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The History of Interpretation · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed thinking. This is the deep dive.
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Today we are taking on a really big topic, a huge historical
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survey, the long story of how the people of God have tried to
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read and understand the Bible from ancient Judaism right up to
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our own time. It's such a critical history to
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understand, and you'll find that as we go through it, almost
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every single technical issue you could face in biblical rating
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today pops up. It helps us see the
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opportunities and maybe more so, the real pitfalls in trying to
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make ancient teachings relevant. Our sources argue that if this
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history teaches US one thing, it's that we should approach
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interpretation with a good deal of humility.
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It shows just how easily even brilliant minds can go astray.
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That humility is definitely needed, so our mission here is
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to trace the major shifts and what was considered the final
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authority over 2 millennia. The history of interpretation is
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really defined, but it's constant tension over what gets
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the final say. It's like a seesaw, really.
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On one side you have the text itself, a scripture, the literal
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sense, but on the other you have these external authorities
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trying to govern the reading. Right.
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Whether that's something like Hellenistic philosophy or later
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church tradition, or even in the modern day human reason.
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And we want to map those shifts. We need to see when
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interpretation leaned heavily on those outside frameworks, and
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then when certain movements tried to restore the plain
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historical text as the ultimate standard.
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Understanding these pressures helps you, the listener, to
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check your own reading for those same external authorities that
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might be creeping in. A great point.
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So let's begin where it all starts.
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Ancient Judaism in the late intertestamental period.
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Our sources make it very clear that the intense study of
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scripture happening then wasn't just, you know, academic.
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It was driven by a really serious crisis.
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That's right. This was a time of political and
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cultural subjugation. You are the Hellenistic.
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And then the Roman Empires. The pressure on Jewish identity
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was just immense. They're facing this daily
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challenge of foreign values, foreign gods.
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Exactly. And the question becomes, how do
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you maintain who you are when your entire culture is under
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assault? The answer was you find your
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refuge and your definition in your ancient scriptures.
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And this pressure cooker, in a sense, is what created three
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very distinct and often competing approaches to
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interpretation. Right.
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You have Rabbinic Judaism, which was centered in Jerusalem.
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Then there's Hellenistic Judaism, with its hub in
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Alexandria, Egypt, and finally the very isolated Qumran
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community, which was intensely focused on prophecy.
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Let's start with a rabbinic approach, since it became so
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central to what we think of as Orthodox Jewish life.
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Their system produced works like the Mishnah, the Talmuds and the
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Midrashim. The Mishnah, which was published
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around 8200, was really an effort to formalize centuries of
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oral teachings from the Rabbis. The Talmuds came later and they
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are essentially huge commentaries.
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The Gemara on the Mishnah itself, yeah.
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What was their goal? Their main goal was to find
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biblical support for the interpretations that were
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already in the Mishnah. And then you have the Mitra
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that. Comes from the Hebrew word for
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it to search right? Yes, to search or to
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investigate. And the Mitra sheem focused on
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interpreting the biblical books directly, often going verse by
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verse to pull out the meaning. This whole body of work is
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organized around 2 main categories, Halaka and Haguta.
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OK, so let's unpack that distinction for the listener.
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What is Halaka? Halaka literally means the rule
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to go by. This material is very focused.
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It's all about deriving principles and very specific
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regulations for human conduct. And it comes from the legal
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purpose of the Old Testament. Specifically from the legal
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sections, yes, it's regulative. If you want to know what you
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must do about a feast day or a legal dispute or dietary laws,
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you're looking for halaka. So then what is Hagada?
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Hagada is a telling It's much broader.
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It draws on the entire Old Testament, the stories, the
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proverbs, the poetry, and its purpose is more to illustrate
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the texts and to provide moral instruction and edification for
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the reader. Most of the midrashima are
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actually the second, more instructional type.
