roots of rationalism lay in the Christian humanism of scholars like Erasmus....In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thinkers applied this tool of reason not only against the authority of the Church but also against the Bible itself....In Neil's words, rationalism 'was not a system of beliefs antagonistic to Christianity, but an attitude of mind which assumed that in all matters of religion reason is supreme.'...

"Radical advances in human science [in the nineteenth century] created popular confidence in the scientific method, which in turn produced a revolutionary method for studying history-the modern scientific study of history. Also...developmentalism-the idea that evolving historical progress underlies everything-became widespread as the philosophy of Frederick Hegel and the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin attest. The Bible did not escape the impact of these changes....Thus was born the approach known as the historical-critical method....[T]he historical-critical method presupposed a naturalistic world view that explained everything in terms of natural laws and excluded the possibility of supernatural intervention. Thus, scholars accounted for biblical miracles by means of the laws of physics, biology, and chemistry. Again, the approach believed that all history happens as an evolutionary process of development....These presuppositions brought about two decisive shifts in the focus of biblical interpretation. First, rather than seek to discern what a text meant, many scholars sought instead to discover the sources behind it. This method was called source criticism. Second, rather than accept the Bible as timeless revelation, some scholars sought to retrace the historical development presumed to underlie it....The dawn of this century witnessed the flowering of two interpretive approaches that grew out of the late nineteenth century. The first was history of religions....The second interpretive approach was the new literary method called form criticism....[It] sought to recover the shorter oral compositions from which the Bible's written sources supposedly derived....Eventually, OT form criticism began to focus more on the literary types [or genres] of the present text rather than on the Bible's oral pre-stages. Today form criticism remains an invaluable method in the toolbox of all serious Bible students."

The twentieth century also witnessed the rise of Karl Barth's "neo-orthodoxy," a reaction to liberal theology, Rudolph Bultmann's "demythologizing" of the Bible, "redaction criticism," "canon criticism," "liberation theology," "feminism," as well as numerous additional forms of literary criticism.

From our survey of the history of interpretation, let us bring together, enumerate, and define the various major approaches that have arisen and been employed.

1. Allegorism. D.R. Dungan writes:

"This method treats the word of God as if it had only been intended to be a kind of combination of metaphors-a splendid riddle....What the Bible may mean to any man will depend upon what the man would like to have it mean. The genius that would be able to make one thing out of it would be able to make it have the opposite meaning if he preferred." (Hermeneutics, Prof. D.R. Dungan; Gospel Light Publishing: Delight, AR; p.60)

The allegorical method is a favorite of many cults. Because they reject the plain teachings of the Bible and substitute for them ideas of their own that are not taught there, they must resort to the allegorical method if they are to continue to use the Bible at all. Emmanuel Swedenborg and Charles Fillmore, the founder of the Unity mind-science cult, among many others, were great allegorists.

2. The Spiritual/Mystical Method.

This was "an outgrowth of the allegorizing of the early church [which] became codified during the Middle Ages" (Ramm, p.41). A passage might have an allegorical, anagogical (eschatological or future), or tropological (way of life, moral) meaning. Both Catholic allegorizing and Protestant typology call for great caution in its use due to the opportunity for abuse and reading into a passage what one wishes it to say instead of what it actually says.

Dungan writes of the mystical method:

"This originated in heathenism....It was maintained that no man could interpret the communications from the deities unless he was en rapport with said divinities. This gave position and prominence to those men of holy calling [the priests]. The church adopted as much of heathenism as was thought best to render Christianity popular with the people; hence the same, or similar claims, had to be made for her priests....The several reformations that have taken place have removed somewhat this veneration for the priesthood, but....a common error remaining is that God's book is to be miraculously interpreted-that no one is competent to understand these things unless he has been called and divinely qualified for the task. This about as effectually removes the Bible from the masses, as the old theory of its interpretations belonging only to the priesthood. It leaves us dependent upon those highly fortunate ones who have been thus especially endowed for the work....If this theory were true, the Bible would be of no value whatever. The inspiration in these interpreters would be sufficient, without any Bible. Hence the effect of this theory has been to prevent the people from looking to the Bible for instruction....Sects and parties have grown from this seed in great abundance. Men who have wanted a following, have been thus enabled to lead away multitudes of disciples after them." (pp.58-60)

Of spiritual interpretation Dungan writes:

"This method differs only in liberality from the Mystical. Instead of supposing that a few persons are favored above the rest of mortals, it regards such power to be within the reach of every one. Piety and a possession of the light of God in the soul, will enable every one to understand the Scriptures in this spiritual way. Of course, many plain passages of the word of God will, to them, have the meaning of something very different from what has been said. For, with them, it is not so much what the Lord has said, as what He revealed to them as the meaning of that language. The Friends [Quakers] have held this idea most firmly, though there are many in other churches now who hold similar views. It is strange that those who are thus enlightened of the Lord do not interpret the Bible in the same way. Even the allegorists are better agreed.... Whatever may be the pious whim of the exegete, he will be able to find it in the Bible. Every one becomes a law of interpretation unto himself. Of course, like all other people, those who live together or read the same books will spiritualize the word of God in the same way, and reach nearly the same conclusions....No one would think of dealing thus with any other book. Law, or medicine, science, history, mechanics, anything else except religion, must be submitted to the rules of common sense. Everywhere else words are supposed to have a meaning, to be interpreted by the laws of language, but this superstition relieves its disciples from any bondage to law respecting exegesis." (pp. 62,63)

3. The Traditional/Hierarchical Method.

We combine the traditional method with the hierarchical method because the two are so connected. Briefly, this method says that the interpretation of great leaders of the past, especially the early Fathers, the traditional interpretation, is the right one. This is the view of the Roman Catholic Church, whose interpretations, in turn, are the officially correct ones, thus, the hierarchical method. Although this is the Roman Catholic approach to interpretation, it can also be found among many other groups. If it is not the early fathers whose interpretations are revered, it is other great leaders of the past or present. Dungan writes:

"Pinning our faith to the sleeves of the fathers, is one of the features of this method that remains, to some extent, even among Protestants at the present time. Just now, however, the world is waking up to the fact that error may live and thrive for a thousand years, and never be disturbed during that time. While that which has been held to be true by good and competent men should not be hastily thrown aside, yet it may be utterly false. There are many traditions which have scarcely been doubted during the whole Christian era, that never had any foundation in truth. To begin with, they were only the unstudied guesses of popular men. Others suppose that they have duly considered them, and therefore adopt them without any further investigation. Still others, seeing their names to the theory, adopt it the more readily; and so on to the end. And yet when we come to look for evidence of truth in the matter, we find it wholly wanting....[T]his method prevents any falsehood from being disturbed. As it has long been the faith of the church, it must be correct!...[This method] affirms that the church is the true exponent of the Scriptures. As the church was built before the NT Scriptures were finished, and was appointed as their guardian, it has, therefore, the right to interpret them....When we ask what is meant by interpretation being given by the church, we are told that the word church does not mean all the members of the body, but simply that portion of its membership appointed to speak for it. Hence not the members of the church are intended in any general way, but its priests only. But when priests are not agreed, then there must be provision for a higher tribunal than the parish priest. If his opinion shall be doubted, the bishop of that Holy See may settle the question. But even then there may be trouble. Bishops differ like other men, and then we will have to go to the archbishop [higher up the hierarchy, thus the term hierarchical interpretation], or the matter may be carried to the Pope, if it should merit the attention of the Holy Father." (pp.64.65)

An additional problem is that Roman Catholic interpretation is often quite inconsistent with its own rule that no interpretation is to be allowed that runs contrary to the unanimous assent of the fathers. The Robertson-Donaldson edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers makes this abundantly clear as it notes doctrine after doctrine of Catholicism that directly contradicts the writings of these early fathers.

