Grammatical-historical hermeneutic

[DanielK (Daniel)]

I understand how this frame of interpretation arose but the authors of the New Testament did not use it. Whether the its the Elijah connection to John the Baptist to Melchizedek to Christ being the rock that followed the Israelites to water baptism and the crossing of the red sea; the NT commentary and interpretation of the OT uses an entirely different hermeneutic. Why do people think this approach is valid today?

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

Good question. I think there are aspects of historical-grammatical method that are tied into modernist ideas about the right way to interpret texts and some of those ideas are dated. I think it is also important to note that currently Bible scholars use elements from a variety of interpretive approaches. The approach is more holistic and takes into consideration that the historical and cultural context determines much of the intended meaning. There is also more emphasis now on on how different biblical texts fit with the whole message of Scripture and God’s redemptive plan throughout history. I think we have a different idea about what the Bible is as revelation than the first century interpreters did, and we also have a different cultural approach to texts (in a post-Gutenberg, highly literate society) than they did, so there is no reason to expect us to have the same hermeneutic as the authors of the NT.

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi)]

I’m curious on what ways did the writers of the New Testament connect the Red Sea to baptism versus how we do now days? What’s the hermeneutical differences of that?

[DanielK (Daniel)]

That is totally fair, I was just coming from an evangelical background and hearing this reliance that what inspired writers did not themselves use so it was a bit of cognitive dissonance for me. I do not mind more holistic views but I found myself in communities that view Scripture very woodenly and I do not see evidence for that.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

I understand the disconnect and I think many pastors who went to seminary in the 70s have not kept up with biblical scholarship and teach outdated stuff. It is certainly true that no NT author was reading the Hebrew Scriptures through the lens of some twentieth century inerrancy construct and that should be something we think about. I work in Bible translation and many Evangelicals who are totally on board with the idea that everyone should be able to read the Bible in their own language are horrified to realize what the linguists who are consulting on the translations think about language and interpretation because it doesn’t match their outdated ideas about “literal meaning.”

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

I like Bonhoeffer’s ‘hermeneutic’, if you can call it that, but I don’t really know why you couldn’t. He acknowledges textual criticism, but…

First of all I will confess quite simply – I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us along with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible…

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament…

And I would like to tell you now quite personally: since I have learnt to read the Bible in this way – and this has not been for so very long – it becomes every day more wonderful to me. I read it in the morning and the evening, often during the day as well, and every day I consider a text which I have chosen for the whole week, and try to sink deeply into it, so as really to hear what it is saying. I know that without this I could not live properly any longer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer