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22 Aug 06

Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics

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WE AFFIRM that a person is not dependent for understanding of Scripture on the expertise of biblical scholars.

WE DENY that a person should ignore the fruits of the technical study of Scripture by biblical scholars.
WE AFFIRM the clarity of Scripture and specifically of its message about salvation from sin.

WE DENY that all passages of Scripture are equally clear or have equal bearing on the message of redemption.

Traditionally this teaching is called the "perspicuity" of Scripture. By this is meant that the central message of Scripture is clear, especially what the Bible says about salvation from sin.

The Denial disassociates this claim from the belief that everything in Scripture is clear or that all teachings are equally clear or equally relevant to the Bible's central saving message. It is obvious to any honest interpreter that the meaning of some passages of Scripture is obscure. It is equally evident that the truth of some passages is not directly relevant to the overall plan of salvation.

A Critique of the Evangelical Doctrine of Solo Scriptura

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Proponents of solo scriptura have deceived themselves into thinking that they honor the unique authority of Scripture. But unfortunately, by divorcing the Spirit-inspired Word of God from the Spirit-indwelt people of God, they have made it into a plaything and the source of endless speculation. If a proponent of solo scriptura is honest, he recognizes that it is not the infallible Scripture to which he ultimately appeals. His appeal is always to his on fallible interpretation of that Scripture. With solo scriptura it cannot be any other way, and this necessary relativistic autonomy is the fatal flaw of solo scriptura that proves it to be an unChristian tradition of men.
He said, “the very fact that I did not study a prescribed course in theology made it possible for me to approach the subject with an unprejudiced mind and to be concerned only with what the Bible actually teaches.”⁹This, however, is simply impossible. Unless one can escape the effects of sin, ignorance, and all previous learning, one cannot read the Scriptures without some bias and blind spots. This is a given of the post-Fall human condition.
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- Unlike the Roman Catholic position and the Eastern Orthodox position, however, which invariably result in the autonomy of the Church, the modern Evangelical position inevitably results in the autonomy of the individual believer.

Societas Christiana » Hermeneutics and Language Theory

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Knowledge contains a large subjective element, as witnessed by Schleiermacher’s approving citation of St. Anselm’s dictum, “He who has not experienced will not understand.”
After Schleiermacher, it becomes difficult to maintain that meaning is purely grammatical and purely a matter of authorial intention. Instead, research tends to orient around the question “does textual meaning reside somehow in the inter-relation or inter-action between both?
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- Modern hermeneutics creates understanding by trying to get inside the exact situation of the original author.
- Pre-Modern hermeneutics operated within a matrix of already assumed knowledge, and used its tools to check for misinterpretations;
- moving “from a hermeneutics of enquiry to a hermeneutics of understanding.”^[2] By this Thiselton refers to the fact that in pre-Modern hermeneutical endeavors one inquires into the meaning of specific texts, while in Modern hermeneutics the focus shifts to the very nature of meaning itself.
- Key to Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics is his romantic revision of the basic rationalist idea of Spinoza and Reimarus: namely, that the Bible is not a book to be interpreted by special rules which are not amenable to immanent human reason, but a book to be interpreted in just the same way as we interpret any other work of human beings.

21 Aug 06

Darrell L.Bock - Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament in the New (Part 2)

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The theses of this article are four: (1) A distinction between divine intention and the intent of the human author is to be made; but both intentions are related in their basic meaning and that relationship can be articulated. (2) Meaning involves the sense of a passage and not primarily the referents of a passage; but the language of an Old Testament passage and its New Testament fulfillment can be related in terms of referents in one of several ways. (3) The progress of revelation affects the detailed understanding of Old Testament passages in specifying details about the completion of the promise and the completion of salvific patterns in God’s revelation. But one should always be aware of (a) what was originally understood by the human author at the time of the original revelation and (b) what God disclosed about the details of that revelation through later revelation or through events in Jesus’ life. (4) New Testament alterations of Old Testament texts were neither arbitrary changes to create fulfillment in the New Testament nor reflections of later church theology placed back anachronistically into the lips of Jesus or the early church; rather they reflect accurate biblical theological considerations of the New Testament authors on the original Old Testament text.
Differing Texts