4. The Literal Method.

We use the term "literal" in more than one sense. Usually when we say the literal interpretation is the best one, we mean the most natural or evident one. But we may also use the term "literal" to denote a strict literalism that misuses the Scriptures, as we saw exemplified in certain strains of Judaism. Of the latter Dungan writes:

"[Literalism] makes all the language of the Bible literal. It treats the word of God as if it were an essay on chemistry or mechanics....Something can be found, by taking a jingle of words, that will establish any theory....These exegetes do not pretend that David's heart melted within him like wax; that all his bones were out of joint...that he was a worm, and no man; for they have no theory dependent upon the literal use of these figures. But let their theory be involved for a moment, and then, if the literal meaning will avail them anything, they will use it, and deny that any other is possible. If the word in question has a low meaning, then it has been used only in that sense....Others...will compel a word into any peculiar meaning which is only possible to it under peculiar circumstances. But, the word having been used in that sense somewhere, it must have that unusual import in the passage under consideration....This dogmatism has fostered the idea that whatever may be proved by the Bible, no matter in what way the proof may be found, or extorted, must be right....It is not uncommon to assume a meaning for a word which it never has, and then make a play on the sound of the word, using it so repeatedly in that sense that many persons will come to the conclusion that such must be its import...." (pp.79-81)

5. The Dogmatic Method.

Dungan writes:

"[The rule of this method is] that that which was desired to be found, was looked for, and, the conclusions reached were those that were desired at the beginning. Men have been able to find what they have looked for. It came into existence during the dark ages....[and it] has been kept alive by the same power that brought it into existence. The desire to rule in spiritual matters made it necessary for leaders and parties....But men and parties hold and teach doctrines nowhere found in the Bible, and they must do something to support their theories. To go to a plain reading of the word of the living God, for support, would be ruinous; hence, resort must be had to what is known as proof. The assertion is made, and then something is found that sounds like the position already announced. This is satisfactory to those who want the theory maintained. This method was begun in Catholicism, and is continued in Protestantism....Wishes and previous conclusions change all objects like colored glasses, and convert all sounds into the assertions which the mind prefers to have made. The horse hears no sound in the morning that indicates it to be his duty to stop, but in the evening, when he has traveled all day, almost anything would convey to him that thought. In the morning there were many frightful objects that suggested the propriety of running away, but in the evening he is not troubled with any such evil apprehensions. The reason of this difference is very obvious: in the morning he wanted to run, and in the evening he wanted to stop, and he understands everything in the light of his desires....So it is with most of us. If we start out to find some particular doctrine or dogma in the Scriptures, we shall probably find it. It may not me there; there may not be anything on the subject; but we can find a hundred things that comport with that thought, and hence conclude that it must be true....A man may not only prove anything he wishes by the Bible, but he may do so by any other book, if he will treat it in the same way. [This method] exalts traditions and speculations of men to an equality with the word of God. In the heat of argument, with a determination to find a theory in the Scriptures, anything is accepted as proof. If the desired proof can not be found in the Bible, it will be found somewhere else. The fathers, the canonized authorities, the practice of the church-anything, to save the doctrine, from which we are determined not to part. This method now very greatly hinders the unity of the people of the Lord....If proof is desired, proof will be found, and the doctrine will continue to be taught....The Bible may know nothing about the doctrine, but it is kept alive by this method of assumption and proof.... We are to go to God's book, not in search of our views, with the intent to find them in some way or other, but to go to it for what it has in it for us...." (pp.73-76)

6. The Liberal Method.

Dungan calls this the "Rationalistic Method":

"[Rationalists] have differed only from the dogmatists in the standard by which all Scripture statements are to be compared. With them, "Nature is the standard, and Reason the guide." If the Bible can be made to harmonize with the notions of the reasoner, then it is to be understood as meaning what it says; but if not, it is to be regarded as mythical, or used by way of accommodation [to the belief of the people at the time], or the writer has been mistaken respecting his inspiration, or we have been imposed upon by apocryphal books....The interpreters are the guide and rule of life, and the Bible is merely called upon to sanction their conclusions...to patronize believers a little....[Included in these are the methods of Strauss, Kant, Baur, Renan, Schenkel, and Eichhorn]." (pp.67,68)

7. The Historical/Grammatical Method.

This is the name given by some to an approach to interpretation that, as its name suggests, focuses upon the historical context-the times in which the documents were written-and the grammatical evidence-the ordinary meaning of the words used at the time they were written. This method is in keeping with what should be the goal of interpretation, to determine the meaning of the author.

As Klein says,

"We are convinced that the goal of hermeneutics is to enable interpreters to arrive at the meaning of the text that the biblical writers or editors intended their readers to understand....[W]e adopt as a basic presupposition to understand the text's meaning in contrast to an approach that argues that interpretation involves bringing meaning to a text....Hermeneutics succeeds when it enables modern readers to understand the meaning of the original biblical texts-the meaning the people at the time of the texts' composition (author, editor, audience, readers) would have most likely understood....Only when we grasp the meaning in the original text, to the best of our ability, may we proceed to explore its significance for us today. We cannot always discern an author's meaning with certainty. Only the creators of documents know what they really intended, and in the case of the Bible, they are unavailable for consultation. All we have are the texts they composed....But as we explore the various dimensions behind a text by means of responsible principles of hermeneutics, we can have a certain degree of confidence, in most instances, that we have approximated the meanings the authors intended to convey. We presuppose the goal of hermeneutics to be the meaning the biblical writers 'meant' to communicate at the time of the communication, at least to the extent that those intentions are recoverable in the texts they produced. As a corollary to this, God's role in inspiration assures that the Bible spoke not only to its original readers or hearers, but it also speaks to us today. An inspired and authoritative Bible has significance and relevance beyond its original circumstances. Further, we assume that the meaning God wanted it to have today corresponds to the original meaning. On the basis of the solidarity of the human race and the spiritual plight we share, the ancient meanings will speak more or less directly to the human condition today. The questions the Bible addresses concern ultimate issues, in addition to merely localized or immediate matters. As we learn God's mind, expressed by human authors long ago, we find understanding and significance for our concerns today. Any quest for other 'meanings' from the Bible lacks that objectifying basis in God's revelation. The meaning found in the text alone provides this foundation (pp. 97,98)....[W]e need methods that are appropriate to the task of interpretation. This task requires diligence and commitment, hard work and discipline. It requires the pursuit of excellence and learning in all dimensions (language, history, culture, theology) that relate to the study of the Scriptures. If the best interpretation involves a fusing of the horizons of the ancient text and those of the modern interpreter, then interpreters must be aware of their own worlds as well as those of the texts-the worlds of the ancient Near East or the Roman Empire of the first century A.D. as well as the modern world. There is no substitute for diligent study and the use of available tools. The interpreter must cultivate a sensitivity to hear and learn from all the information available. This requires study and practice. Issues that concern factual matters in interpretation cannot be settled by an appeal to prayer or the illumination of the Holy Spirit. One cannot know through prayer that Baal was a fertility god worshiped by the Canaanites or that the Jews of Jesus' day regarded Samaritans as hated half-breeds. The identity of the 'sons of God' in Gen. 6:1-4 or the 'spirits in prison' in 1 Pet. 3:18-22 cannot be determined by simply reading and rereading these texts in a prayerful and humble way. One must study history and culture to discover the nature of the 'head coverings' in first-century Corinth (1 Cor. 11:2-16). Today the Bible interpreter is privileged to have numerous, excellent tools that provide facts and information about the ancient world and the biblical texts. Capable interpreters become acquainted with such research tools and use them to the best of their ability. If the goal of interpretation is to determine the meaning the text had for its original author and recipients, then the diligent interpreter must be committed to using historical sources. Does this mean that without a competence in biblical languages and a mastery of all the critical historical and linguistic tools no one can understand God's message in the Bible? No, for certainly no one can attain total proficiency, and even were it obtainable it would not guarantee correct interpretation. Without doubt, a simple, sincere, and uneducated believer can comprehend the central truths of the Bible. The diligent Christian with even an average education who is willing to study, and who has access to the fine tools now available, can arrive at the central meaning of virtually every passage in the Bible. The believer who can acquire expertise in the biblical languages in addition to further training in biblical studies, history, culture, and theology, will become that much more qualified to explain the meaning of most verses and even many of the more obscure or controversial texts. Finally, the scholars who have advanced training, research, and specialization are able to perform closely reasoned and technical studies, write commentaries, perform textual criticism to determine the original texts, translate and evaluate ancient literature that sheds light on the Bible, and produce modern versions of the Bible." (pp.86,87)

