Encourse Wiki

Old Testament — Topic 2

Properties3
tagstopic
courseOld Testament
unitTopic 2

12 min read

Old Testament — Topic 2

2. Hermeneutic

Hermeneutics develops general and specific theoretical principles and methods of interpreting Holy Scripture. The name “hermeneutics” comes from the Greek verb ἑρμηνεύω [herminevo], meaning “I translate, interpret, explain”.

Exegetics deals with the interpretation of Scripture, the extraction of meaning from the biblical books in accordance with the methods developed by hermeneutics. The word exegesis comes from the Greek verb ἡγέομαι [hegéomai] - “to introduce” with the prefix ἐξ- [ex-], which emphasizes the action taken from the inside out. Hence ἐξήγησις [exegesis] - “deduction, explanation, interpretation”.

Biblical theology systematizes the doctrinal truths of both the entire Bible and individual sacred writers. Biblical theology considers the doctrine of Scripture from two sides: 1) from the side of the unity of the Word of God and 2) from the side of its historical development.

In addition to these disciplines, biblical studies use data from auxiliary sciences:

  • Archeology is a science that studies the past from the preserved monuments of material culture. Archeology, which studies the historical environment in which the Bible originated and the events of sacred history took place is called biblical archeology.
  • History is a science that studies written sources about the past in order to establish the sequence of events, the truth of the described facts and draw conclusions about their causes. Since the main events took place in antiquity in the East, the History of the Ancient East is especially important for biblical studies.
  • Paleography is a science that studies ancient and medieval manuscripts: writing forms, place of writing, dating, state of manuscripts, their characteristics in terms of external design and writing material.
  • Linguistics is the science of the general laws of the existence and development of the human language.
  • Philology is a science that studies texts, and on the basis of their linguistic, substantive and stylistic research - the history and essence of the spiritual culture of a given society.

2.1 Terminology. Sciences that study the Holy Scriptures.

The whole set of disciplines involved in the study of Holy Scripture is called biblical studies. In pre-revolutionary literature, biblical studies were often called “bibliology.” The main disciplines of biblical studies are: textual criticism, isagogics, hermeneutics, exegesis, and biblical theology.

Textual criticism (Textology) studies the history of the text of works. The emergence of textual criticism is due to the variety of manuscripts. The aim of textual criticism is to reconstruct the original text of the books of Holy Scripture. This original text is called an “autograph”. Other name for textual criticism is “lower criticism”.

Isagogics provides an introduction to the origins of the sacred books. It deals with issues of authorship, time of writing, establishes the addressee. It talks about the historical, cultural, religious and political situation during the creation of a book. It talks about the process of transferring the text throughout history, about the content and methods of its exposition, as well as about the existing reference and interpretative literature. The name of the science comes from the Greek verb ἄγω [ágo] - “I bring in, I bring” and the prefix εἰς- [is-] denoting an action directed inward, and hence the name εἰσαγωγή [isagogí] - “introduction”, “initial guidance”. Therefore, isagogics is also called “Introduction to the Holy Scriptures.” Another name for isagogical study is “higher” or “inner criticism”.

But Protestants and secular biblical scholars prefer the term Biblical criticism which uses the method of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. For the Orthodox tradition, biblical criticism is an imprecise and ill-considered term. It is closely related to deism (a philosophical trend that denies the influence of God on human history, especially on sacred history). Deists believe that Revelation is impossible, and Sacred history is human history, which has yet to be fully studied with critical methods.

The term historical-critical method has two different meanings. In a narrow sense, it serves to indicate a specific method that became dominant in Western biblical studies in the 19th and 20th centuries, but dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. In a broad sense, this term or, more often, the expression biblical criticism, refers to the totality of various directions in Western biblical studies of the 19th - 21st centuries. For a better understanding, consider both values.

The “fathers” of biblical criticism are usually called two philosophers: Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) based his reasoning on deistic concepts according to which God, although He is the “eternal Cause of all things,” but does not interfere with the life of the world after creation. For the philosopher, humanity is just an unorganized mass inclined towards evil, the only specific forms of power of which are capable of restraining and forming. This power was consistently in the hands of patriarchs, judges, kings, apostles and clergy, but now it passed to secular rulers, and the state took the place of the Church. Accordingly, the time has come to revise the canonical status of the biblical books, given in previous eras solely by the will of the people in power. Therefore, he questioned the authorship of a number of books in the Old Testament. The philosopher from the Netherlands, a native of the Jewish family Baruch/Benedict Spinoza (1632−1677), being a religious person, shared pantheistic views, but believed that they did not contradict Scripture, including accepting the New Testament. He proceeded from a rationalistic approach to Bible study and argued that Scripture should not contradict reason. He understood inspiration in a psychological sense, as a discovery to the authors of certain ideas about worship of God, ignored the historicism of the Bible, and questioned the authorship of a number of books of the Old Testament (in particular, the Pentateuch).

From that moment on, and throughout the entire 18th century, more and more researchers appeared who wanted to study the Bible proceeding from such a priori premises that had never been part of the Christian worldview. In addition to the indicated ideas of deism and the rejection of the inspiration of Scripture, they sympathized with such then fashionable views as skepticism (represented by Voltaire; 1694-1778) and rationalism (for example, represented by Johann Christian Edelman; 1698-1767). Deists, proceeding from the idea of ​​God’s intervention in the life of mankind, denied the historicity of the scriptures. Skeptics tried to find contradictions in the Bible, rationalists sought, from the point of view of reason, to interpret the entire biblical history, including explaining the supernatural events described in it, by natural causes. Faced with a number of difficulties with such approaches, these researchers began to pose isagogical questions: “What is the “true” origin of the books of the Bible, and who are their “real” authors?”

