(Edited: 10.14.

19)
Methodologies Section

INTERPRETATION

SOURCES:
 Interpretation, History and Principles of; IDB, Vol. 2, p.718-724
 Defending Your Faith; a video series lecture #4 of Dr. R. C. Sproul
 Personal Comments: (in italics)

(What is the question and the problem you are trying to solve? Anyone who engages in a
serious study of something has a problem that needs solving and the solution begins with an
inquiry. Whatever question you may have in mind when you embark on a serious study of the
Scriptures―the Christian Bible―you would want to get the most accurate answer to your
inquiry and closest to the truth in order to best solve the problem. The best way to achieve that
goal is to subject your search to the best process of interpretation there is. At this point, we do
not have a single process of interpretation. What we all have are differing methods; which, if
we try to use them, either partially or all of them totally, is like using a shotgun that requires no
precision aiming on the part of the shooter to shoot down a single fowl. Therefore, may we all
rise to the occasion of creating the best single process of interpretation.
Biblical interpretation is both an art and a science. It is an art because it deals with
historical documents that have been written in times when people's cultures were different from
ours at the present time; and, understanding their cultures requires getting to know the kind of
world they lived in. It is a science because writers of those historical documents made use of
patterns and methods of communication in documenting their perceptions of their world. When
we consider the category of art in the process of interpretation, we cannot help but to consider
subjectivity in our quest for meaning and understanding. Hopefully, with scientific
methodology, our quest for meaning becomes more objective; thus, our understanding will be
much clearer and cohesive.
Do not be intimidated by these high-sounding methodological terminologies. For all you
know, if you are an adult with some college background or even a high school level education,
you may already be using some, if not all, of these methodologies; you only need to realize it or
match these terminologies with the way you communicate to people. E.g., with the analogical
method, you make use of analogies all the time when you try to explain to others something
that is technical and that only you could understand. Thus, may this be an encouragement for
you to engage in this important aspect of your Christian life. If it makes it easier for you, I am
not a professional interpreter of the Bible either; I hold no professional degree in philosophy
(PhD) or theology (Th.D.). The reason the LORD did not instill in me a desire to pursue a
professional degree in philosophy and or theology, I believe, is to be able to encourage others to
study the Bible in depth with me.

Interpretation represents either of two technical words, "exegesis" or "hermeneutics,"

which were originally synonymous but are now arbitrarily distinguished; exegesis, the detailed
specific explication of a text; hermeneutics, the theory underlying such explication. We will try
to deal with interpretation here from both aspects.

The necessity of interpretation

 Any, not simply naive, product of the human mind, even if contemporary and in one's own
idiom, invites, or demands, interpretation. Such a product may be a painting or sculpture, a
symphony or drama, a law code, or a document of religion.
The Bible (Christian) contains thoughts, now between two and three millenniums old,
formulated within an environment alien to our own, and written in two Semitic languages
(Hebrew and Aramaic) and an Indo-European language (Hellenistic Greek) remote from our
own―three clamorous demands for interpretation. But it is a fourth fact about the Bible
which, for the Christian, makes interpretation of it the most painful demand for interpretation
in our entire culture: its claim to authority, a claim rather modestly made within the Bible, but
categorically made for it by the group (The Church) within which it has its life.
There is, of course, already interpretation within the Bible, not merely of dreams (Gen. 40;
Daniel; cf. Acts 10-11) or riddles (Judge. 14; Dan. 5) or figurative speech (John 2:21; 21:19 and
often, which may occur in the text); nor merely of the OT within the NT (Matthew; Hebrews; el
passim), but also of older OT passages in younger ones (Jer. 31:29-30 in Ezek. 18; the books of
Samuel and Kings in the books of Chronicles) and of the older NT in its youngest portions (Matt.
10:10 in I Tim. 5:18). Furthermore, there is a subtle web of interpretation lying between the
two testaments: the fact that the NT writers always quote the OT, not in Hebrew, but in Greek.
However, every translation is inevitably to a certain degree (and often to a high degree) an
interpretation―in fact, one of the common meanings of interpretatio, since Cicero's time at the
latest, is "translation." For every translator "carries over" into the new language only what he
understands the original language to be saying; in other words, between the translator's
reading of the original and his transmutation of it there lies a fundamental act of interpretation:
it is only what he thinks the original means that he can translate.
There are two basic questions that have agitated the history of biblical interpretation: (1)
How many meanings may a given passage have? and (2) To what extent must or may
interpretation may be governed by a tradition of interpretation recognized as authoritative?