"...[F]or any interpretation to be true it must be consistent with: -the obvious sense of the literary context, -the facts of the historical-cultural background, -the normal meaning of the words in such a context, and -the proper grammatical relationship between the words." (p.156)

Dungan calls the method that seeks to determine the meaning of the text rather than imposing a preconceived notion on it the "inductive method":

"[The inductive method] is a leading or drawing off a general fact from a number of instances, or summing up the result of observations and experiments....In the uses of this method of interpretation, all the facts are reported, and from them the conclusion is to be reached. Of course, during the time of the collection of these facts, there will be incertitude as to whether some of them are facts or not....But when the whole number of facts are reported, it is probable that all the facts will stand approved as such, and the guesses that were incorrect will be found to be wanting in the necessary evidences, and will be easily thrown aside....But it is not always possible to obtain all facts that have bearing on any given subject....This method demands that when all the facts can not be had, as many shall be reported as possible....Before reaching a conclusion, then [as to the meaning of a given passage], all facts attainable should be gathered....The inductive method has long been used in almost all departments of investigation [e.g., law, science, medicine, history, etc.] except that of theology....Inference may be used legitimately in the ascertainment of facts, and also in the conclusions reached from them....[Inference is not, as supposed, a mere guess, but] it is the logical effort to know the facts in the case, and to ascertain the facts from phenomena...." (pp.82,83,84,87,91)

We move now from the goal, history, and methods of interpretation to the principles of sound Bible interpretation. Almost all authors on the subject offer rules, some more, others less, that serve as guidelines to interpretation. The ones we have selected below come from several different sources, and are suitable for our purposes. Most authors point out that Bible interpretation is a science as well as an art. Ramm writes:

"Hermeneutics is a science in that it can determine certain principles for discovering the meaning of a document, and in that these principles are not a mere list of rules but bear organic connection to each other. It is also an art as we previously indicated because principles or rules can never be applied mechanically but involve the skill of the interpreter." p.11)

A person could be dishonest or selective with the following rules just as he might be with the Scriptures, choosing only those rules in a given case that confirm the interpretation he likes best. But the rules are intended to force us to be objective with the passage we are seeking to interpret that we may come to an unbiased conclusion given the facts as they stand. We should not be selective with the rules-adhering to certain ones when dealing with a specific passage that will move us to draw the conclusions to which we are already disposed while ignoring others that also apply.

1. The primary aim of interpretation should be to determine the meaning of the author (both human and divine). This rule, as we have noted, stands in opposition to other approaches or aims to interpretation such as bringing one's own meaning to the text. Needless to say, this principle is not at all observed by many interpreters. Faith movement people and teachers, for example, as well as many other modern readers and teachers, have no such aim. Rather, they search the Bible for confirmation of their "faith principles," "positive confessions," or other positive promises, etc. They are not at all interested in doing the difficult work of arriving at the meaning of the author. Those who minimize or disregard the aim of the human author, considering only that the Bible is all God's Word, also make many great mistakes in interpretation. Many modern ideas and concepts are read back into Scripture.

2. Work from the assumption that the Bible is authoritative (the infallible Word of God). We have seen how other views or denials of inspiration affect one's approach to interpretation. If one accepts the infallibility of Scripture, he must work to resolve apparent discrepancies, not simply dismiss certain passages as untrue.

3. Saving faith and the Holy Spirit are necessary for us to understand and properly interpret Scripture. (The writers wrote from the background and viewpoint of their experience of the new birth and the Holy Spirit.) On the other hand, one cannot simply rely on prayer and the guidance of the Spirit to correctly interpret difficult passages. No two people would then interpret the Bible alike; there is too much subjectivity in this approach. It would be nothing more than adopting a mystical approach to interpretation, again, as people in the faith movement often do when they speak of "revelation knowledge" and the necessity of "getting the revelation of the Word in your spirit." We should seek God's help in understanding the Bible, but we must not neglect true scholarship and the sound rules of interpreting written text.

4. Each Christian has the right and responsibility to investigate and interpret the Scriptures for himself. This is evident from the fact that most NT books are specifically addressed to the believing Christian, not just Church leaders: Rom.1:17; 1 Cor.1:2; 2 Cor.1:1; Gal.1:2; Eph.1:1; Phil.1:1; Col.1:2; 1 Thess.1:11; 2 Thess.1:1; Heb.3:1; James 1:1,2; 1 Pet.1:1,2; 2 Pet.1:1; Rev.1:1. The Reformation rightly restored the Bible to the people to read, study, and interpret. But if we neglect our responsibility and fail to prepare ourselves by learning as much as possible about Bible interpretation and applying sound principles, the result will be (as it has been) disastrous and chaotic. Many strange interpretations and fragmentation of the church results.

5. Start with as an accurate a translation as possible (if you cannot read Hebrew and Greek)-the American Standard Version, New American Standard Version, NIV, or interlinear translation. You must understand what a passage says before you can understand what it means. Each translation has its strong points and weak points which means each has a more suitable purpose than another. Loose translations and paraphrases such as the Good News Bible or the Living Bible, due to their high readability, may be good for casual reading for the purpose of covering the content of the Bible, but are not suitable for real study or precise work in interpretation. For this, as a general rule, the more accurate the better. The NIV is generally more loose in translation than the American Standard or New American Standard versions. Interlinear translations or versions, which feature a line of Greek or Hebrew with English words transliterated underneath it are often good tools for interpretation. Attention should also be given to whether or not a passage has textual variants. These must not be chosen or rejected, as is often done, on the basis of whether or not they say what you would like the passage to say, but on the merits of each variant according to the textual evidence-the manuscripts that support it. Too many people think that all textual variants are equally valid and simply provide more opportunities to get the passage to say what they want.

6. Interpret the meaning of a word in relation to its sentence and context. Words have different meanings in different settings. This is true of any language. One cannot assume that it means the same thing in every occurrence. Neither can one arbitrarily select from all the possible meanings of a word the meaning that will best concur with the conclusion he has already reached. This again, is simply imposing on the text whatever meaning the interpreter desires, not seeking the meaning of the author. Many popular appeals to "the Greek" or "the Hebrew" words in a verse are nothing more than this-a manipulation of the lexical evidence to suit a desired result.

7. Interpret words in harmony with their meaning in the times of the author. (Consider 1. Its use by the author, 2. Its relation to its immediate context, 3. Its current use at the time of writing, and 4. Its root meaning. Use lexicons and commentaries.)

8. Scripture has only one meaning and should be taken literally. It has one meaning but possibly more than one application; however, each application must be consistent with the meaning. Exceptions to the "one meaning" principle may include 1) prophecy, which may have more than one fulfillment as is evident from the way NT writers see the fulfillment of certain OT prophecies, and 2) typology, where something in the OT not only has its literal historical meaning but also points to some NT doctrine or Christ. Some argue that these are not exceptions to the "one meaning" rule, since the literal meaning remains the same; only the application is different. By taking Scripture "literally" we mean in its natural, ordinary sense of the words. Exception may be figurative language such as figures of speech, parables, allegories, etc. Some argue that this is not a violation of the literal sense in that the figurative must first be taken in the ordinary sense of the words, and the fact that figurative language is being used is evident and therefore intended.

9. Seek to interpret an author's passage or verse in consistency with himself (within book, within author). This rule is in keeping with the commonly recognized fact that authors do not use words alike. Each has his own unique way of communicating, and for this he chooses certain words and terms and uses them in a unique manner. Consider first what else the same author says about related things in the same book (author's do change expression from time to time and under different circumstances, on different occasions, and when speaking on different subjects). Next consider what else the author had to say about related things in other books he wrote (if any).