Researchers of biblical criticism of the 19th century continued this kind of research, openly denying the inspiration of Scripture, and sharing the ideas of deism, or rationalism, questioning the historicity of the events described in it. It was during this period that representatives of this trend tried to consolidate the term “scientific study of the Bible” for their speculations, and “scientific” consisted, first of all, in the denial of traditional Christian principles and methods of studying Scripture. Those researchers who continued to follow Church Tradition when interpreting the Bible were accused of being “unscientific.” In the second half of the 19th century this approach became dominant in Western European biblical studies.

All other methods of biblical criticism aimed at analyzing the origin and content of the books of Scripture and strongly dependent on a priori premises were called the highest criticism. First of all, it includes the historical- critical method discussed above. Criticism of sources was popular in the 19th century and dealt with the issue of mutual influence and borrowing from the authors of biblical books. In the 20th century it was replaced by literary criticism. Understood in a broad sense, an approach to studying the Bible as an ordinary literary work, in which through a detailed analysis of the individual elements and structure of the text, the author’s goals and the extent to which they have been achieved are revealed.

Methods of criticism of forms and editions became specific varieties within the framework of this general direction in the 20th century. The method of criticism of forms set itself the task of identifying the forms of oral tradition that existed before the written fixation of biblical books (legend, hymn, curse, lamentation, etc.), their recordings of oral tradition, or using the works of their predecessors.

These methods are unacceptable for the Orthodox tradition. As well as the false opposition of biblical science and belief in the inspiration of the biblical text. We will consider some aspects of these problems further.

2. Hermeneutic

2.3 The need to interpret the Holy Scripture

Usually what is heard or read is understood spontaneously, in a natural way. The rules by which the message is interpreted operate automatically and unconsciously. When there are obstacles to natural understanding, then there is a need to understand the rules and methods that are used in the interpretation of the message. And the more obstacles arise for spontaneous understanding, the more the need for this awareness is manifested, that is, the need for hermeneutics appears.

Let’s return to the concepts of hermeneutics and exegesis. Biblical hermeneutics and exegesis seem to be the same, but there are also differences between them. Exegesis deals with the very process of commenting on the Bible, while Biblical hermeneutics serves as an introduction to exegesis, establishing its principles and methods.

When a modern person reads Scripture, there are many obstacles to a spontaneous understanding of the original meaning of the text.

First, tens of centuries separate the modern reader from the biblical writers. For example, the authors of the Bible belonged to the world of the Ancient East, and its great civilizations: Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Phenicia - came to a close long before the birth of Christ. But it was they who created the cultural and historical background against which the events of the Old Testament took place.

There is a huge cultural gap between modern civilization and the biblical one, and each person perceives reality through the prism of his own culture and characteristics of personal experience. Ignoring this fact can lead to a serious distortion of the meaning of the biblical text. For example, the reluctance of the prophet Jonah to go to the Ninevites is explained by the fact that they were enemies of the Jews and posed a real threat to the independence of the Kingdom of Israel. The prophet Jonah understood that if he preached repentance to the Ninevites, the Lord would forgive them and they would someday conquer Israel (which happened). Therefore, he flees, hoping that the Lord will destroy Assyria and his homeland will be saved.

St. John Chrysostom pointed out this obstacle and wrote that «the vagueness of some places in the sacred books often stems from the obscurity of the subject being spoken of, and from the impoverishment of events that were then and now do not happen» (Hom. on 1 Cor. 2:9).

Second , Scripture is written in ancient languages, of which Aramaic and Ancient Greek have been dead for many centuries, and Hebrew has been dead for over two thousand years. In addition, each of these languages ​​has a completely special structure and idioms that are absolutely different from the idioms of another language.

Third, biblical teaching is not presented systematically, but in historical order. The revelation of God was given to people gradually. The clearest example of the development of Revelation in the Old and New Testaments is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

You need to understand that some important truths are missing in many sections of the Holy Scriptures. To get a complete picture of the biblical teaching on any issue, it is necessary to refer to the entire text of the Holy Scriptures. For example, the dispute between the Sadducees and Christ about the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead (Mt. 22:23-32). The Sadducees, unlike the Pharisees, believed neither in the resurrection of the dead, nor in the existence of angels and spirits, nor in the coming general judgment of mankind. The story the Sadducees told Jesus (Mark 12:19-23) is based on the law of the levirate (Deut. 25:5-6).

According to which, in the event of the premature death of a man who did not leave behind an heir, his closest relative was obliged to continue the family of the deceased. Our Lord Jesus Christ cites here the words from the Pentateuch (Exod. 3:6) – that part of Scripture that the Sadducees especially appreciated, thereby proving that the Sadducees did not understand the Pentateuch. Jesus specifically mentioned Moses because the Sadducees claimed that Moses never taught about the resurrection. According to Christ, God is (and was not) the God of the forefathers, and this proves that the patriarchs remain alive, for «God is not the God of the dead, but of the living» (Mt. 22:32, compare Mk. 12:27; Lk. 20:38). He made a covenant with the forefathers, gave them promises that were not fulfilled during their earthly life, but did not lose their strength. It follows from this that God will raise the forefathers to life.

Christ resorted to this interpretation, because the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is not found in the Pentateuch, or in the history books, or in the early prophets. Although patristic exegesis finds in the Old Testament the prototypes of the future general resurrection of the dead, for the first time this teaching is mentioned in the book of the prophet Daniel.

  • Terminology. Sciences that study the Holy Scriptures.
    • Hermeneutic
    • The need to interpret the Holy Scripture

2.1 Terminology. Sciences that study the Holy Scriptures.

2.3 The need to interpret the Holy Scripture

  • Terminology. Sciences that study the Holy Scriptures.
  • Hermeneutic
  • The need to interpret the Holy Scripture.

Graph View

Backlinks