How many meanings are there?

The Alexandrian answer

 The first great Christian exegete was Origen (ca. 185-254 A.D.); lived and worked in the
city of the learned Jewish interpreter, Philo of Alexandria (ca. 25 B.C.-A.D. 40).
 Like Philo, Origen was not systematically interested in finding a true plurality (three or
more) of meanings in a given passage, but only in finding the "deeper meaning," which
he was more than willing to find everywhere, even when he accepted and valued the
literal meaning, but in which he was particularly interested when he found the obvious
sense untrue, unworthy, or impossible.
 Writers on Origen often leave the impression that he regularly set forth three meanings
of a passage : its "flesh," its "soul," and its "spirit," in accordance with On First
Principles IV.l, where such interpretation is recommended in order that three kinds of
men may be edified: the simple man by the "flesh" of a text (the obvious sense), he who
has ascended a certain way by its "soul," and the perfect man (1 Cor" 2:6-7 is cited in
full) by the "spiritual law which” has but a shadow of the good things to come'" (Heb.
10:1).
 What the church condemned was his theological results, not the exegetical method by
which he had reached them. The church had too well learned from him to use his own
 method for it to be able to condemn Origen the exegete along with Origen the
theologian.
 Origen's hermeneutic legacy was (a) the unrestricted assumption of at least a
second meaning lying universally beneath the letter and to be found by allegory; (b) a
great fund of clever allegory to countless texts of both testaments; (c) a theory of the
threefold meaning of scripture.
The Antiochene protest

 The great names from this school were: Diodorus of Tarsus (died 394); Theodore of
Mopsuestia (died 428); and Theodoret of Cyrrhus (died a60); including their great
popularizer, Chrysostom the homilist (ca. 347-407).
 The School of Antioch leaves us with two meanings of scripture, the historia (historical)
and the typus (typological). These two methodologies did not thrive during the time of
Jerome (c.a. 370) and Junilius Africanus (c.a. 550).
The triumph of allegory

 Origen's allegorical method persisted against Antiochene's historical and typological

methods. Origen's allegory, or three meanings―body, soul, and spirit―however, was
so fluid that it could be argued that his methodology may be anagoge or tropology.
 The students of Origen distinguished between allegory and anagoge; that they are one
in origin but separate in teleology. The goal of allegory is Christology and ecclesiology;
that of anagoge, the eschatology of the individual. Tropology is also allegorical in
character, allegory applied to ethical living (τρόπος means both "figure of speech" and
"moral character").
 For a thousand years, the exegete could choose either a twofold sense (the literal or
historical and
the mystical or spiritual sense) or a threefold (several different groups of terms) or a
fourfold―and still remain
within the hermeneutic tradition of Alexandria.
The Jewish influence

 The medieval Jewish exegesis used a fourfold theory of interpretation. The single
word "PaRaDiSe," whose four Hebrew consonants yielded the initials of four key
words: peshat ("spread out," the obvious literal meaning), remel ("hint," typological or
allegorical meaning), derash ("search," a meaning derived by research according to
the middoth [rules]), and sod ("secret," mystical meaning).
 If the fourth term can be understood as at least including the secrets of life hereafter
(i.e., anagoge), then three of the rabbinic terms are made equal with three of the
patristic four, and only the equation "tropology=derash" remains doubtful.

 Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, better known by his acrostic nickname as Rashi, in the latter
half of the eleventh century reformed the Jewish exegesis with the choice between the
literal sense and the midrashic nonliteral meaning(s); however, with the objective of
finding the literal meaning.
 Rashi concluded: "Therefore I say let Scripture be expounded according to its simple
meaning, each word in its proper context―and let the midrash interpretation be only a
hint" (on Exod. 6:2-9).
Nicholas of Lyra

 A Franciscan professor at the University of Paris, Nicholas (died ca. 1349) from Lyra in
Normandy, has the distinction of being the author of the first Bible commentary ever
printed (Postillae Perpetuae [Rome, 1471-72]).

