“Biblical” Interpretation - More Than One Meaning?
Have you ever read the New Testament’s use of Old Testament Scripture and became puzzled that the authors didn’t employ historical-grammatical exegesis on the text, but rather employed what looked like a metaphorical interpretation, mistranslation or an odd application of the Old Testament that disregarded the Old Testament context? (Or is that just me?)
Here are some examples of the issues I am referring to:
- How did Peter turn Psalm 16, a Psalm, when read contextually, about David’s relationship with God, into a Psalm about the resurrection of Christ?[1]
- How did Paul come to the conclusion that Christ was “the Rock” in 1 Cor. 10:4 (referring to Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20:11)?
- Why do Paul and the Author of Hebrews prooftext a certain part of Psalm 8(v4-6) in 1 Cor. 15:27 and Hebrews 2:6-8 to make a certain Messianic point when the grammatical-historical point of the Psalm is about human domain over the natural world (Psalm 8:7-8)?
- In Matthew 2:14-15, the author quotes a part of Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt I called My Son”) making the text out to be a future/prophetic text. However, the text in its original context is recounting the history of Israel as a reprimand of their disobedience (Hosea 11:1-11).
In my previous post, I looked at two weaknesses of historical-grammatical exegesis. In this post, I want to show how our interpretation methods aren’t always “biblical”.