10. The Bible interprets itself; Scripture best interprets Scripture. This principle from the Reformation, aimed against the Roman Catholic principle of depending upon tradition or church authority to interpret Scripture, is still a good rule for today.

11. Interpret a passage in harmony with its context-the material surrounding it (verses before and after, chapters before and after, the rest of the book, other writings by the same author, the testament, the Bible as a whole). This is usually referred to as the "literary context" of a passage (in distinction from the historical context, which we will take up in rule 12). The "immediate context" (verses before and after, chapters before and after), the book context, the author context, testament, and Bible as a whole make up what Klein calls concentric circles of context. "Each provides significant insight into the intended meaning of the passage, but a decreasing relative importance exists as one moves from immediate context to the context of the rest of the Bible. The immediate context exerts the most important control over the meaning of a specific passage." (pp.162,163).

"Context" is the all-important rule of interpretation. Klein writes:

"Every passage must be interpreted consistent with its context for three main reasons. First, taking a passage out of context violates the writer's 'flow-of-thought'....[or] series of related ideas strung together to communicate a specific concept. Most meaningful communication involves some type of logical thought-flow in which one thought leads naturally to the next in keeping with the genre of literature employed. A preceding statement prepares for the one that comes after it. The words that follow grow out of what precedes. People communicate, not with a series of randomly selected ideas, but with related ideas linked together in a logical pattern. For example, consider this confusing account: 'I heard an interesting story on the news the other night. The quarterback faded back to pass. Carbon buildup was keeping the carburetor from functioning properly. The two-inch thick steaks were burned on the outside but raw on the inside. Ten-feet-high snow drifts blocked the road. The grass needed mowing. The elevator raced to the top of the one-hundred-story building in less than a minute. The audience booed the poor performance.'...Any interpretation of a text that violates the point of its overall context is not likely to be the true one. It contradicts and ignores the normal way people use language to communicate....The second reason why an interpretation must agree with the general message of the context derives from the nature of words. Most words have more than one meaning. The literary context presents the most reliable guide for determining the most likely meaning in that setting....The third reason...is because most biblical books were written and preserved as complete documents intended to be read as a unit....Biblical verses do not exist as isolated, independent entities. They comprise individual units of larger literary works, and interpreters must understand them according to their relationship to the whole argument of the book. A book like Proverbs may appear to be an exception in that it groups many different sayings that originated independently; apart from a few sections, we may see little connection between the proverbs that occur in sequence. But even here, where the immediate literary context before and after a given proverb may give little help in understanding the meaning, the context of the whole book becomes particularly important because the writer scattered many proverbs on the same topic throughout the book. Thus the combined teaching of the book on each theme becomes the key to understanding the individual wisdom saying....The chapter and verse references do help us identify and locate passages quickly, but unfortunately they have also contributed to the widespread practice of elevating individual verses to the status of independent units of thought. Each verse is treated like a complete expression of truth that, like a number in a phone book, has no connection to what precedes or follows-each is a 'quote for the day' considered in isolation from its biblical context. This constitutes a grave danger....As written communication, biblical statements must be understood as integral parts of the larger units where they occur. Detached from their contexts, individual verses may take on meanings never intended by their writers. To qualify as the text's intended meaning, an interpretation must be compatible with the total thought of the immediate context and the book context. The meaning should be consistent with the point the text is making in that section of the writing....This is probably the single most important principle of hermeneutics since literary context is at the heart of all language communication....A text without a context is a pretext....[A] pretext [is] an alleged interpretation that only appears valid; in reality it obscures the real state of affairs. This principle serves as a warning against the popular tendency to engage in invalid proof-texting: quoting biblical passages to prove a doctrine or standard for Christian living without regard for the literary context....There is nothing wrong with quoting verses to prove a point provided we understand them according to their contextual meaning (under the correct circumstances proof-texting can be valid). Before listing any verse in support of a position, we should first check the literary context to insure that the passage is about the same subject and really does have the meaning that proves the point....The smaller the passage being studied, the greater the chance of error. Short texts usually contain very little information about the general theme of the larger passage. They give us less evidence about their meaning....Simply stated, large passages have a built-in literary context; short passages do not. Normally speaking, the paragraph constitutes the basic unit of thought in prose. Focusing on the meaning of a paragraph rather than a verse, phrase, or single word (which unfortunately is the emphasis of some Bible teachers) increases the odds of discovering the accurate meaning." (pp.156-162)

Almost everyone acknowledges that observing the context of a passage is a crucial rule of interpretation; nevertheless, sad to say, it is not always practiced by those who acknowledge it. Often it is employed very selectively-for certain passages, but not others. Sometimes context is abused by making a passage fit a desired interpretation by forcing onto it the meaning of a nearby passage which is truly not on the same subject.

12. Since Scripture originated in a historical context, it can be understood only in the light of biblical history (to whom was it written, what was the writer's background, what was the experience or occasion that gave rise to the message, who are the main characters?).

Klein states it thus:

"The correct interpretation of a biblical passage will be consistent with the historical-cultural background of the passage. There are three reasons why this principle is important: perspective, mindset, and contextualization. First, the circumstances in which communication occurs substantially affect, if not determine, meaning....If someone shows us a personal letter, even if the letter comes from a mutual friend, some things may need explanation because they refer to an experience known only by the writer and recipient. Lacking this information, another reader has difficulty making sense out of these references....Apostles or others sent these first-century letters to specific people living in certain places concerning particular circumstances in their lives....To correctly interpret these books today, the reader needs to understand as much as possible about the details of this historical and cultural background..... Present-day Bible interpreters need to put themselves in the shoes of the writer and initial recipients, that is, they need to understand the passage from their perspective. Biblical writers did not have our situation in mind. They wrote from the perspective of their own circumstances, and we must understand their writings from that vantage point. The second reason why a passage must be interpreted consistent with its historical-cultural setting grows out of the possibly subtle factor of mindset. Statements not only communicate ideas; they also cause emotional impact. Each culture manifests a system of values that regulates this effective or feeling dimension of discourse....We must determine the impact that the biblical message would have had in its original setting. The third reason ["contextuali-zation" (using the word another way)]...focuses on expressing [the] message [of Bible writers] accurately in today's world....Contextualizing biblical truth requires interpretive bifocals. First, we need a lens to look back into the background of the biblical world to learn the intended meaning. Then, we need another lens to see the foreground to determine how to best express-contextualize that truth for today's world....Effective exegesis not only perceives what the message meant originally but also determines how best to express that meaning to one's contemporaries....Any suggested explanation of a passage that would have been inconsistent with or inconceivable in the historical or cultural setting of the author and recipients cannot be valid....Fortunately, archaeological findings, historical research, and sociological and cultural studies have provided a vast reservoir of information for this task....Understanding each passage according to its background involves determining how the biblical setting was like ours and how it differed from ours....Those wishing to interface the biblical message with our contemporary culture face significant challenges and risks. One perennial danger concerns syncretism. Generally, 'the combining of different forms of belief or practice,' it comes to have a subjective and more pejorative sense: 'The subjective meaning includes an evaluation of such intermingling from the point of view of one of the religions involved.' So, for Christians it denotes the union of biblical and nonbiblical beliefs to form a hybrid, and thus unacceptable, religion....Like Jeroboam of old [1 Kings 13-14], many today would blend together their understanding of the Christian faith with the best elements of the 'religions' in their contemporary culture [e.g., psychology, mind science, success motivation, evolution, feminism]." (pp.172-177)

13. Interpret personal experience in the light of Scripture, not vice versa. It is a common mistake to read into or out of the Scriptures things that fit our experience. Many non-Pentecostal groups do this with the miraculous gifts of the Spirit in Acts and 1 Corinthians. Others do it with practical holiness, insisting that one cannot live above sin. We must let the Bible say what it says and seek to bring our experience into line with it, not try to make the Bible fit our experience.

14. Bible examples are authoritative for all only when supported by a command. Believers had all things in common for a time in the book of Acts, and churches observe the Lord's supper every Sunday, but neither of these is supported by a command. Groups that do not follow these examples, then, cannot be regarded unscriptural.

15. Due consideration should be given to the literary style and genre of the passage (narrative, didactic, law, poetry, prophecy, parable, apocalypse). The rules we are listing here are general and apply primarily to prose (narrative, history, teaching, etc.). In poetry, prophecy, parable, and apocalypse, special considerations and possibly exceptions must be made because the kind of writing is quite different. Much more imagery and figures of speech are used, for instance.

16. Church history is important but not decisive in the interpretation of Scripture. This rule runs counter to the Roman Catholic reverence for tradition. Surely it is a great mark against any interpretation that it is novel, that it runs counter to all of church history-for example, the teaching of a pre-tribulation rapture. And consensus on an interpretation in church history (especially the earlier writers) is weighty and must be carefully considered, but even this may not be decisive. If an interpretation was the right one in the beginning and changed over the centuries or was lost, this must be reasonably accounted for.

17. The promises of God throughout the Bible are available to the Holy Spirit for the believers of every generation. God may use any promise to encourage you; however, remember that general promises apply to everyone while specific ones apply only to those to whom they were given. Not all of God's promises to Abraham belong to us even though we are "Abraham's seed." The general promises that He would be our God and justify us do, but not the promise of the real estate of Canaan, for instance, as well as other things do not. What God commanded of Israel in the law is binding on us only if it is repeated in the NT, and it is good to be able to cite a NT counterpart for general OT promised blessings as well.

18. Give preference to that meaning which is clearest and most evident. When a literal meaning is impossible, it will be evident. Since the Bible is a "spiritual" book, inspired by the Spirit of God, some seem to assume that the more "deep," secret, subtle, even strange an interpretation is, the more likely it is the right one. But this runs contrary to the way language communication works.

19. When an inanimate object is used to describe a living being, the statement may be considered figurative. Corollary: when life and action are attributed to inanimate objects, the statement may be considered figurative. For example, Jesus is called "bread," "light," and the "door."

20. When an expression is out of character with the thing described, the statement may be considered figurative. Caution must be exercised here, however, because many simply superimpose their ideas of what is out of character upon the Biblical text. Faith teachers suppose that making people sick or killing them is out of character for God and so they make all kinds of contortions to bring the hundreds of plain Biblical statements to this very effect into line with their "principle."

21. The principle parts and figures of a parable represent certain principles. Consider only these principle parts and figures when drawing conclusions. Parables are one of several classes of literature in the Bible that require special consideration (later). Often people read far too much into incidental details in them rather than sticking to the main point or points of the parable in interpreting them.

22. Though God's revelation in the Scriptures is progressive, both Old and New Testaments are essential parts of this revelation and form a unit. For instance, progressive revelation does not mean that the OT presents a lower view of God or what His standards are. Some ignore the difference between the Old and New Testaments while others make too much of a separation between the two, ignoring the relation between them. By "progressive revelation" is meant that God's revelation to man of His will and purpose has unfolded in successive stages through history. We should keep in mind what degree of revelation of His will was available at the time of the writing of each author and book. But this does not mean, as many modern interpreters suppose, that later writers corrected earlier and more primitive views and mistakes.

23. When two doctrines taught in the Bible appear to be contradictory, accept both as scriptural in the confident belief that they will resolve themselves into a higher unity. Do not wrench the Scriptures apart in attempting to force one into the other or to compromise them. Examples: the two-fold nature of Christ (God and man), God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, God's foreknowledge and man's free will, the security of the believer and the doctrine of continuance, faith and works. Too often, one side is stressed to the exclusion of the other, or one side is denied, or one side is distorted to make it fit the other instead of leaving their harmony unresolved or holding both sides depending upon the point of view. This principle is a corollary of the Bible being its best interpreter and is an outgrowth of our doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, that it is equally inspired in all its parts. Not only does God make no mistakes, He doesn't contradict Himself either.

24. A teaching merely implied in Scripture may be considered biblical when a comparison of related passages supports it. Example: we may deduce that women may partake of communion because they are a part of the body of Christ as well as men, although this is nowhere specifically stated. This principle runs counter to rigid literalism. On the other hand, we must exercise caution not to assume something must be in harmony with the Bible simply because it is so universally acknowledged or seems so right.

25. Do not violate one principle of interpretation in order to substantiate another-take all the principles objectively and impartially into account. As we said, many are just as partial and subjective in applying the rules as they are with the Scriptures themselves, citing the principles that will make their desired interpretation plausible while ignoring those that will not.

26. Sound interpretation requires honesty and objectivity, not pursuing only the information which you know will lead you to your preconceived conclusion. It requires distancing oneself from preconceived ideas and familiar interpretations as much as possible. We all have certain preconceived notions and biases; we should do all we can to resist them and take the Scriptures for what they say, not what we want them to say or think they must say.

27. The primary purpose of the Bible is to change our lives, not increase our knowledge. Academic pursuit of information helpful to interpretation should always be accompanied by the search to know how the Bible impacts our lives, what God wants us to do with what He is telling us.

(Rules 1,9,15,18: H.E. Dana, Searching the Scriptures; Central Seminary Press: Kansas City, MO; 1946. Rules 2-4,6-8,10-14,16,17,19-25,27: Walter Henrichsen, A Layman's Guide to Interpreting Scripture; Lamplighter Books [Zondervan]: Grand Rapids,MI; 1985.)

The 27 principles above apply mainly to prose, that is, narrative and teaching. Let us now look at four areas of the Bible that due to their literary nature call for special consideration-poetry, prophecy, parables, and typology.

We say "OT poetry" because most, but not all, the poetry in the NT is quotations from the Old. There is other poetry in the NT-songs, etc.-but there is no real poetry literature like the OT books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Klein writes:

"Comprising about one-third of the entire Bible, poetry is the second most common literary feature. It even abounds outside the so-called poetical books like Psalms, Job, Song of Solomon, and Lamentations. OT narrative books periodically present long sections of poetry, and most prophetic oracles take poetic form. Also, contrary to a common impression, poetry dots the pages of the NT, in original forms as well as in quotations of the OT....What is poetry? Poetry consists of written compositions typified by terseness, vivid words, and a high degree of structure. Put differently, poetry displays a higher degree of structure, sound, and language than prose. We say to a 'higher degree' because many prose texts also have poetic elements....The more intense, dense, and compact a literary piece is, the closer it approaches the poetry side of the continuum....Read aloud, each [line of a poem] shows natural rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables....[T]he rhythmic structure dictates an economy of language. The poet...carefully carve[s] his thoughts into a few precise words that fit the rhythmic scheme; there are no 'wasted words'....The poet...craft[s] rhyme and repetition into his lines so they sound pleasant when read aloud....[T]he poet offers concrete images to convey an abstract idea....Through vivid language...the poet wants us to experience his topic....[H]is words appeal not so much to our reason as to our imagination. They paint imaginary pictures that allow us to experience the topic-its feel, sights, smells, touch, or taste....In sum, 'poetry is a language of images that the reader must experience as a series of imagined sensory situations.'...Prose does make use of poetic language, particularly prose that is written for public presentation. The distinct attributes of poetry, however, are its sparseness and its restricted structure; these are not intrinsic to prose. Though prose may be compact and carefully structured, its structure is formed of sentences and paragraphs. The structure of poetry, by contrast, consists of tightly arranged lines and compact language....

"Traditional English poetry uses two aspects of sound: rhyme and meter....Meter involves the rhythmic alteration between accented and unaccented syllables within each poetic line....Hebrew poetry differs from English poetry in its uses of sound. For example, it lacks the rhyme that English speakers deem so basic to poetry....Does Hebrew poetry have regular meter? [Since 1970 this has been the object of scholarly dispute.]...