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What's so interesting about the rabbinic method is that even
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though they lean so heavily on tradition, I was citing earlier
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respected rabbis. They could also employ this very
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strict, almost woodenly literal interpretation, the P chat or
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the plain sense. They could, and the example our
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sources give about the rebellious son in Deuteronomy 21
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is just astonishing. It's powerful warning about a
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certain kind of literalism. OK, so walk us through it.
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The text in Deuteronomy 21 outlines the legal process for
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parents who have a son who is persistently rebellious, a
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glutton and a drunkard. Right.
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And the text says the parents must lay hold of him and bring
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him out to the elders, and then they ought to say He will not
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obey our voice. The language is very physical,
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very direct. So what did the Rabbi's do with
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those specific phrases? This is where it gets strange.
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The rabbinic tradition took those physical descriptions lay,
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hold, bring out. He will not obey and use them to
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define the precise physical circumstances under which a son
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would actually escape condemnation.
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A loophole A. Huge loophole because the text
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implies a physically capable son being brought out and who is
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able to speak. The missioner ruled that if the
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son was, say, maimed in the hand, or if he was lame or dumb
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or blind or deaf. He couldn't meet the specific
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criteria. He could not meet the physical
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criteria mentioned in the legal text, and so he escaped the
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judgement entirely. Wow, so they took lay hold of
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him so literally that a physical disability became a way to get
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out of the law, completely overriding the moral and ethical
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point of it all, which was to protect the community from
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persistent rebellion. It's a terrifying outcome of
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literalism that's been detached from the larger purpose of the
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law. It just shows how a technical
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interpretation, when it's isolated from the Spirit and the
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overall intent of scripture, can lead to absurdity and legalistic
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escape clauses. OK, so let's pivot now.
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The rabbinic school was trying to resist Hellenistic culture,
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but down in Alexandria, Hellenistic Judaism was doing
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the exact opposite. They were trying to integrate.
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And this is what leads to the rise of Allegory with Philo as
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its champion. This is where Greek philosophy
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comes in, as that external authority we were talking about.
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It absolutely is. Hellenistic Jews wanted to make
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their ancient scriptures seem respectable to the intellectual
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Greek world, and the key framework they used for that was
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Platonic philosophy. And Plato's big idea was that
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true reality lies behind appearances, that the physical
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world is just a shadow of the true ideal forms.
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How did Philo take that idea and apply it to the Bible?
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Well, he argued that the literal words on the page, the physical
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text, that was only the body of Scripture.
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The text's true meaning, he said, lay behind the words.
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That was the soul. So the text becomes a kind of
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extended metaphor. An extended metaphor hiding a
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deeper, more sophisticated philosophical truth.
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And for Philo, this spiritual or allegorical sense, the soul, was
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always the more important one. It elevated the Bible from what
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might look like rustic history into a grand philosophical
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abstraction. But he must have had some rules
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for when you could just disregard the literal meaning,
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right? Otherwise, why even read the
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body at all? He did.
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You could ignore the literal sense and jump straight to the
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allegory if the text seemed to say something, you know,
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unworthy of God. Which was a big problem for
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Greek thinkers reading about what they saw as a tribal deity.
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Or if it had some kind of contradiction.
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Yes, or if it contained an insoluble difficulty, a strange
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grammatical feature, or what he saw as an obviously allegorical
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expression. The classic example of this is
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how we handled the river splitting from Eden.
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Genesis 2.1 says a river flows from Eden and then splits into 4
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headwaters. To Philo, you just couldn't take
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that literally. It had to mean something more.
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So the Edenic River must represent the goodness of God
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and the four headwaters. They conveniently map onto Greek
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philosophy. They represent the four great
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virtues of Greek philosophy, prudence, temperance, courage
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and justice. It's a very neat package, but it
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brings us right back to the main critique.
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Philo's interpretation seems to depend much more on forcing the
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text to fit Plato than it does on what the text itself is
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saying. It becomes completely
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subjective. Right.
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If you bring your philosophical framework to the text instead of
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letting the text shape your framework, you're always going
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to find what you were looking for.