This issue is one about which the majority of evangelicals are most aware. The question is this: Do not certain New Testament uses of the Old Testament require an altering of the Hebrew text in such a way that fulfillments are possible only because the text has been altered?
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- Longenecker demonstrates the repeated use of these techniques in the New Testament. What is debated is (a) how much the perspective of this hermeneutic has influenced the interpretations of the New Testament and (b) how proper it is to refer to New Testament quotations in Jewish terms such as “pesher” or “midrash.” With regard to the first issue, it is fair to say that the key hermeneutical perspectives of New Testament interpretation (its Christological focus, corporate solidarity, and the presence of pattern) all emerge either from the events of Jesus’ life (Christology) or from perspectives already present in the Old Testament (corporate solidarity and the use of pattern).
- Second, many of the Old Testament passages the New Testament appeals to were recognized as prophetic in Judaism, but the referent of those passages was disputed. [13] The force of the passage was seen as prophetic, but who or what fulfilled it was an issue in the first century. In the context of the progress of revelation, the disciples could point to recent historical events in the life of Jesus that fulfilled these passages and completed the promises.
- It is here that the concept of pattern and generic promise are helpful, because with the coming of the pattern and the promise, many seemingly loose ends in the Scriptures were tied together in one Person, bringing a unity to the whole plan. Patterns were completed and promises were fulfilled in ways that reflected a connection to Old Testament persons or events, or in ways that heightened them. The “refraction” principle, which was mentioned earlier, [12] rightfully belongs here.
- The life of Christ did help the disciples understand what the Scriptures taught. What they did not realize about the Old Testament before, the life of Christ made clear to them.
- he Progress of Revelation
  
  This issue deals with historical concerns. The question here is this: What effect did the history of Jesus’ life and ministry, especially His resurrection and ascension, have on the church’s understanding and the apostolic understanding of Scripture?
- Within the Scriptures the following sense-referent relationships can occur:
  
  1. Referents of passages were made more specific, as in the “seed” example.
  
  2. Motifs were reapplied. For example the Exodus imagery was reused and reapplied, sometimes with changes, by Isaiah and by some New Testament writers; also Adam is introduced as the “first Adam” by Paul, a change made in light of Jesus’ coming.
  
  3. Language that was “earthly” in the Old Testament was expanded to include a “heavenly thrust.” For example, the king as “son” in a non-ontological sense in the Old Testament is “the Son” in an ontological sense in the New Testament (Heb 1); “kingdom” in some New Testament texts along with “Jesus as King” refer to something other than an earthly rule (Luke 17:20, 21; Acts 2:32-36). The eschatological debate turns on the question whether the Old Testament earthly sense is removed by the heavenly thrust of some New Testament texts. Premillennialists answer this question with a firm no.
  
  4. Language that was figurative became literal. Examples are (a) the righteous sufferer in Psalm 22 is described with figurative language that Jesus, the righteous Sufferer par excellence, fulfills literally; (b) Psalm 69; and (c) “the right hand” of Psalm 110.
  
