Part2

Practical Guidelines for Interpreting Scripture as Communication

Pages 139-274

Genre and Communication

Pages 139-165

1. The author’s choice of genre is a primary part of the communicative choices.
2. While in an epistle an author seeks to persuade through a course of reasoning that is fairly explicit and often linear, narrative authors do their “persuading” most often implicitly, through story and point of view. (140)
3. Hebrew poetry does not share characteristics like rhyme and meter with English poetry, but it does also utilize alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and wordplay.
4. As A. Berkeley Mickelson has warned, “The very essence of poetry is destroyed if we are absorbed in the mechanics of it.” (148)
5. In poetry, authors select words for their sound, form, and metaphorical qualities which contribute to poetry’s compactness compared to prose. David in Psalm 51 uses a dozen occurrences of five different words to describe sin. It would be a misreading to look too deeply into these five instances and emphasize its nuances.
6. Yet the inclusion of individual lament psalms in the Psalter implies that these personal expressions were valued and used by the wider community of Israel—that they were communicative. In fact, even now they continue to resonate with believers who face overwhelming situations. 🔥The laments, even while expressing anger and despair, are set in the context of a stance of trust; they are, after all, addressed to God. They assume the presence of God, even while mourning God’s apparent absence. Because of their faith stance, they speak beyond the psalmist’s particular self expression to communicate passionately and powerfully with hearers and readers. (150)
7. Since we are so familiar with the epistle genre, due to our daily interaction with emails and letters, we can be lulled into a complacent reading of the Epistles. There tends to be more sermons on Paul than on the Gospels or the OT in non-liturgical evangelical settings.
8. Brown uses the example of sending an introductory email of a seminary course she’ll be teaching. It’s quite lengthy to cut out any need for inference or implications. Paul and other NT letter writers assumed a lot from their readers since they were picking up their communication in relational midstream.
9. The one part of the form of ancient letters we are not used to is a thanksgiving section that was typically included. This section might be rather extensive or simply a prayer for the recipient’s good health. Paul, in fact, usually extends the expected thanksgiving section, so that it is quite developed. Knowing these conventions helps us feel the effect of his omission of a thanksgiving in his letter to the Galatians. Paul moves directly from his greeting to the body of the letter “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (1:6 NRSV). The omission, which may not seem so significant to modern readers, would almost certainly have been felt by the Galatian Christians. (151)
10. The truth is that we always provide a social context for what we read; we do so automatically. (152)
11. An example of automatically providing social context is reading Paul’s exhortations about Communion in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. If we think they did Communion by passing a small grape juice cap and cracker, we will have read the text with our own setting mind. In reality, ancient Corinth conducted Communion as a full meal.
12. We can also potentially overconstruct the situation, a procedure that has been called “mirror reading.” Mirror reading is the determination that each command or argument of a letter is tied to a specific problem being experienced by the audience of the letter. (154)
13. An example is how early reconstructionist dated 1 Peter to a time under Nero’s reign due to the phrase “fiery ordeal” in 4:12. This term does not necessitate literal fire and concluding the epistle’s written date from such slim evidence would be an example of mirror reading.
14. Matthew groups together a number of miracles together in chapters 8-9, which are sequenced differently in Mark/Luke to emphasize Jesus’ authority over sickness, nature, and sin to fulfill Israel’s hope for resurrection.