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Today, Philo's method is rightly criticized for its subjectivity
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and artificiality. And we should acknowledge that
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modern readers do the same thing.
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We just replaced Plato with maybe a political theory or
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critical theory or some other set of presuppositions, and then
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force the Bible to confirm what we already believe.
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That parallel is so important. We always have to ask what
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external authority we're bringing to our reading.
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OK, so our third Jewish school, the Qumran community, gives us
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another warning about bias, but from a completely different
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method. Pesher.
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The Qumran sectarians, who were likely the Essenes, believed the
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official Judaism in Jerusalem was apostate, so they withdrew
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into the desert to await the Messianic Age, and they believed
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they had a special divine inspiration that allowed them to
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decode prophecy. So Picher just means
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interpretation. Yes, but it's a specific kind.
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It's a method where they prophetically reinterpreted
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ancient texts, claiming that the events happening in their own
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day were the fulfillment of those prophecies.
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So they weren't just reading prophecy, they were saying we
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are living inside the fulfillment right now.
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And that conviction LED them to use three specific, and I would
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say manipulative techniques. The first was textual
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emendation, basically suggesting changes to the biblical text to
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make it fit their purpose. A good example is in Habakkuk
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1.13. That verse says your eyes are
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too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong and
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it's addressed to God it. Is it uses a singular you.
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But the Qumran commentary on this first does something
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shocking. It interprets the you pronouns
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as plural, shifting the reference away from God entirely
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and onto their enemies, the despised House of Absalom.
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So they didn't just reread it, they fundamentally changed who
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the text was talking about to validate their own grudge.
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It's an act of what you might call textual violence.
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The second technique was contemporizing a prophecy.
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This is claiming fulfilment and events happening right then.
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Exactly. Habakkuk 1.6 originally warned
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the people of Judah that the Babylonian army was coming to
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punish them, but the Qumran Pescher reinterpreted that
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chapter to be about the Kittim, who were the Romans, their
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current political enemies. So the ancient prophecy is just
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lifted out of its own time and mapped directly onto their
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present political situation. And the third technique,
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atomization, shows the danger of breaking scripture into tiny
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pieces. How does that?
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Work. They would divide the text into
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separate phrases and then interpret each one independently
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with no concern for the original context.
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For instance, in Habakkuk 2.4 it reads Look, his soul shall be
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swollen. The pressure commentator just
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arbitrarily reads the Hebrew word for swollen PL. as a
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similar sounding word meaning to be doubled.
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Why? What did that get them?
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It allowed them to derive the idea of a double requital for
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their sins. It's completely arbitrary and
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driven by their own theological agenda.
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So just within ancient Judaism, we see three huge warnings.
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There's the Rabbinic danger of a legalistic literalism that
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misses the point, the Hellenistic danger of
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prioritizing an external philosophy like allegory, and
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the Qumran danger of manipulating the text because of
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internal bias, which is Pescher. And that sets the stage for the
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next great shift. With the coming of Christianity,
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the entire interpretive landscape changes.
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The first Christian interpreters, the apostles.
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They introduce a new absolute authority, the person and work
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of Jesus Christ. Our sources are clear that the
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authority of Jesus was seen as superior even to the law of
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Moses itself, so they interpreted the whole Old
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Testament christologically. Yes, they viewed everything
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through the lens of Jesus's Messiahship and the new age that
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his coming had started. This was completely
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revolutionary. So they saw the Old Testament as
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a story moving toward its climax.
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And that climax was Christ. They used three main
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interpretive methods to show this continuity, and it went way
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beyond just finding a few proof texts.
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The first one is typological interpretation.
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Typology looks for divinely inspired patterns in the Old
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Testament. People, events, institutions
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that prefigure or anticipate what God does in Christ.
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It's not the same as allegory, which just invents meaning out
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of thin air. So typology is based on a real
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historical event in the Old Testament.