"Besides rhythm, Hebrew poets also used the sounds of words to create poetic effects. Knowing these various uses is an extremely helpful aid to proper interpretation of biblical poems. Assonance is the repetition of the same or closely similar vowel sounds in a series of words.... Alliteration offers a similar use of sounds: the repetition of the same or similar-sounding consonants within a poetic unit....Hebrew poetry also uses the familiar sound device of wordplay ['pun']....Slightly more sophisticated is the 'root-play,' a pun in which one word's consonants reappear in later words but in a different order....Word repetition is another common type of wordplay. In this case the poet simply repeats a word or words, perhaps in slightly different forms, throughout a series of poetic lines....Finally, poets sometimes use onomatopoeia, that is, words whose own sounds imitate the actual sounds of the actions they portray ['buzz,' 'babble,' 'gurgle']....

"Scholars refer to the structure of Hebrew poetry as parallelism of members....Many people understand 'parallelism' to mean that a second poetic line merely restates or contrasts the point of the previous line in different words. They assume that an equal sign (=) links the lines together. Actually, parallelism is that phenomenon whereby two or more successive poetic lines strengthen, reinforce, and develop each other's thought. As a kind of emphatic additional thought, the follow-up lines further define, specify, expand, intensify, or contrast the first....Types of Parallelism....1. ...subordination....one stich [line] is grammatically subordinate to its parallel. In Psa.111:6, for example, the second stich describes the means by which Yahweh accomplished what the first stich stated: 'He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations.'...It is also common for one stich to state the reason for the claims of the other, as Ex.15:21 shows: Sing to the Lord,/ for he is highly exalted./ The horse and its rider/ he has hurled into the sea.'...2. A parallelism of contrast occurs when a poet juxtaposes stichs that contrast each other. Its best known form is the old 'antithetical parallelism,' which Proverbs 11:20 (NCV) illustrates: 'The Lord hates those with evil hearts/ but is pleased with those who are innocent.'...We call this an 'antithetical' contrast because it speaks of opposites that share no common ground....Occasionally, parallel lines may convey a contrast that is not antithetical....Consider Judg.5:25: 'He asked for water,/ and she gave him milk....'...3. In cases of parallelism of continuation, succeeding parallel lines present a progression of thought. For example,...Isa.40:9...: 'You who bring good tidings to Zion,/ go up on a high mountain./ You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem,/ lift up your voice with a shout,/ lift it up, do not be afraid;/ say to the towns of Judah,/ "Here is your God!"'...4. In a parallelism of comparison, parallel lines form a simile, that is, a comparison....Psa.103:13 illustrates this...: 'As a father has compassion on his children,/ so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.'....Sometimes, however, the comparison is implicit rather than explicit....because the Hebrew text lacks the explicit signals of the simile-the words 'like' or 'as.' Instead, it simply aligns two stichs side-by-side without clarifying their connection (i.e., a metaphor). Consider how Psa.125:2 reads literally: 'Jerusalem-mountains surround it;/ And YHWH surrounds his people....'...5. In the parallelism of specification, each succeeding stich makes more specific what the opening stich states in general terms....Isa.45:12 illustrates this...(NRSV, our italics): 'I made the earth (general)/ and created humankind upon it; (specific)/ it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, (general)/ and I commanded all their host.' (specific)....In other cases of this type, succeeding stichs provide an explanation of the opening line....Isa.48:20b-21...: 'Say, "The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob./ And they did not thirst in the deserts where he led them;/ water from a rock he made flow for them./ He split a rock and water gushed out.' ...[Each succeeding line] become[s] increasingly more specific, each implicitly answering a question arising from its immediate parallel....In yet another variety, the second stich may specify the purpose of the first....Prov.4:1, for example: 'Listen, my sons, to a father's instruction;/ pay attention [to a father's instruction] and gain understanding.'...6. The last major use of parallelism is intensification. Intensification occurs when the second stich of a couplet restates the first in a more pointed, extreme, or forceful way. To paraphrase the dynamics, we might say the second develops the first by saying, 'Not only that but more so!'...'How could one man chase a thousand,/ or two put ten thousand to flight...(Deut.32:30)....'Your granaries will be filled with abundance,/ with new wine your vats will burst.' (Prov.3:10, Alter's translation, our italics)....

"Unfortunately, a preoccupation with the phenomenon of parallelism too often creates the impression that parallelism alone is the essence of biblical poetry....We will treat two aspects of poetic language: imagery and poetic devices....Poets are essentially artists who paint pictures with words. From their poetic palette they draw images-'words that evoke a sensory experience in our imagination.' If well chosen, those words conjure up vivid mental pictures and stir up powerful emotions....Devices of Poetic Language....A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using the words 'like' or 'as.'...'Now then, I will crush you/ as a cart crushes/ when loaded with grain.' (Amos 2:13) 'Like a lily among thorns/ is my darling among the maidens. (Song 2:2)...Like a simile, a metaphor also draws a comparison between two things; however, the metaphor draws the correspondence more bluntly. Omitting the words 'like' or 'as,' it states straightforwardly 'A is B.'...'Your word is a lamp to my feet/ and a light for my path' (Ps.119:105)....By personification a poet writes about something nonhuman-an inanimate object or abstract idea-as if it were human....'Send forth your light and your truth,/ let them guide me;/ let them bring me to your holy mountain,/ to the place where you dwell. (Psa.43:3)....'Let the rivers clap their hands,/ let the mountains sing together for joy.' (Psa.98:8)....The device of apostrophe closely resembles that of personification....[It] is 'a direct address to someone or something absent as though it were present.'...'Therefore, you kings, be wise;/ be warned, you rulers of the earth.' (Psa.2:10)....Hyperbole is 'conscious exaggeration for the sake of effect.'...'At this my heart pounds/ and leaps from its place.' (Job 37:1)....'Saul and Jonathan-in life they were loved and gracious,/ and in death they were not parted./ They were swifter than eagles,/ they were stronger than lions.' (2 Sam.1:23)....The device called metonymy features the substitution of a word or idea for one closely associated with it....'You prepare a table [meal] before me/ in the presence of my enemies. (Psa.23:5a) The high places of Isaac [Israel] will be destroyed/ and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined. (Amos 7:9) Truthful lips endure forever,/ but a lying tongue lasts only a moment [speakers who tell the truth or lie] (Prov. 12:19)....In synecdoche, a part of something serves to represent the whole idea or item....something specific as a symbol of something larger....'I will turn your religious feasts into mourning,/ and all your singing [the whole of festival activities] into weeping.' (Amos 8:10) 'I do not trust in my bow,/ my sword does not bring me victory...' [weapons] (Psa.44:6) 'And it shall come to pass afterward,/ that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh....' [people] (Joel 2:28)....[I]rony is a device] in which a writer says the very opposite of what he means....'Go to Bethel and sin;/ go to Gilgal and sin yet more'.... (Amos 4:4b) 'And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter"-the handsome price at which they priced me!' (Zech.11:13)....