The Language of the Bible

Pages 166-188

1. There is nothing archaic, solemn or mystical about the kind of language used by the inspired authors of the New Testament. It is the Greek of the street. This says a great deal about the nature of God’s revelation. Just as God took on the form of common humanity when he revealed himself as the living Word, so his written Word was revealed in language that the person on the street could understand. - Mark Strauss, Distorting Scripture? (166)
2. The New Testament was penned in Koine, a simplified version of classical Greek that had gained widespread usage in the East thanks to Alexander the Great’s conquests.
3. Some elevate language above God since some claim language is how we live and move and have our being.
   1. An easy rebuttal is the claim that infants are relational even prior to language.
4. Understanding language as created and so secondary has a number of implications. First, that God has created language implies that language is adequate for the task of communication and theology. (170)
5. . Good exegesis is much more about listening carefully to the whole movement of a discourse, rather than isolating individual words for study. As I frequently tell students: It’s better to be a good English exegete than a poor Greek or Hebrew one. (176)
6. We do not understand a culture through its language.
   1. it is simply wrongheaded to assume that particular characteristics of a people group correspond to “patterns in the linguistic structure when analysed itself.” (178)
7. NT authors may use the same term with different senses: James uses pistis as affirmation of Christian truth (which demons exhibit) and Paul uses it as trust.
8. The less familiar we are with a language, the more likely we are to treat it artificially. (182)
9. Linguistic Pitfalls to Avoid
   1. Don’t infer the meaning of a word from its etymology.
   2. Don’t infer the meaning of a word from its later usage.
      1. An example is how we define the term martyr.
   3. Don’t read all possible meanings of a word into a specific usage.
      1. It essentially collapses the norms of language (all possible meanings of a word) into the norms of utterance (the specific meaning intended in an utterance). (186)
   4. Don’t overemphasize fine points of grammar.
10. God created language as good but sin has tainted our ability to fully understand it and avoid misunderstandings. Yet, God uses human language as a vehicle of his perfect truth.

The Social World of the Bible

Pages 189-211

1. “There is an innate laziness which affects us all: the sense of ‘d’you mean I’ve got to learn all that stuff about first-century Judaism just to get the simple gospel message?’ Answer: Yes. If God chose to become a first-century Jew you might have thought finding out about first-century Jews would be something a believer in God would want to do!” - N.T. Wright (190)
2. We need to mind the gap between our understanding of the culture we live and the one the characters of the Bible lived in.
3. Levels of context
   1. World Context: we all understand “light” and “dark” metaphors like in Psalm 119:105.
   2. Cultural Context: professional mourners for the death of a loved one was a Hebrew practice (Amos 5:16)
      1. Covers these domains: geography, politics, economics, military/war, religious customs, and cultural practices, family customs, material customs (home/dress), everyday customs, athletics, recreation, music, and art.
   3. Audience Context: the original audience of Malachi was the post-exile people of Judah who were familiar with the abuses of the Levitical priesthood.
   4. Dynamic Context: the evolving relationship between the author of a text and the intended audience like Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.
4. The author of Genesis may have been aware of other cosmologies like the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish. If so, we can read other ancient near eastern sources to construct what their social world resembled.
5. Four categories of intertestamental/Second Temple writings:
   1. Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
   2. Philo and Josephus
   3. Dead Sea Scrolls
   4. Rabbinic literature
6. There were distinct “Judaisms” around in the first century: Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees, etc.
7. The interplay between Jewish belief/practice and Greco-Roman culture is best exemplified by the fact that the crucifixion was a “Roman form of imperial control and execution used to remove troublesome members of the empire.” (199)
8. Be ready to hear presuppositions quite different from your own as you read. Whenever you read something that strikes you as odd, assume that the idea in question actually makes sense within the worldview of the writer. (200)
9. One ancient author may hold a viewpoint not shared widely by everyone else. At Qumran, they expected two Messianic figures (Messiah of Israel and Messiah of Aaron) but most first century Jews didn’t think so.
10. A Bible Atlas can help us learn that Amos is from the southern kingdom of Judah who prophecies against places in the northern kingdom of Israel. This explains why in 7:12 Amos to treated as an outsider.
11. Cautions:
    1. Underconstructing the Setting
       1. We need to know the literary context of Amos to understand Amos 4:4 as ironic since Israel’s worship was not pleasing to God due to their unjust treatment of one another.
    2. Overconstructing the Setting
    3. Overgeneralizing about the Social Context
       1. Anytime we assert “All Israelites though or did this” or “All first-century people believed this” we overgeneralize.
       2. “All Pharisees were legalists” is another example of overgeneralization.
12. As we look at the Old Testament, we see that the Torah was never intended to provide a way for Israel to earn God’s approval (one aspect of the popular definition of legalism). God gave the law so that Israel would know how to live in the covenant relationship God had already established with them through Abraham and reaffirmed in their redemption from Egypt. Law was understood within the context of covenant. First-century Judaism was no more prone to legalism than any other religion, including twenty-first century Christianity! (208)
13. Pharisees were like Bible camp counselors who gave the famous pep-talk on the last night to urge campers to not lose the fire when they return home from camp.
14. The point of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees is over the interpretation of the law—not legalism. Matthew 23:23 demonstrates Jesus directing the Pharisees to heed weightier matters of the Torah without neglecting the rest of the law.