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Yes, a real historical event that finds its ultimate, much
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larger fulfillment in Christ. Give us the example from Matthew
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2.17. OK, so Matthew sees Herod's
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massacre of the infants in Bethlehem as a fulfillment of
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Jeremiah 31.15, which talks about Rachel weeping for her
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children. Matthew sees this as a
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repetition of history. A divinely ordered pattern.
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Exactly a pattern of the nation suffering under persecution.
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And this echo, this pattern signals the gravity of who
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Christ is. Typology shows that the Old and
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New Testaments are one continuous history of salvation,
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and it all culminates in Christ. They also used a straightforward
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literal contextual interpretation.
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Absolutely. The apostles regularly appeal to
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the normal meaning of Old Testament scripture to support
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Christian moral teaching. When Paul quotes Deuteronomy and
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Proverbs in Romans 12 to teach believers not to seek revenge,
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he's relying on the direct, contextual, moral instruction of
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those texts. So the idea of a historical
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grammatical method didn't just appear with the reformers.
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Not at all. It was there from the very
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beginning and the. Third major Apostolic method is
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principal application. This is where the specific rule
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isn't carried over, but the theological idea behind it is.
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This is so vital for applying ancient texts today.
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Paul's argument for financially supporting apostles in First
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Corinthians 9 is the classic example.
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He quotes Deuteronomy 25.4. Do not muzzle an ox while it is
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treading out the grain. And obviously the Corinthian
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church wasn't literally using oxen for their work.
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No. He pulls out the theological
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principle. If a creature or a person does
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useful labor, they deserve to share in the benefit of that
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labor. He then applies that principle
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to a similar situation. The gospel worker who serves the
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spiritual needs of the church deserves to share in the
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material provisions of that church.
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So he moves beyond the letter of the law to its spirit.
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A necessary interpretive step. So the Apostolic age really
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centered all interpretation on Christ.
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But as we move into the patristic period from about 8100
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to 590, we see the rise of the next great external authority,
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Church tradition. And this was also driven by a
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crisis. It was once the apostles were
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gone, heretical groups, especially the Gnostics, started
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manipulating the scriptures to support their own unorthodox
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views, often claiming they had some kind of special secret
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knowledge. How did the Orthodox leaders
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fight back, especially when the New Testament Canon wasn't even
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fully settled yet? They had to appeal to the
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authority of tradition handed down from the Apostles.
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Their argument was that the true teaching was preserved by the
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bishops in the churches that the Apostles themselves had founded.
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It was a pragmatic move to secure doctrine when the textual
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boundaries were still a bit fuzzy.
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And that appealed to tradition, meant that traditional
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interpretation eventually got a status almost equal to scripture
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itself. It really did.
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It became the lens through which you read the Bible.
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Later on, after the Roman Empire became Christian, major
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doctrinal disputes were settled by big church councils.
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These councils issued pronouncements that defined
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orthodoxy, and they based those definitions on what they
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understood the Apostolic tradition to be.
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And that effectively froze those interpretations into place.
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It set the standard interpretation for many key
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passages, and that became the tradition, regardless of what a
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later textual analysis might say.
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And at the same time, the allegorical method that we saw
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with Philo really took hold of the church, mostly through the
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Alexandrian school. Clement of Alexandria adopted
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Philo's body literal and soul spiritual model, but it was his
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successor Origin who really codified the system that would
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shape interpretation for well over 1000 years.
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He expanded it to a tripartite approach.
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Yes, he argued that Scripture has a meaning that corresponds
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to the human person, body, soul and spirit.
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So what were these 3 levels of meaning for origin?
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First was the literal sense. That's the body, the historical
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events, what actually happened. Second was the moral sense, the
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soul. This was about hidden principles
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for Christian living, ethical instructions.
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And third was the spiritual or doctrinal sense.
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This was the Spirit. It conveyed the highest
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doctrinal truths about the nature of God and the Church.
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And if the literal sense is just the body, the lowest level,
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what's the problem with that for doctrinal stability?
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Well, if the literal sense is secondary, you're essentially
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giving the interpreter a license to bypass history and plain
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meaning to go searching for some higher truth.