  5. Language that is literal becomes figurative. For example literal lambs were sacrificed in the Old Testament but Christ was “the Passover lamb” in the New (1 Cor 5:7), and the literal first fruits in the Old Testament refer in 1 Corinthians 15:20 figuratively to resurrected saints.
- the literary context is limited to antecedent revelation. For the other schools, the literary context of all of Scripture is to be used. But it is important to state that when appealing to the whole of Scripture an awareness of what is antecedent to the given passage and what is subsequent must be maintained.
- If the “seed” example from Genesis 3 cited in the previous article is any guide, then meaning deals primarily with the sense, not always with the referent, of a passage as that meaning is defined by its literary context
- As the biblical theological context of a passage is deepened, how is the meaning of that passage affected? Much of the debate among evangelicals about eschatology falls in this semantic area. Does a “heavenly” referent for the New Testament fulfillment of passages like Psalms 2 and 110 nullify what appears to be an “earthly” reference in the original Old Testament contexts?
- This specific hermeneutical issue deals with the question, Where does meaning reside in a given utterance? Is it at the level of sense (the definitions of the words within a passage) or at the level of the referents? Is it at the level of the word or at the level of the word in its context?
- who affirm that God could intend more than the human author did but never at the expense of the thrust of his wording. The New Testament fulfillment will either agree with or expand by natural implication the human author’s wording.
- So to try to limit the meaning to the human author’s intention seems to be too narrow a view.
- One must also reckon with the fact that Old Testament prophets sometimes admitted that they did not understand their utterances (Dan 12:6-8; John 11:44-52; and esp. 1 Peter 1:10-12).
- A fair summary would be to say that God wrote to His people at a point in history and to His people throughout time, while the human author wrote to his people at a point in history and/or, as a prophet, wrote to his people with hope as he expressed God’s ultimate deliverance, either (a) in full human consciousness (direct prophecy, full human intent; Dan 7:9-14), (b) in the ideal language of the passage itself (many of the psalms such as 16 ; 22 ; 110 ; and Isa 53), (c) in language capable of expansion of reference into a new context through progressive revelation (Gen 2:7; 3:15 ; Pss. 2:1-2 ; 8 ; 16:10 ; Isa 61:1-2; Old Testament kingdom texts; texts about Yahweh in the Old Testament that refer to Christ in the New Testament), or (d) in language that involves a “pattern” of fulfillment but with less than full human authorial understanding of each referent in the pattern (typology that is typico-prophetic, Gen 2:7; Pss. 8 ; 95:7-11 ; Isa 7:14; 40 ; Hos 11:1).
- The question of dual authorship is the basic one to be considered. Can God intend more in a passage than the human author intended?

Darrell L.Bock - Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament in the New

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bible christian interpretation ot

The key to this view is its desire ultimately to read the Old Testament so thoroughly in light of the New.
position is that the whole of the Old Testament is to be reread ultimately in light of the New Testament; as a result the original expression of meaning within the Old Testament passage is overridden and redefined by the New Testament.
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- New Testament fulfillments of earthly Old Testament promises have the effect of taking priority over the Old Testament promise and “unpacking” its literal meaning
- Waltke rejects a sensus plenior that “wins” new meanings from the text and sees New Testament writers as “supernaturally” discovering the fuller sense.
- Their appeal for a prophetic meaning is grounded in (a) the sovereign design of God in which the patterns of salvation history reoccur and aim for fulfillment and in (b) the appeal to the wording of the text in conjunction with God’s revelation in Christ. However, it is also crucial to note that the event is the key dynamic that leads to the realization of the prophetic meaning. Most realization of fulfillment works toward and from the New Testament event.
- this approach seems to lessen the concept of prophecy by setting its recognition largely in the fulfillment period, rather than at the time of the original revelation.
- But the Jewish context in which the New Testament came to birth, significant though it was, is not what was distinctive or formative in the exegesis of the earliest believers. At the heart of their biblical interpretation is a Christology and a Christological perspective.
- when the New Testament writers read the Old Testament, they did so out of a developed theological picture both of messianic expectation and salvation history.
- Their exegesis could be characterized as “charismatic” in the sense that they saw events and declared them to fulfill the Old Testament in the “this is that” language reminiscent of pesher exegesis at Qumran.
- present the New Testament use of the Old as a reflection of the progress of revelation in Jesus Christ (“the Christological glasses” of the New Testament writers) and as especially making use of methods of first-century Jewish interpretation and exegesis (concepts such as midrash, pesher, and Hillel’s rules of interpretation)
- The Historical Progress of Revelation and Jewish Hermeneutic School (Earle E. Ellis, Richard Longenecker, Walter Dunnett)
  