"In order to interpret the meaning conveyed through poetic devices, the student must take the following steps. First, identify the kind of figure of speech present (i.e., simile, metaphor, personification). Remember that more than one device may be present in the same biblical text....Second, interpret the figure of speech. From analysis of its literal meaning, determine its figurative meaning....Finally, the student should determine the function of the figure in its context. In other words, why did the poet use this particular figure? What did it contribute to the meaning he desired to convey?...Thus far, our discussion may have created the [mistaken] impression that all Hebrew poetry consists of only a few lines....The Bible's parallel stichs actually form part of larger structural units we call sense units. A sense unit constitutes the major subdivision of a poem....The key indicators of a poem's sense units are as follows: (1) changes in content, grammar, literary form, or speaker; (2) the concentration of keywords in a section; and (3) the appearance of refrains or repeated statements.... (pp.215-225, 230-234, 241-252)

"...Martin Luther...said of the prophets: 'They have a queer way of talking, like people who, instead of proceeding in an orderly manner, ramble off from one thing to the next, so that you cannot make head or tail of them or see what they are getting at.' Probably no part of Scripture mystifies and frustrates readers more than the prophets. Indeed, OT prophecy presents a veritable snake pit of interpretive problems....Traditionally, one describes the content of prophecy under the terms forthtelling and foretelling. Better known, foretelling refers specifically to predictive prophecy-the prophets' predictions about the future....Contrary to popular impression, however, very little of OT prophecy is predictive prophecy. According to Fee and Stuart, 'Less than 2 percent of OT prophecy is messianic. Less than 5 percent specifically describes the New Covenant age. Less than 1 percent concerns events yet to come [after the NT period].' Instead, most of it involves forthtelling-messages for a prophet's own audience about their own day or the near future....[W]e need to be aware of several general characteristics of prophecy....First, the prophets have a telescopic view of the future....[They] saw future events as a succession of distant 'peaks' (i.e., events) without an awareness of the large time gaps between them. Isaiah 9:6,7 provides a good example: 'For to us a child is born,/ to us a child is given..../ He will reign on David's throne..../ from that time on and forever.'... According to the NT, the present so-called church age comes between Christ's birth and his future earthly reign. But Isaiah sees the birth and reign of this future Davidic ruler as telescoped, i.e., chronologically close rather than separated. There is a corollary principle related to the prophet's telescopic vision. The prophets understood that history had two major periods-the present age and the age to come-although they did not always make a hard-and-fast distinction between the two. Most prophecies concern the present age, even those that predict events in the distant future. But introductory phrases like 'in the latter days,' 'in that day,' or 'days are coming' often identify a prophecy about the age to come (e.g., Isa.2:2; 11:10,11; 24:21; Jer.23:5; Zech.14:1; etc.) Hence, when we relate such OT prophecies to the NT, the first coming of Jesus introduced the future age to come into the present age....[W]e must interpret OT prophecies about the age to come in terms of the historical turning point that Jesus initiated. Again, while OT prophets saw the coming age as a whole, the NT presents it as having several major phases....it has at least two periods: the present church age and the period after Christ's second coming....We must add a second characteristic of prophecy: it may have two fulfillments, one near the prophet's lifetime and one long past it. We know of these multiple fulfillments because the NT reapplies an already-fulfilled prophecy to a later event. For example, God promises David that his son, Solomon, will succeed him as king (2 Sam.7:12-16). In v.14, God even promises Solomon that 'I will be his father, and he will be my son.' When Solomon later became king (1 Kings 1-2), this prophecy found its fulfillment. But Heb.1:5 also applies 2 Sam.7:14 to Jesus, not just as son of David, but as son of God....[M]any prophecies are conditional [Jonah 3:4-10; Jer.26:1-6; 7:1-15; 36:1-7, Jerusalem would not be destroyed if they repented]....This implies that readers must interpret predictive prophecy with a certain tentativeness....On the other hand, we still regard the prophecies that involve the major milestones in God's plan for history as unconditional....

"Assuming we understand what a prophecy says, what can we say about its fulfillment?....As we might expect, prophecies commonly find literal fulfillment in subsequent events....The NT also indicates that literal OT prophecies may reach fulfillment in non-literal ways. They may, for example, find a figurative fulfillment [Zech.13:7-9; Mt.26:31].... The NT also shows that other literal OT prophecies have what we call a literal/spiritual fulfillment [Amos 9:11,12 with Acts 15:16,17; Jeremiah 31:31-34 with Hebrews 8:8-12; 10:15-17]....While some interpreters tend to agree with us, they argue that prophecies like Amos 9 and Jeremiah 31 still have a future literal fulfillment involving the nation of Israel....Some OT prophecies receive unexpected fulfillment in the NT [Isa.52-53]....Finally, some OT and NT prophecies remain unfulfilled....

"In summary we suggest several basic principles for the proper interpretation of prophecy: 1. The clarity of a text determines the degree of confidence we may hold in its interpretation. The clearer the text, the greater the certainty about what it means. On the other hand, the more obscure a text, the more humbly and tentatively we must approach its interpretation. 2. The Bible itself offers the best guide to the interpretation of prophecy. It indicates which prophecies were fulfilled during the OT and NT periods and suggests patterns for interpreting OT prophecies today. 3. The student should seek the most likely time for the fulfillment of a prophecy in history. Here we must apply a knowledge of biblical history as well as of the NT's teaching about the future....4. Unless the NT indicates otherwise, the student should relate OT prophecies about Israel and Zion to those whose fulfillment the NT specifically teaches.....5. The student should strive to understand a text's major points rather than all of its symbolic details....6. We recommend that longer prophetic books be read in small sections (i.e., a context of verses, a whole chapter, or several chapters, etc.). God did not intend the prophets to be read through at one sitting. The goal is to understand the major point(s) that each section stresses. 7. As for application,....find modern life situations analogous to the one which a prophetic section handles. Ask the question: What does this section say about that analogous situation?

"[A]pocalyptic [prophecy] describes prophecies in which God 'reveals' [Gk. apokalypsis, 'revelation'] his hidden future plans, usually through dreams or visions with elaborate and at times strange symbolism or numbers....The apocalyptic genre presents unique challenges to the interpreter....Read OT apocalyptic in connection with NT apocalyptic like Mt.24 and Revelation....[M]ove beyond the detail to determine the main points...." (pp.302-312)

Ramm writes:

"Dodd's definition is that a parable 'at its simplest...is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to rouse it into active thought.'...There are four elements to a parable: (i) A parable is some commonly known earthly thing, event, custom, or possible occurrence.... farming, marriages, kings, feasts, household relationships, business arrangements, or customs of the peoples....(ii) Beyond the earthly element is the spiritual lesson, or theological truth which the parable intends to teach. (iii) This earthly element bears an analogical relationship to the spiritual element....(iv) Because a parable has two levels of meaning every parable stands in need of interpretation. The actors, elements, and actions need to be identified [without allegorizing them]....

"Rules for the Interpretation of Parables....(1) The perspective principles inform us that to adequately interpret the parables we need to understand them in their relationship to Christology and the kingdom of God....In the Gospels it is the Christ who is teaching about his kingdom, and in some measure is reflectively teaching truth about himself....The second perspective principle is the kingdom principle....Adequate interpretation of the parables must now be based upon an understanding of the kingdom of God and the relationship of Jesus Christ and His gospel to that kingdom....(i) First of all, the kingdom has come. In some sense it is in existence from Christ's first preaching, and men are entering it [John 3:3; Matt.21:31; Lk.17:20,21]....Being here the kingdom continues through this age. The parables of the kingdom were also prophecies of the kingdom....(ii) The kingdom is eschatological in character. There is a harvest at the end of the age....(2) The cultural principles....In general, the parables are drawn from material familiar to a poor, agricultural peasant. The manners, customs, and material culture exhibited in the parables amply substantiate this....In the interpretation of every parable it is necessary to recover as much as possible the local color employed in it....(3) Exegetical principles....(i) Determine the one central truth the parable is attempting to teach....the golden rule of parabolic interpretation....'The details are not intended to have independent significance.'...(ii) Determine how much of the parable is interpreted by the Lord Himself....(iii) Determine whether there are any clues in the context concerning the parable's meaning....(iv) The comparative rule-compare the parable with any possible OT association, and with the parables as recited in one or more other of the Gospels....(4) Doctrinal principles....We ought not to read our theological debates back into the parables. Primary consideration should be given to what we judge to be the meaning which the immediate listeners garnered from the parable....[C]onstant check must be made with students of rabbinics to see whether anything in their studies reveals beliefs about controversial matters in parabolic interpretation....(pp.254-264)

Unlike the other three subjects of special consideration in interpretation we have looked at, typology is not a kind of literature in the Bible. It is rather a means of showing the interrelation of the OT with the New. Persons, institutions, offices, events, actions, and things in the NT are viewed as being represented by comparable persons and things in the Old. Ramm offers these definitions of typology:

"...Muenscher defines a type as: 'In the science of theology it properly signifies the preordained representative relations which certain persons, events and institutions of the OT bear to corresponding persons, events, and institutions in the New." Miller's definition is: 'Typology is the doctrine of symbols and types; the doctrine that persons and things in the NT, especially the person and work of Christ, are symbolized, or prefigured, by persons and things in the OT.'...(pp.208,209)

"In the history of typological exegesis certain schools of interpretation are discovered....(1) One group of interpreters saw too much as typical. [The apostolic Fathers and early apologists and medievalists in particular.]...(2) Directly opposite to this group are those rationalists and critics who see the entire typological method of interpretation as a case of forced exegesis. [They deny divine inspiration of the Scriptures and the possibility of predictive prophecy.]...(3) [Some have argued] that a type is a type only if the NT specifically so designates it to be such. This is a very strict principle and was advocated to curtail much of the fanciful and imaginary in typological interpretation....(4) [Finally there is a] school we may designate as the moderate school...[which holds] that types were of two sorts.....An innate type is a type specifically declared to be such in the NT. An inferred type is one that, not specifically designated in the NT is justified for its existence by the nature of the NT materials on typology....The very implication of Hebrews itself is that only a fraction of the great parallels between the two Covenants is considered, and that it is left to our Christian maturity to draw the other parallels [Heb.5:11; 9:5]. If the whole (e.g., the Tabernacle, the wilderness journey) is typical, then the parts are typical. The avoidance of extravagance in typology is not to be accomplished by narrowing typology mercilessly to a small field, but by establishing typology from an empirical investigation of Scriptures themselves." (pp.199-202)

"The justification for typological interpretation is as follows: (1)...The strong prophetic element in the OT establishes a real and vital [tie] between the two Testaments. The fact of prophecy establishes the principle that the New is latent in the Old, and that the Old is patent in the New. The form of prophecy may be either verbally predictive or typically predictive....(2) Our Lord's own use of the OT is His invitation to us to find Him in the OT [Luke 24:25-44; John 5:39-44]....Paul uses the sacrificial language of the OT in speaking of the death of Christ (Eph.5:2; 1 Cor.5:7) thus showing that Christ is in the offerings. Hebrews clearly teaches that the Tabernacle which was, is now realized in a present heavenly tabernacle of which Christ is the minister of the sanctuary (Heb.9:9-11,23-24)....And certainly from Paul's reference in 1 Cor.10:4 Christ was in the wilderness wanderings ['the rock']. It is the conviction of many scholars that the Christian interpretation of the OT stems directly from the teachings and example of our Lord. (3) Even more specific is the vocabulary of the NT with reference to the nature of the Old. The following words are used in the New of the Old. Hypodeigma means a sign suggestive of anything, a representation, a figure, a copy, an example. Typos and typikos...mean a mark of a blow, the figure formed by a blow, an impression, a form, a letter, a doctrine, an example, a pattern, a type. Skia...means a shade, a sketch, an outline....Parabole means a placing by the side, hence a comparison, a likeness, a similitude. Eikon means an image, a figure, a likeness. Antitypon means a repelling blow, an echoing, a reflecting, a thing formed after a pattern, a counterpart, an antitype. Allegoreo means to tell a truth in terms of a narrative. These NT words referring to the nature of the OT establish the typical character of the OT. In addition to this is the weight of the entire book of Hebrews, for it is almost completely devoted to a study of the typical character of the OT...." (pp.196-199)

"In the history of interpretation the question has been occasionally asked whether allegorical and typological interpretation are [the same thing]....[We believe it is possible to separate them.] Allegorical interpretation is the interpretation of a document whereby something foreign, peculiar, or hidden is introduced into the meaning of the text giving it a proposed deeper or real meaning '....substituting a whole range of persons or things from an entirely different sphere of experience.' Typological interpretation is specifically the interpretation of the OT based on the fundamental theological unity of the two Testaments whereby something in the Old shadows, prefigures, [outlines] something in the New. Hence what is interpreted in the Old is not foreign or peculiar or hidden, but rises naturally out of the text due to the relationship of the two Testaments....Dana states that the difference is that the typological method is based on the theological connectedness of the two Testaments, whereas allegorical interpretation is 'assigning to Scripture an assumed meaning different from its plain literal meaning, derived deductively from some abstract or philosophical conception. It takes the events and ideas of Scripture as symbols beneath which are concealed profound or hidden meanings.'...(pp.202-205)

"By analyzing [the] definitions the following elements of a type are manifest: (i) In a type there must be a genuine resemblance in form or idea between the OT reference and the NT counterpart. The connection between type and antitype must not be accidental nor superficial but real and substantial. (ii) This resemblance must be designated....In fanciful systems of typology designation springs from the imagination of the interpreter either on arbitrary or superficial grounds....A type is properly designated when either it is so stated to be one in the NT, or wherein the NT states a whole as typical (e.g., the Tabernacle, and the Wilderness Wanderings) and it is up to the exegetical ability of the interpreter to determine additional types in the parts of these wholes. (iii) Dissimilarity is to be expected. There is no one-to-one correspondence between type and antitype. Great care must be taken to lift out of the OT item precisely that which is typical and no more....One of the cardinal errors in typology is to make typical the elements of dissimilarity in a type....

"...[T]ypes are prophetic symbols or as Davidson puts it, 'Typology is a species of prophecy.' We suggest the following rules of interpretation: (1) Note the typology of the NT and see how it treats the subject. This much immediately is apparent: the NT deals with the great facts of Christ and redemption; with the great moral and spiritual truths of Christian experience, when it touches on typology. It does not deal with minutiae, and with incidentals. We should then learn that in typology we should restrict our efforts to major doctrines, central truths, key spiritual lessons and major moral principles....(2) Note that the NT specifies the Tabernacle with its priesthood and offerings, and the Wilderness Wanderings as the two major areas of typical materials. This indicates the wholes which have typical parts. By no means is typology restricted to these areas, but these are the areas where most of the typical material is to be drawn....(3) Locate in any given type the typical and the accidental....Much about the Tabernacle has no typical significance and this ought to be clearly apprehended. Not all the actions of the priests, nor all the elements of the sacrifices have precise NT counterparts....Temptations to be novel, clever, original or shocking should be resisted....(4) Do not prove doctrine from types unless there is clear NT authority....Types may be used to illustrate NT truth....In general a humble spirit should characterize our interpretations of typology....Typology involves two layers of meaning and this allows for the intrusion of imagination....

"Properly speaking symbolism is a special study of its own...Types differ from symbols in that 'while a symbol may represent a thing either past, present, or future, a type is essentially a prefiguring of something future from itself....' A type (as previously indicated) is a species of prophecy, but a symbol is a timeless figurative representation. A lion as a symbol of strength or of voracious hunger does not predict anything in the future....For the interpretation of symbols we suggest the following: 1) Those symbols interpreted by the Scriptures are the foundation for all further studies in symbolism. When the Scripture interprets a symbol then we are on sure ground. These interpretations may be used as general guides for all further studies in symbols....(2) If the symbol is not interpreted we suggest the following: (i) Investigate the context thoroughly....(ii) By means of a concordance check other passages which use the same symbol and see if such cross references will give the clue. (iii) Sometimes the nature of the symbol is a clue to its meaning (although the temptation to read the meanings of our culture into these symbols must be resisted)....(iv) Sometimes comparative studies of Semitic culture reveal the meaning of the symbol....(3) Be aware of double imagery in symbols. There is nothing in the symbolism of the Bible which demands that each symbol have one and only one meaning....The lion is at the same time the symbol of Christ ('the Lion of the tribe of Judah') and of Satan (the lion seeking to devour Christians (1 Peter 5:8)....There is no question that there is a basic symbolism of numbers in the Bible....Daniel and Revelation are especially rich in the symbolic use of numbers. Apart from a few basic agreements on some of the numbers, fancy characterizes most studies on the subject....Closely associated with symbolism is the symbolism of metals and colors....There is at least one general principle to guide in such matters of symbolism. Careful investigation must be made of the meaning of the terms in the original, of their examination of their associations to see what the natural symbolism might be. (pp. 209-219)

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