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Origin himself argued that God had inspired the original
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writers to put this allegorical meaning into the text.
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So the highest truth was implicit, not explicit.
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Exactly. But the problem is obvious.
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You risk reading your own ideas into the text instead of drawing
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doctrine from it. And that leads to the same kind
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of subjective chaos we saw with Philo.
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This all sounds like could be an interpretive free for all, but
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then we get to Augustine in the Western church and he introduces
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a really crucial anchor. Augustine's contribution is
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huge. He helped to balance the
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objective and subjective goals of reading.
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He rooted all interpretation in a very simple, practical idea.
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The ultimate goal isn't just knowing things, it's loving,
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loving God and loving other people.
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Interpretation has to cultivate a proper, ethical and devout
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Christian life. And he also put a big stress on
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the literal or historical meaning of a text.
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He called it the real meaning. He was trying to rein in the
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excesses of allegory, wasn't he? He was.
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He put up some guardrails. If a text seemed difficult or
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seemed to be pushing you toward a figurative reading, he
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suggested you consult 3 things. First, clearer passages of
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Scripture. Second, the rule of faith, the
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summary of Apostolic doctrines, and finally, the context.
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If the first two conflicted, Augustine was searching for the
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single simple meaning of the text, but he wanted to make sure
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that meaning drove the reader towards sanctification.
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OK, so by the time we get to the Middle Ages, from about 8590 to
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1500, that tension between Scripture and tradition had been
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pretty much settled and tradition one for.
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Most part, yes. Exegesis became almost the same
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thing as repeating the teachings of the Church Fathers.
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Interpretation was more prescriptive than it was
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exploratory. And this knowledge was passed
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down through 2 main literary forms, the Catenae and the
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Glossa Ordinaria. The Catenae are literally chains
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of comments. They were just collections of
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interpretive comments from the church Fathers arranged verse by
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verse. If you wanted to know what a
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passage meant, you just consulted the Chain of
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Tradition. And the glossa ordinaria.
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That became the standard medieval commentary.
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It was written right into the margins of the Bible itself, so
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it enshrined the views of the Father's as the correct
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interpretation right there alongside the biblical text.
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And during this time, origins 3 senses of scripture got expanded
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into the famous fourfold sense. This really reflects the belief
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that the biblical text was just infinitely layered.
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It does, and this fourfold. The model was even taught with a
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little mnemonic rhyme to help students remember the layers.
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What were the four sentences? The first was literal or
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historical. It teaches deeds, what actually
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happened. The second was allegorical or
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doctoral. It teaches what you should
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believe. The third was moral or
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tropological. It teaches what you should do.
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And the fourth was amagogical or eschatological.
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It teaches what you should hope for.
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So let's use the classic example of Israel crossing the Red Sea
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to see how one event had to be interpreted 4 different times.
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OK. The literal sense is just that
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Moses and Israel historically crossed the Red Sea.
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The allegorical sense is that this event teaches Christian
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doctrine. It represents Christian baptism
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and the new life in Christ. And the moral sense?
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The moral sense teaches what we should do.
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It represents the obedient Christian crossing from life's
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difficulties into earthly blessings.
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And finally, the anagogical sense teaches what to hope for.
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It represents the Christians final crossing from death into
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eternal life. It's very systematic, but it
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also shows just how far interpretation had moved from
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the original historical context. The literal sense was just a
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launching pad. It was, and that system was
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dominant. But even within the Middle Ages
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there was a subtle pushback. The scholastic movement,
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especially with thinkers like Thomas Aquinas in the 13th
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century, started applying Aristotelian philosophy.
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And Aristotle was much more about rational and empirical
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moorings than Platonic mysticism.
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How did that help anchor interpretation back to the text?
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Aquinas really championed the central idea of the literal
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meaning of Scripture. He argued that the literal sense
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was the basis on which all the other senses rested.
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And even more, he said that the literal sense contained
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everything that was necessary for faith.
