Common Sense in Bible Interpretation, part 1

The more that one hears today's preachers "expound" on the Scriptures, the more one may realize that most Christians have absolutely no idea what is going on in the Bible. Without background in the history of Isra'el, the history of the Bible, and the ministry of the Messiah or the Christ as well as the teachings of Paul, the limit for how Christians could interpret passages that are not completely explicit and without controversy is somewhere beyond the reaches of the farthest galaxy. Furthermore, even some of the well-explained passages are subject to much abuse. Granting that no one's understanding of God's Word is complete and that this author's understanding is somewhat unique, there is, nevertheless, a correct interpretation of the Bible.

Whereas some have tried to say that there may be many interpretations of a particular passage of Scripture, there is only one that is correct - the one trying to be conveyed by the author. The premise that there is such a correct interpretation is found in several facts:

First, the books of the Bible were written by some seventy competent men who were obviously impressed with the need to convey coherent thought to the readers. Among these were such rational thinkers as the physician, Luke, the pharisaical lawyer, Paul, the wisest man in recorded history, Solomon, King of Isra'el, and Moses, educated, potential heir of the throne of an Egyptian pharaoh. People who want to convey a message in a coherent fashion do so with a theme and try to develop a thread of logic throughout their works. Therefore, they were trying to say something.

Furthermore, people do not usually write with more than one theme in mind. Oh, true, there are times when side points of interest are visited, but by and large, there is some underlying theme that ties all the parts together to form an integrated unit. Thus, there is a high probability that there is a single point an author is trying to make in any one context.

Compound this fact with the premise that God was supervising and inspiring the writing of the Bible produces a high likelihood that the authors wrote with intent on passing along a theme. Therefore, what they were thinking was intended to be conveyed by what they wrote. Thus, there is a correct interpretation to each of the books of the Bible - those thoughts trying to be conveyed by the authors.

If there is therefore only one correct interpretation, the next logical question is "Which interpretation is the correct one?" Some have argued the point by saying, "What makes your interpretation of the Bible any better than mine? I believe that there are many different interpretations of the Bible." Such "open-mindedness" is in itself closed to a view of one particular interpretation, namely the literal-historical interpretation of the Bible.

Historicity states the facts as they happened. Perhaps there may be some subjectivity in the reporting of most history, but the Bible is notorious for stating both sides of an individual's character, the side in full view of the public and the dark side as well. As a point in fact, look at the reported life of David, King of Isra'el: He is reported as "a man after God's own heart," and yet the Bible candidly reports his sins of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah, as well as the heartache caused by such wickedness. It also reports his numbering of the people which was against God's will.

Grammar involves the nuances of the forms and structures of words, phrases, and sentences that are used to convey a thought in a particular language.

Together, historicity and literalism in the normal grammar of the language form the grammatical-historical interpretation of the Bible. This method also highly adheres to the premise that contextual agreement must be present before one can claim any interpretation.

Literalism purports that the normal, literal interpretation of the passage is that which was intended by the author: If an author says, "The sky was an unusual shade of pink that evening," then he is not talking in some metaphor or simile or obscure code meaning something else. He means that the actual evening sky in which the birds fly was an unusual shade of pink!

The allegorical interpretation, by way of contrast, might assign the passage an allegory or an analogy suggesting that the sky might represent heaven, the evening might represent the end of the world, and the fact that it was said to be an unusual shade of pink would thus be interpreted to mean that through all the gathering darkness of impending doom, there was still a ray of hope. Such interpretation suggests that the ironic, unnatural, and miraculous events in the Bible are not literal but are allegories of something grander. Sometimes this interpretation is also called a "spiritual interpretation." On the other hand, it is the most susceptible interpretation to subjectivity; anyone can say that any passage of Scripture really means something else.

Although the allegorical interpretation of the Bible is said to be the "spiritual interpretation," if it does not reflect what the authors intended to be understood from the contexts, what is so "spiritual" about misinterpreting the intent?

Furthermore, allegories are not foreign to the grammatical-historical method of interpretation: If the passage says that the following is an allegory, then the literal interpretation gives the meaning as an allegory! What could be simpler? If a passage is a simile with the words "like" or "as," then the reader knows that the passage is not to be taken literally. Even metaphors such as the "Lion of the tribe of Judah" are self-evident not to be taken literally. However beyond the context of such a passage, the allegory goes no farther.

Another consideration alluded to above is that the method of interpretation needs internal and external consistency. Internal consistency refers to an interpretation of Scripture that agrees with other passages of Scripture and is not contradictory, while external consistency means that an interpretation does not conflict with known historical events and known societal philosophies of the time in which the text was written. Both internal and external consistency are susceptible to a degree of error because often historical events, philosophical attitudes, political and cultural trends, and social environments are subjectively "known" and are often proved wrong at a later date, and previously formed biases and interpretations slant unternal consistency.

How can one possibly know what the Isra'elis were doing during the Messiah's ministry without examining history and the Old Testament in its historical and prophetic passages?

Some would like to spiritualize away all sorts of passages, such as Revelation 6:12-17: Some have suggested that the stars mentioned here, as in 12:3-4, are symbolic of angels. However, an appropriate answer to this would be, "Why?!" There is no contextual requirement that these verses be interpreted allegorically! So, what possible purpose would it serve to give them a "spiritual" interpretation?! The only reason one may surmise why one would choose to interpret Scripture so is not a hermeneutic consideration but rather an attempt to make the passage more intellectually palatable in light of the current discoveries and theories of the sciences and is based on the bias of the interpreter. The Greek word for "star" used in this passage, "asteer" and simply refers to any of the "seed-sized" lights strown across the sky. Some of these were also called "planeetees," which simply means "wanderers" or "rovers" that would slowly change their positions from night to night against the backdrop of the fixed star patterns, or some were said to be "ekpiptoo," or "driven off course," but each of these was still considered to be called an "asteer" or star. From the time of Copernicus and Galileo, humankind has since, through the studies of astronomy, cosmology, planetary physics, and Newton's laws of motion and gravitation, subdivided this single class of bodies into stars, planets, moons, comets, meteors, meteorites, asteroids, planetoids, nebulae, galaxies, and the list goes on and on. Some objects are purely speculative based on mathematics and inconsistent nuances between the laws of physics and observed phenomena, such as black holes, but so what?!

The bottom line is that stars looked like seeds scattered across the sky. As such, there is no problem with such a body striking the earth. Whereas we differentiate between stars, bodies as big or bigger than our own sun which give off their own light by nuclear fusion, and meteorites, chunks of interplanetary matter that are occasionally captured by earth's gravity, heated until radiating light because of friction with earth's atmosphere, and are big enough not to disintegrate entirely and strike the earth, the Greeks did not differentiate as such. They thought of all the points of light as one group of objects, which were then subdivided into those which were fixed, those which wandered, and those which were entirely driven off course and fell to earth. So for one in Jesus' lifetime to call these meteorites "stars" is not an error but is simply evidence of the difference between the naming schemes of two different cultures, and there is no contextual support for allegorizing this portion of Scripture.

Perhaps, people are uncomfortable with the interpretation that these could actually be meteorites and thus would rather have an allegory to replace the catastrophe described in Revelation 6:12-17, but there is no contextual support for such an interpretation.

(More to come...)

In the Messiah's love,
Retrobyter