Literary Context, Intertextuality, and Canon

Pages 212-231

1. Reading 1 Corinthians 13 in context of chapters 11-14 reveals Paul’s assessment that they are using spiritual gifts without love.
2. Picking out parts of Scripture for our reading is like taking a friend’s letter and reading the middle paragraph today and the introductory section two months later.
3. Proof-texting is taking a Bible verse out of its literary context to fit into a framework of interpretation: “the smallest atoms of the text are torn away from their textual… contexts and reassembled within some other framework of interpretation, often in order to demonstrate a point that is anything but natural to them.” (214)
4. While Philippians 4:13 probably has been used to claim strength for any number of endeavors, in the immediate context Paul is interested in one particular Christian attitude—contentment (4:10-19). (215)
5. A common usage of proof-texting are in Bible studies where a conclusion of a certain topic is stated preceding surveying particular verses that prove the point. There is a tendency to assume a certain way of reading the text rather interpreting them in their literary contexts.
6. Themes that appear as “bookends” are inclusios.
7. In John’s Gospel, themes are combined with particular Jewish festival settings to emphasize some aspects of Jesus’ identity in relation to his followers. For instance, the setting of John 6 is the Jewish Passover, in which unleavened bread plays an important role (see Exod. 12:1-20). The Passover becomes the setting for Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1-15), his claim to be the bread of life (6:35; see 6:32-33), and the dialogue that surrounds this claim (6:25-59). Thus, the motif of bread, the Passover setting, and the controversy around Jesus’ claim to be the bread of life all work together to highlight Jesus’ identity and role as the sustenance of his people (see John 6:53-58). (220)
8. The choice of genre is fundamental to the fulfillment of these authorial purposes. (221)
9. Exegetical skills for studying literary context:
   1. Outlining a book
   2. Summarizing
   3. Identifying themes
   4. Identifying the function of a particular text in relation to its literary context
10. Intertextuality
    1. The verb “remember” in 1 Samuel 1:19 is also used in Genesis and Exodus for activities tied to God’s covenant. The reader, knowing this, would hear covenantal overtones in the birth story of Samuel.
11. All of Scripture together points to a coherent picture of God’s redemptive work in creation and humanity. (229)

Conceptualizing Contextualization

Pages 232-251

1. We often move intuitively between exegesis and contextualization.
2. Figure on page 236
3. We…read the text, examining it in all its historical otherness to ourselves as well as all its transtemporal relatedness to ourselves, and being aware of the complex relation that exists between those two things. Wright (236)
4. Contextualization can be understood as movement between the text and the reader.
5. Our natural tendency to domesticate the text—to make it say what we would like it to say—is minimized when we take seriously the distance between our settings and the biblical world. (240)
6. Contextualization can also be understood as participation where we observe the resonances between the two worlds of the author and reader. We can engage the text assuming some continuity.
7. Brown’s students read Genesis and were put off by reading about Lot’s incest. We may have been trained to emulate what we read in narrative, but that’s why understanding genre is important for the interpretive process.
8. Most of us have been trained to think that whatever unit of Scripture we select to study must have at least one point of application. (245)
9. Two questions for contextualization: coherence and purpose.

Contextualization: Understanding Scripture Incarnationally

Pages 252-274

1. The Bible is culturally located divine discourse for the shaping of the Christian community.
2. Seeing the Bible as divine discourse allows us two things:
   1. We assume the unity of the Bible.
   2. We will expect reading the Bible to impact readers.
3. Neither Matthew nor Paul envisions Christian obedience as a human work that earns salvation. Both seem to view obedience in covenantal terms as the result of already-received grace and power in the life of the believing community. (257)
4. The radical consequence of the incarnation is that human knowledge of God cannot be ahistorical. (259) - Zimmerman, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics, 163-164
5. Narrative theology stresses the Bible’s historical-temporal movement by calling theology to reengage the biblical story. (260)
6. One method of contextualization is drawing the principles that lay beneath a culturally bounded passage. Don’t let this take away from the fact that Scripture itself is God’s Word, not the principles we extract from it.
7. Principalizing isn’t wrong—we just shouldn’t make it our primary method of contextualization.
8. Using purpose-guided contextualization turns our attention to the author which invites us to acknowledge the wider context of a passage.