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So that was a quiet but huge shift back toward the textual
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foundation. It was, and it laid some
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essential groundwork for what was about to happen with the
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Reformation. Which brings us to the moment.
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The interpretive paradigm completely flips.
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We can't really talk about this shift without first mentioning
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the textual groundwork that was laid by Erasmus in 1516.
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Erasmus, New Greek New Testament, based on better
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manuscripts, was a revolutionary piece of scholarship.
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It directly challenged the authority of the Latin Vulgate,
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which had been the standard biblical text for centuries.
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And the famous error he exposed was in Matthew 4.17.
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Yes, the Vulgate had translated Jesus's call as do penance, but
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Erasmus's more accurate Greek showed the word meant repent.
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And this isn't just a small change, it's a massive
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theological shift. Do penance implies the whole
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Sacramento system of the Church? It implies a merit based system.
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Repent, on the other hand, implies an internal change of
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heart and faith. And since the Catholic Church
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had built doctrinal claims on the Vulgate, these doubts about
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the translation cast serious doubts on the Church's
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institutional authority itself. And this leads us directly to
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Martin Luther and his central thesis, Sola Scriptura.
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Sola Scriptura Scripture alone. It asserted that only Scripture
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has divine authority for Christians when it comes to
22:29
faith and conduct. This was the fundamental break.
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It rejected the principle held for centuries that church
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tradition and ordained church leaders have the same doctrinal
22:39
weight as the Bible. It put the canonical text back
22:42
in its proper place above the Church's pronouncements.
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And once the text was restored as the highest authority, the
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long tradition of allegory had to be abandoned.
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Luther called it empty speculation.
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He did because it allowed the interpreter to say whatever they
22:58
wanted, completely disconnected from history and grammar.
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Both Luther and Calvin affirm that Scripture has one simple
23:05
meaning, it's historical sense, and you find that sense by
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applying the ordinary rules of grammar in light of the original
23:11
historical context. The literal sense was the basis
23:14
for all theological conclusions. And if Scripture is the only
23:17
authority, then it has to be able to interpret itself.
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This led to the principle that Scripture is its own best
23:22
interpreter. Scriptura Sui interprets this
23:25
was key. It dramatically reduced the
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dependence on the church fathers and other authorities.
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If you're struggling with a difficult passage, you look for
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clearer passages elsewhere in the Bible to shed light on it,
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not for a ruling from a church council.
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Now this all sounds very objective, just history and
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grammar. But the reformers, working
23:44
within a confessional framework, also recognized a necessary
23:48
subjective element, which was the role of the Holy Spirit.
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They did, and this is where Reformed thinking really
23:54
synthesized the objective truth of the text with the necessary
23:57
work of the Spirit. Luther stressed the illumination
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of the Holy Spirit in guiding Christians to apply what they
24:03
read, resulting in a truly spiritual interpretation.
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Calvin called it the internal witness of the Holy Spirit,
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which confirms the truth of the interpretation in the believer's
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art. So the reading itself is
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objective. It's grounded in history and
24:17
grammar, but the reception and application of that reading
24:20
needs divine help to actually produce spiritual fruit in a
24:23
believer's life. Exactly.
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The Spirit doesn't create a new meaning, but makes the one
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objective meaning effective for salvation and for life.
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The Reformers believed the Bible was clear enough for ordinary
24:35
people to understand, but they also maintain the critical
24:37
belief that the human heart needs the Spirit's help to fully
24:40
embrace that truth. So the Reformation establishes
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Scripture as the supreme authority.
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But after the 16th century things start to fragment.
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There was a reaction against some of the, well dry
24:53
intellectualism that had crept into Protestant circles.
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This led to a movement called Pietism.
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Pietism was a movement that stressed a devotional, practical
25:02
study of the Bible. It was looking for tangible
25:04
moral implications for life. It was an understandable
25:07
reaction against a doctrinal dogmatism that didn't have much
25:11
spiritual warmth. But the Pietists weren't the
25:13
only new force. At the same time you have the
25:15
Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, which began to elevate a
25:18
new and very powerful external authority, the human mind.
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Rationalism said the human mind could determine truth all by
25:25
itself without any divine revelation.
25:28
And so the external pressure on Scripture shifts again.
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It's no longer institutional tradition.
25:34
Now it's human reason and new scientific presuppositions.
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Baruch Spinoza, an early figure here, argued that Scripture
25:42
should just be studied like any other book, subject to the
25:45
authority of human reason, not as God's unique revelation.
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That sounds like a subtle change, but the consequences are
25:52
huge. If the Bible is just any other
25:54
book, it loses all of its divine authority.
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It does, and this rationalistic mindset became the guiding
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principle for the historical critical method, which really
26:03
took off in the 19th century. This method was built on 2 core
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ideas, rationalism and naturalism.
26:10
Naturalism being the world view that explains everything in
26:12
terms of natural laws. And crucially, it excludes the
26:15
possibility of supernatural intervention.
26:17
Miracles, prophecy, the resurrection, all of it has to
26:20
be explained away through natural phenomena or historical
26:22
editing or later myths. They treated the Bible as
26:25
secular literature, and they often started with the
26:28
presupposition that the supernatural parts of the
26:30
narrative could not possibly be true.
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So the big shift for these scholars was moving away from
26:34
trying to find the meaning of the final canonical text, which
26:38
is what the reformers cared about, to trying to find the
26:40
sources and the history lurking behind the text.
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Yes, and this gave birth to things like source criticism.
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The authority was no longer in the text the Church had
26:49
received, but in the scholarly reconstruction of what they
26:52
thought the earliest, most historical text must have been.
26:56
Let's look at the skeptical impact this had, starting with
26:59
the New Testament. FC Baer and the tubing in school
27:02
are a perfect example. Applying this critical reason,
27:05
Baer basically inferred this massive division in early
27:08
Christianity between a Petrine faction and a Pauline faction
27:13
based entirely on this inference, for which there was
27:15
little external proof. He dated the Gospels and Acts
27:18
very late. Seeing them as documents written
27:20
to try and bridge this fictional divide.
27:22
Exactly. And in doing so, he denied their
27:25
authority as reliable historical historical sources about Jesus
27:28
and the apostles. So he dated the text based on
27:30
his own philosophical theory, and that undermined its
27:33
historicity. And the Old Testament saw a
27:36
similar reconstruction with Julius Wellhausen.
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Wellhausen's work was massive in its influence.
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He argued that the Pentateuch was compiled from 4 separate
27:45
sources, Jed and P, and that these sources were written long
27:49
after Moses and in an order that completely upended the
27:53
traditional historical sequence of.
27:55
For instance, he argued, the blog codes in the Pentateuch
27:57
were actually younger than the prophetic writings.
27:59
Which fundamentally reverses the timeline that the text itself
28:03
assumes. The impact was immense.
28:05
It told the reader that what you're reading isn't the history
28:08
of Israel written by Moses, but a heavily edited, much later
28:12
compilation that reflects the theological biases of different
28:15
editors from centuries after the events.
28:17
The object of interpretation fundamentally changed.
28:20
Why study the book of Genesis as we have it if the real object of
28:24
study is some reconstructed earlier source that a scholar
28:27
thinks is more historical? The authority of the received
28:30
canonical text was lost to the scholarly hypothesis.
28:33
Moving into the 20th century, we see reactions to this
28:35
skepticism. One major 1 was Rudolf Boltmann
28:38
existentialism. He tried to save the spiritual
28:41
message while throwing out the history.
28:43
Boltman's goal was to de mythologize the Bible to strip
28:47
away what he saw as mythological language like miracles and
28:50
demons, to make the core message relevant for modern people who
28:53
are troubled by a scientific worldview.
28:56
He argued modern people just couldn't believe in a three
28:58
tiered universe, so those elements had to go.
29:01
And what was left after he stripped all that away?