  The main characteristic of this school of thought is its utilization of historical factors in assessing the hermeneutics of the relationship of the two Testaments.
- For this school, typology is prophetic because the pattern of God’s activity is designed by God to be repetitive and the correspondences are identifiable from details in the Old Testament text. In identifying typology as prophetic, this school differs from Kaiser’s view. This represents a second divergence, the first being its refusal to identify human intent with divine intent totally, as Kaiser does. The key distinctive of this school is its defense of a distinction between the human author’s intent and God’s intent, while trying to maintain a connection between the meaning which both express in the words of the text.
- Think, for example, how messianic prophecy is declared to have been fulfilled in the New Testament, or how the sacrificial system of Leviticus is explained as typical in Hebrews. The point here is that the sensus plenior which texts acquire in their wider biblical context remains an extrapolation on the grammatico-historical plane, not a new projection onto the plane of allegory. And, though God may have more to say to us from each text than its human author had in mind, God’s meaning is never less than his. What he means, God means.
- according to this view, God speaks through the prophet’s words.
- The Divine Intent-Human Words School (S. Lewis Johnson, James I. Packer, Elliot E. Johnson)
  
  The key emphasis of this school of thought is that prophetic passages all draw on the human author’s words but that the human author did not always fully intend or comprehend the prophetic reference, while God did intend the full reference.
- The key distinctive of this view is that the human author had the whole picture in view as part of his own intention and understanding, with the one exception of the time frame.
- The Full Human Intent School (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.)
  
  The basic premise of this school is that if hermeneutics is to have validity then all that is asserted in the Old Testament passage must have been a part of the human author’s intended meaning. Thus the Old Testament prophets are portrayed as having a fairly comprehensive understanding of what it is they are declaring about the ultimate consummation of God’s promise. [5] So Kaiser rejects sensus plenior, dual sense, double fulfillment, or double meaning. He rejects any bifurcation between the divine author’s intended meaning and the human author’s intended meaning, though he recognizes that God has a better recognition of the fuller significance of a promise.
- is often more complex than a direct line-exclusive fulfillment
- The relationship between certain Old Testament texts and their New Testament fulfillments is often more than just a mere linear relationship between the Old Testament text and New Testament fulfillment.
- they all recognize that the way to discuss the use of the Old Testament in the New is not on a “pure prophetic” model, in which one takes the Old Testament passage in its context and simply joins it directly to its New Testament fulfillment without any consideration of the historical situation of the Old Testament passage. In fact Kaiser explicitly makes the point that the best term to summarize the prophetic connection between the Old Testament and the New is not “prediction” but promise.
- The goal of this article is to discuss the hermeneutical issues that are raised in the debate. The article seeks to describe four schools of approach that have emerged recently in evangelicalism, letting each view define its perspective on these complex issues.

bible.org: Hints, Allegories, and Mysteries: The New Testament Quotes the Old

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How to understand how NT users use OT - ernye02 on 2006-08-21

This is not a call for a radical change in scholarly hermeneutics. The grammatical and historical approach to the scriptures is the foundation of understanding Biblical truth. It remains the only basis by which we can objectively discuss the doctrines of our belief.

When it comes to communicating doctrine, we should allow ourselves greater latitude. This, of course, also means that we must communicate to our hearers the 4 interpretive modes, their principles and their boundaries. As in all that we do: “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). It is not to sound mystical. It is not to sound enlightened. It is not to seek our own glory. Instead, like the writers of the New Testament, we have a gospel of regeneration to communicate to a lost and dying world. That world consists of right and left brained people, who have different learning modes. The use of p’shat, remez, drash, and sod can broaden our audience and enhance the effectiveness of our teaching.
use the scriptures as a model. That model contains these principles:

1. New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are largely in the p’shat sense. Christianity represented a dramatic change for the Jews and the Gentiles. It had to swim against the current of centuries of entrenched doctrine. Its champions had to show from the scriptures that the “new order” was not entirely new or unexpected. Nothing but a consistent presentation of plain simple passages from the Old Testament could win the day. They were the proof texts for New Testament doctrine and were quoted to convince the Jews and the Gentiles of the truth about Jesus the Messiah.

Our first rule must be to use the simple p’shat sense predominantly. People must first of all know what the Book says in order to benefit from its message.

