Why Word Studies Aren't Enough (Intro to Hermeneutics, Part 3)
Our not-boring crash course in Bible Interpretation Continues
Growing up in a church where the Bible was central I was well-trained to be a word study rock star. I know my way around a concordance and have a shelf full of resources designed to help serious Bible students who aren’t trained in Greek and Hebrew get to the range of meaning behind each word in the Bible. I also have a growing collection of technical commentaries that do the same.
But here’s what I’ve learned . . .
As important as literary/grammatical analysis is, it’s not enough to get us all the way to a faithful interpretation of a passage - one that reflects the intent of the original author.
Let me share an illustration of this that showed up on my Instagram feed last week. (If you are offended by this example, blame Instagram.😉) Consider the words “butt dial” and “booty call.” I think we’d all agree that there is a world of difference between those two things! But if someone two thousand years from now is trying to determine what those phrases mean by relying heavily on word-study data, they’re probably going to conclude that they mean the same thing. They’ll determine that “butt” and “booty” are almost always synonyms (unless pirates are involved). They will come to the same conclusion about “call” and “dial.” If they treat these phrases like many interpreters treat biblical words and phrases (looking only at the lexical data), they will inevitably draw erroneous conclusions.
What would they need to determine that a “butt dial” and a “booty call” are in fact two very different things?
They would need historical context. They would need to understand the thought-world and social customs of the people who used these phrases. They would need to carefully piece together information about the culture from which these phrases emerged. Then and only then would they arrive at a faithful interpretation.
In part 3 of our Intro to Hermeneutics course, we explore the importance of historical context in Bible interpretation by identifying two more key elements in our description of what the Bible is:
The Bible is ancient literature
The Bible has a divine AND human origin
Welcome to class, friends!
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