29:03
What was left was the karigma, the essential message about
29:06
humanity's existential dilemma and the call to an authentic
29:10
self understanding. And this required reading the
29:13
Bible subjectively with an existentialist hermeneutic,
29:16
which was often completely uprooted from the 1st century
29:19
historical event. The text's meaning was about how
29:22
it spoke to my existence today, not what it meant back then.
29:25
A huge wave of subjectivity. So in reaction to all this
29:29
academic skepticism and subjectivity, we see a drive in
29:32
the later 20th and 21st centuries to find some stable
29:35
footing. Again, a return to objectivity,
29:37
but coupled with spiritual application.
29:39
And you need both. You need the objective meaning
29:42
of Scripture anchored in its historical and grammatical
29:45
context to stop the Bible from becoming a nose of wax that you
29:49
can just shape to fit any theory you want.
29:52
But you also need the subjective application to make sure it's
29:55
relevant, cultivating the spiritual and ethical life.
29:58
That, as Augustine said, is the whole point.
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And finally, we see some modern movements that are trying to
30:03
push back against the dominance of this scholarly skepticism
30:06
altogether, like canonical and theological interpretation.
30:10
Canonical criticism focuses on the theological meaning of the
30:13
final canonical shape of the text.
30:15
It argues that this is the form the Church received, and so this
30:18
is the authoritative object of study.
30:21
It pushes back against the source critics who are always
30:23
looking for fragments behind the text.
30:25
And the theological interpretation of scripture
30:27
movement TIS. TAS is LED mostly by theologians
30:31
who are trying to recover the Bible's theological voice.
30:34
They resist the Enlightenment's impulse to dismiss all pre
30:37
critical interpretation. TS practitioners welcome the
30:41
insights of the Church Fathers and the Reformers back into the
30:43
conversation. They argue that the Bible has to
30:46
be read as Christian Scripture within the framework of the
30:49
Church's doctrine. It's an attempt to reconnect the
30:52
academic study of Scripture with the life and practice of the
30:55
believing community. It is this has been incredible
30:59
tour through more than 2000 years of really intellectual
31:02
warfare over the Bible. We started with the rabbinic
31:06
fear of cultural assimilation and the Hellenistic desire for
31:09
philosophical accommodation. We saw the Church use tradition
31:13
as a necessary defense against heresy, only to see that
31:16
tradition become an external authority in his own right.
31:19
And then the massive shift of the Reformation, which returned
31:22
to the priority of the simple historical sense as the sole
31:25
basis for all meaning, while also recognizing the necessary
31:29
guidance of the Holy Spirit for application.
31:32
And that's at the stage for the modern era where reason and
31:35
naturalism became the new explanal authorities, leading to
31:38
the skepticism of historical criticism.
31:41
It all comes back to that seesaw.
31:43
We have to be constantly vigilant about what external
31:46
framework we are allowing to govern our reading.
31:49
Is it a philosophical system like Plato or naturalism?
31:53
Is it an institutional tradition that we value more than the
31:56
plain text? This whole history confirms that
31:58
the main interpretive pitfall is always replacing the authority
32:02
of the text with some other pre decided authority.
32:05
If we go back to Augustine's first principle that the aim of
32:08
interpretation is to lead us to love God and other people, then
32:11
the great challenge today isn't just figuring out the correct
32:13
technical meaning, it's making sure that meaning actually
32:16
shapes our conduct and our devotion.
32:18
Technical knowledge by itself is not enough.
32:20
So I'll leave you with this final thought.
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Considering all the methods we've reviewed, the arbitrary
32:25
reinterpretation of the Qumran community, the philosophical
32:28
bias of Philo's allegory, the reliance on extra biblical
32:31
tradition in the Middle Ages, or the naturalistic skepticism of
32:34
the historical critical method, what stands out to you is the
32:37
single most critical interpretive pitfall to avoid in
32:40
your own study of the Scriptures.
32:42
What external authority do you need to check at the door before
32:45
you open the book?