2. New Testament quotes of the Old Testament never introduce or establish doctrine with anything other than the simple p’shat sense. Instead, the use of remez, drash, and sod serve to amplify and illustrate themes established by the sounder method. To put this another way, remez, drash, and sod are not a bridge to esoteric knowledge. They are servants of the p’shat. Paul, in Galatians, firmly laid a plain text foundation for justification by faith, before using an allegory to provide a human dimension. In the allegory, Paul was not trying to be deep, he was trying to be clear. The story of Hagar and Sarah would stick much better and longer than his propositional logic. On the other hand, without the logic the allegory has no power.

3. The more error prone is an interpretive model, the less frequently the New Testament uses it. Thus the New Testament employs p’shat, remez, drash, and sod in decreasing frequency.

Mysticism attracts people with a promise of a deeper experience with God that transcends the need for righteousness. Because of this, there is a persistent temptation to create a biblical mystique by emphasizing hints, allegories, and hidden themes above simple understanding. This is the area that Paul was warning Timothy about.

4. The New Testament books that favor a Jewish audience have the highest frequency of remez, drash, and sod. Matthew, Hebrews, and the writings of John contain the highest concentrations of this material, whereas Paul’s letters use it very sparingly. This suggests that their use today has favorable implications for Jewish evangelism. Also by communicating outright that these are Jewish authors using Jewish principles of interpretation, we disarm the efforts of the anti-missionaries, who stridently use the quotes in Matthew to turn the ears of seeking Jews from the claims of Messianic Judaism.

5. Remezim derive their meaning by semantic association with New Testament events or by communicating universal principles in pictorial form.

6. Drashim make room for expanded meditation on major p’shat themes. One can even see where the force of the allegory stems from the maxim, “History repeats itself.” Thus the choice of Abram to father a child by Hagar stems from the same misunderstanding driving the Galatian churches to choose justification by self-effort. The meaning of an allegory does not derive from a symbolic language of the scriptures, but on the common behaviors in the human heart that link past events to a current situation.

7. There is some room for seeking hidden messages in the scriptures, subject to the restrictions noted above. An important criterion before teaching from such a text, though, is for us to discern author intent. One could imagine the human author intentionally hiding a message in his text and that he gives clues to its presence. Such a criterion protects us from efforts like the equi-distant letter sequences concept discussed by Michael Drosnin in his book The Bible Code¹⁵.

� This is certainly true of Genesis 1:1, where one can connect aleph and tov (the basics of language) with the phrase “And God said.”

� The abrupt appearance and disappearance of Melchizedek, who was obviously of great significance to Abram, leaves us wondering who he was and why more is not said about him.
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- Paul also warns us to be careful.
  
  As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3, 4)
  
  In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. (1 Timothy 4:6,7a)
  
  Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, (2 Timothy 2:14-16)
- The pastor’s sermons, at this church, are filled with symbols, types, and shadows. Consequently, he can say anything that he wants. There are no controls. His approach removes understanding of the scriptures from the common person and places it in the domain of the enlightened, i.e. those who “understand the language.” If this leader develops cultic tendencies, his congregation will be ill equipped to challenge him.
- Is it for Today?
  
  Must one be an inspired writer of sacred scripture to employ hints, allegories, and hidden meanings from the scriptures? There is no suggestion in the scriptures that this is so, and many who employ a grammatical-historical hermeneutic also acknowledge the existence of types (drashim). All that’s left is to add the use of hints (remezim) and possible discovery of hidden meanings (sodim) to our interpretive toolkit. The scriptures model all four and, therefore, they seem to be legitimate.
  
  The fundamental issue with this notion is quality control and purity of doctrine. One can dialog over the simple meaning of the text and arise at consensus meaning (most of the time). How might one dialog over subjective interpretations? How do we avoid the pitfalls of error and protect people from falling prey to cults? Look at the following membership class notes that illustrate the core problem:
  
  The Kingdom of God, like any other kingdom has a culture and a language all of its own. Its language is of divine origin. It is the way in which deity has chosen to communicate with humanity. If we are going to dialogue with God in his word or in prayer we best learn the Language of his Kingdom. One cannot understand much of the Bible, without understanding the language of symbols, types, and shadows. Until we see the divine intent in the OLD TESTAMENT we will never fully comprehend the contents of the NEW TESTAMENT.¹⁴ (Emphasis is in the original.)
- Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, defined, with God’s direction, a doctrine of Gentile faith that was independent of the Laws and traditions of Judaism. In making his case, he quoted frequently from the Old Testament. Most of the time, he used the p’shat or simple sense so that:
  
  To declare the pre-eminence of Faith he quoted Genesis 15:6, “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
  To declare the hopelessness of justification by Law, he quoted Deuteronomy 27:26, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.”
  
