.

[faroukfarouk]

Ask God to shed His Light on it, through His Holy Spirit, and pray to be "hungry" for, and to "delight" in His Word?

Excellent similar point (as discussed in the above post).

 

[Uber Genius]

Scripture can be read in four ways according to Scholasticism and traditional theology.
Literal, metaphorical, anagogical, allegorical. (More correct terminology would be literal, anagogical, tropological, typological)

A good example to use would be Jonah. Literally a story about a prophet, typologically prefiguring Christ in His tomb sacrificed to calm the storms of sin (in the whale's belly), morally/metaphorically about listening to and following the commands of God and anagogically the old man dying and being reborn as a New Man of God. Anagogy is the tricky one as it is gaining spiritual truths from events, a visible event referencing an invisible spiritual statement.

Some add a historical-critical approach where you read the verses in the sense of what its contemporary audience expected or thought it would mean.

All I think are valid approaches, but one approach should not be too dominant over the others.

Love your erudite posts.

But it seems that if a passage were understood by author and original audience as allegorical and we interpreted it literally, we would not get the intended meaning.

If we are postmoderns then there is no meaning in the text (no cross cultural truths we can get at). But that is as coherent a statement as, "Let me introduce you to my married brother, who is a bachelor."

If we want to get at meaning of a text we need to gain historical and cultural knowledge, language structure, genres, styles, figures of speech particular to that author/audience.

Historical-grammatical approach attempts to first understand what the first audience would have understood, then apply that knowledge to biblical theology (progressive revelation) and systematic theology (topical revelation), and personal revelation (applicable in one's own specific walk as a disciple).

So if one does some of the source critical approaches they necessarily assume a different authorial context than given as well as cultural, editing, figures of speech, ECT.

Certainly these things are examined during textual criticisms, but most of the form and source criticisms of the last 150 years (coming out of an atheistic German theological scholarship) are destructive to meaning both original and contemporary.

All that to say that we should remember to match up style and structure to genre, and interpret allegories as such an literal narrative in a non-allegorical fashion.

So your comments about all methods being valid are spot on, but I would add a diagnosis phase. Just like all medical (approved by AMA) treatments are valid, a doctor still can perform malpractice it they match the wrong procedure to a medical problem that requires a whole different treatment.

"Judge not lest you be judged," taken out of context misses Jesus point about judgement.

 

[Uber Genius]

For those interested here is a post about historical-grammatical method.

The first step of Bible study is to get at what the original author and audience would have understood the passage to mean. As exegetical scholar, Gordon Fee says, "A text can't mean today what it never meant to its original audience."

Atheist, and intellectually undeveloped Christians make the same mistakes of anachronistic fallacy, taking passages out of context, misrepresenting figurative language as literal and vice-versa. I want to introduce Exegetical bible study methods at a high (introductory) level. One should fill in the following info based on whichever book you are studying.

1. Context

· Author

· Date

· Audience

· Purpose and Themes

· Historical Background, Worldview, Culture

2. Inductive Study

· Chart Entire Book (Extent depends on Genre e.g. we don’t chart Book of Psalms or perhaps entirety of Isaiah)

· Outline each chapter

· Clues for dividing :

1. A repeated term, phrase, clause or sentence may act as a heading to introduce each part or conclude each individual section.

2. Often there may be grammatical clues such as transitional conjuctions for example, “then, therefore, wherefore, but, nevertheless, meanwhile,”

3. A rhetorical question could signal a switch to a new theme and section. It may be that there also will be a series of such questions which carries forward the argument or plan of a‘whole section.

4. A change in the time, location or setting is a frequent device, especially in narrative contexts, to indicate a new theme and section.

5. A deliberate shift of attention from one group to another constitutes one of the most important devices.

6. A change in the tense, mood or aspect of the verb perhaps even with a change in the subject or object may be another clue that a new section is beginning.

7. Repetition of the same key word, proposition or concept might also indicate the boundaries of a section.

8. In a few cases, the theme of each section will be announced as a heading to that section. In those unusual cases, the interpreter need only make sure that all of the contents of the section are judged in light of the stated purpose of the author.

In a followup post I will describe sentence diagramming and a deeper discussion into Greek and Hebrew grammars, compendiums like BDAG, interlinear Bibles, concordances etc.

Finally, I will point you to the overview diagram, exclusive of Biblical or Systematic theology.