 The total work of this literary giant is eighty five books that are divided into two
commentaries: the first fifty books go through the whole of scripture, giving a
professedly literal interpretation; the other thirty-five books, called Moralitates (in the
incunabula, Moralia), cover the same ground with a mystical commentary. The second
Prologue ("Concerning the author's intention and method of procedure") to the first
fifty books is significant.

 The purpose of the fifty books was only to furnish a firm support for the thirty-five
books of the mystical commentary. The fact that he treats the literal and the mystic
senses separately and does so in the ratio of 50/35 is the overshadow of a more radical
possibility (of a new or unique way of interpretation in the future).
Martin Luther

 Luther began in the old hermeneutic tradition―"When I was a monk, I was an expert in
allegories. I allegorized everything" (TableTalk I.136).
 He moved away from allegorizing to taking a more historical approach to
interpretation―, "So I hated Lyra beyond all interpreters because he so diligently
pursued the literal meaning. But now for this very recommendation I place him ahead
of almost all interpreters of Scripture" (WA 422³⁷⁷). "Since that time when I began to
embrace the historical meaning, I have always abhorred allegories and have not used
them unless either the text itself exhibited them or [allegorical] interpretations could be
cited from the New Testament" (WA 42¹⁷³).
The authority of tradition

 The other main factor in the history of interpretation owes its importance to the
uncertainties of Alexandrine hermeneutics. Such uncertainty resulted to the idea that if
scripture or a particular scripture has no certain, dependable meaning, some other
authority beside it or above it is necessary to guide faith and conduct; and, the idea put
forth tradition as not only some substitute but as a viable factor to interpretation.
 The decision to take the sum total of all that which had been passed on by the Apostles
(strictly the twelve), written or unwritten, became the standard tradition (with which an
interpreter would proceed towards understanding one's faith and practice). Tradition
was understood to be distinct from scripture: tradition is the unwritten ongoing life of
the church handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles―indeed, tradition is
(or is becoming) the church (or the church's life).
The Dr. Sproul Approach
 A. Epistemology - "how do you know what you know?"; verifying and falsifying claims
to truth either by sensory perception or by any logical formal reasoning or by
presupposing assumptions.
B. Four non-negotiable foundational principles of knowledge or ways of knowing for
Christian apologist that were derived from the inductive study of the way atheists
argue their position (check the Resources/Related Topic section for the brief
explanation of each of the following principles):
1. Law of non-contradiction
2. Law of causality
3. Principle of the basic reliability of sense perception (five senses)
4. Analogical use of language
C. The Bible, though it is concerned about ultimate truth, is not a technical textbook on
epistemology. It makes certain assumptions or presuppositions to communicate
divine truth. Those assumptions reflect the wisdom that comes from God Himself.
D. The Bible assumes the law of causality (cause and effect) and the ultimate cause is
God Himself—The First Cause.
E. The Bible expresses mostly human sense perceptions. Even though sense
perceptions may deceive one's knowledge it only proves the limits of sense
perception. Science has made ample assistance in the improvement of sense
perception through inventions such as the telescope.
F. The Bible displays evidences of analogies. Descriptions about God do not give
indication of an ultimate and absolute knowledge of God. For man to understand
the being of God, man must find expressions of God's being through analogy.

(NOTE: Almost all people reading and interpreting the Christian Bible often start their
interpretation of the text subjectively. Unfortunately, they never move from their subjective
interpretation, but are fixed in their own opinions; thus, interpreters often embrace a
misunderstanding of the message of the text. With such proliferation of misunderstandings,
confusion.
Granted, that we all may start from the subjective approach, we must move toward the
objective interpretation of the text, that all of us may come to a clear understanding of the
message of the text. Finding a single process of interpretation through which these methods
are applied in sequential order would be the goal of a hermeneutic-for-all that can be unifying
rather than divisive.
The methodologies described here are not listed in their sequential order for
application. A method is applied when the text being studied calls for its use. Ideally, only one
method is the most appropriate to use in a text to get to its objective meaning; however,
finding that most appropriate method is the biggest challenge of all. Determining the most
appropriate method is what gives interpreters the biggest problem that causes separation and
creates antagonism.
Using all of the methods and still come up with that one objective meaning is almost
quite impossible; unless, perhaps, all the differing meanings of a text can be sort of linked
together cohesively to make sense with everything else that the Scriptures teach.
 The application/s of the text or passage of Scriptures must come from its objective
meaning upon exhausting all the methodologies of interpretation.)