  But in this section, Paul switched from p’shat to a drash drawn from Abraham’s life. Although Abram believed that God would fulfill the covenant, he decided that God needed help. So Abram went into Hagar, who conceived and gave birth to Ishmael. Much later, Sarah miraculously conceived and gave birth to Isaac. Paul saw a parallel, in these events, between those who seek justification by human effort and those who trust God alone for their salvation. On the one hand, he showed the allegorical correspondence of Flesh-Hagar-Slave. On the other hand, he showed the correspondence of Promise-Sarah-Freedom. By way of the allegory, Paul asked the Galatians, “Whose son are you? Whose son do you want to be?”
- drashim has a parallel with the Christian concept of “types.” For example, there was a time during the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites when poisonous snakes came into the camp. People, when bitten by the snakes, died. So, the Lord directed Moses to craft a serpent out of bronze and lift it up in the camp. After that, if a snake bit someone, he could look at the snake and be cured. Christian theologians say that the “serpent in the wilderness” is a “type” of Christ. Both were lifted up for the sake of dying men. In fact, Jesus gave us the allusion of the bronze snake (John 3:14). He also gave us the connections between His burial and Jonah’s great fish (Matthew 12:39-41).
- The point is this. A scriptural text may carry semantic associations that go beyond the simple meaning of its words and context. It is a right-brained connection and, therefore, violates the western-enlightenment-left-brained preference for propositional logic.
- words of Jeremiah are a perfect description for the grief of the mothers whose children Herod killed. And so the scripture, after the historical event, hints at and speaks to the horrible grief experienced by Bethlehem’s mothers.
- it “filled full” the meaning of Hosea 11:1. Israel is called “God’s son,” but how much greater is the One who is more truly God’s Son? That He would also dwell, for a time, in Egypt communicates God’s desire that the Messiah would completely identify with His people. One can imagine that Matthew, who composed his gospel to reveal Messiah as Israel’s King, decided to bring the subtle hint, contained in Hosea 11:1, into sharp focus.
- when Mary, while yet a virgin, conceived and gave birth to Jesus, it filled up or gave enhanced meaning to Isaiah 7:14. In other words, the significance of the historical event forever adds a shade of meaning to the prophetical event. A remez recognizes that God wired us with associative memories. Who can read “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” and not think of Jesus, His virgin birth, and the fact that He was God among us? Regardless of the p’shat meaning of Isaiah’s words to Ahaz, they will forever afterwards also speak by association of the virgin birth of our Lord. The verse has a fuller meaning that it had before
- three passages from Matthew. Somewhat arbitrarily, one might categorize them as remezim or “hints.” The principle reason for this choice comes from Matthew’s use of the word “plhrow,” translated “fulfill.” Although our tendency is to think of prophetic fulfillment in a predictive sense with “fulfill” meaning, “coming to pass,” plhrow can also mean “complete,” “fill full,” or “fill to the brim.”
- We must understand the four basic modes of Scripture interpretation used by the rabbis. These are:
  
  (1) p’shat (“simple”)—the plain, literal sense of the text, more or less what modern scholars mean by “grammatical-historical exegesis,” which looks to the grammar of the language and the historical setting as background for deciding what a passage means. Modern scholars often consider grammatical-historical exegesis the only valid way to deal with a text; pastors who use other approaches in their sermons usually feel defensive about it before academics. But the rabbis had three other modes of interpreting Scripture, and their validity should not be excluded in advance but related to the validity of their implied presuppositions.
  
  (2) Remez (“hint”)—wherein a word, phrase or other element in the text hints at a truth not conveyed by the p’shat. The implied presupposition is that God can hint at things of which the Bible writers themselves were unaware.
  
  (3) Drash or Midrash (“search”)—an allegorical or homiletical application of a text. This is a species of eisegesis—reading one’s own thoughts into the text—as opposed to exegesis, which is extracting from the text what it actually says. The implied presupposition is that the words of Scripture can legitimately become grist for the mill of human intellect, which God can guide to truths not directly related to the text at all.
  
  (4) Sod (“secret”)—a mystical or hidden meaning arrived at by operating on the numerical values of the Hebrew letters, noting unusual spellings, transposing letters, and the like. For example, two words, the numerical equivalents of whose letters add up to the same amount, are good candidates for revealing a secret through what Arthur Koestler in his book on the inventive mind called “bisociation of ideas.” The implied presupposition is that God invests meaning in the minutest details of Scripture, even the individual letters.
  
  The presuppositions underlying remez, drash and sod obviously express God’s omnipotence, but they also express his love for humanity, in the sense that he chooses out of love to use extraordinary means for reaching people’s hearts and minds. At the same time, it is easy to see how remez, drash and sod can be abused, since they all allow, indeed require, subjective interpretation; and this explains why scholars, who deal with the objective world, hesitate to use them.
- long standing “rabbinical” hermeneutic that can explain the New Testament use of the Old Testament.
- a satisfactory resolution only comes from coming to grips the hermeneutic used by the New Testament authors.
  
  The Jewish Connection
- scholars for whom this is not an issue. For them, the grammatical-historical methodology is good for everything except prophecy. They understand prophecy to have a large symbolic element, and thus, for example, see the Church as the fulfillment of the Messianic Kingdom.
- New Testament authors often quote scriptures out of grammatical and historical context. Note the troubling word “fulfilled” in the four verses above. In what way can anyone say that a verse quoted out of context is “fulfilled?”
  
  The issue, of course, is that we cannot actually complain. We are not reading the papers of young biblical scholars. We are reading inspired Scriptures. It is not up for correction. We cannot give it a bad grade. One can find and read case-by-case attempts to say that the problem text, if read just so, is not a problem⁴. In truth, though, the more firmly one holds to the grammatical-historical method, the larger the problem looms!
- Even my close friend in whom I trusted, Who ate my bread, Has lifted up his heel against me. (Psalm 41:4-9)
  
  It is difficult to conclude that this Psalm’s author intended it to refer to Jesus the Messiah, because verse 4 reads, “As for me, I said, ‘O Lord, be gracious to me; Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.’” Did Jesus have some secret sin in His life? To ask the question is to answer it. Of course, He didn’t.
- Jeremiah refers to the land weeping for the Israelites who have been dispersed to foreign lands. Following the verse about weeping, Jeremiah says, “‘Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; for your work will be rewarded,’ declares the Lord, ‘And they will return from the land of the enemy.’” There is nothing about a king slaughtering children, because of the birth of Messiah. Rather the tears are a precursor to joy; not the hopeless despair of the young mothers whose children Herod destroyed.
- Isaiah’s prophecy really outlines a timetable for the destruction of two troublesome foreign kings named Rezin and Pekah. Isaiah says to Judah’s king Ahaz, in effect, that by the time a particular maiden¹ marries, has a son, and sees him through his “Bar Mitzvah”, these two kings will be gone. Some commentators try to say that Isaiah is not speaking to Ahaz, but to the whole “House of David.” They take this mental handle and try to stretch the meaning to make it fit the true virgin birth to come. But verse 16 ties the prophecy to the two kings and verse 18 calls upon Egypt and Assyria to be the instruments of their destruction. What have Egypt and Assyria to do with the conception and birth of Jesus?²
- Now compare Matthew 2:15 and Hosea 11:1
  
  He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2:15)
  
  When Israel was a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son. (Hosea 11:1)
  
  Hosea’s prophecy specifically refers to the nation of Israel and the Exodus from Egypt. Whereas, Isaiah 7:14 has some interesting handles to grab and stretch, Hosea 11:1 just doesn’t! His words are what they are and cannot possibly be said to predict that a future Messiah would spend any time in Egypt. Why would Matthew say that Hosea’s words were fulfilled?