Final Flashcards
Source Criticism
Attempts to recover the written sources from which the extant biblical texts grew. Undermines the historical integrity of the text.
Form Criticism
Attempts to classify bits of the oral material that was later incorporated into the OT. Classifying these bits according to genre or literary type is expected to aid in understanding the purpose or function of that bit of text in its original setting. (Ex. In the NT an attempt is made to trace how certain stories, bits of teachings, or sayings originated and developed in oral tradition of the early church prior to their inclusion in a written gospel.
Redaction Criticism
Attempts to discover the theological reasons or aims the final editors had in putting the present text in its present form. The theological viewpoint of the final redactor or editor is what is in view. Attempts to understand the purpose of the writer who produced our present biblical texts.
Literary criticism
The art of reading behind the text into what it does not say, rather than what it says. Bible texts in particular do not just convey information, but also do something to the reader. Literary approached to the bible, therefore, investigate how the biblical texts address and confront the human condition by using an array of literary devices and techniques.
Extra-textual reading of scripture
People are interpreting the bible based on information or a text they hold higher than the bible. They bring that view and information from the outside into their biblical interpretation.
Hermeneutics
Learning to study, interpret, and apply the bible rightly. Hermeneutics involves exegesis, application, and contextualization.
Intertextual reading of scripture
within- reading the word on its own terms, at face value. We must read Scripture according to its own categories, structure, and presentation (=not extratextually). It is God’s interpretation of his own events and how Scripture presents those events is significant in our reading of Scripture
‘New Hermeneutic’
this approach has now become the concern of philosophers, who wish to know not what a text means, but what it means to understand at all. In this approach, ‘hermeneutic philosophers’ no longer consider hermeneutics the study of a ‘subject’ trying to understand a text in some ‘objective’ manner. That is viewed as an impossible task. Instead they view meaning as dependent upon the response of the interpreter or reader.
Reader-response hermeneutics
Much of the purpose of this approach was to give an ‘objective’ method by which a person could reconstruct the history and belief-structure of particular believing communities behind the text, rather than to listen to the message of the text itself
Textual Horizon
(immediate context)-“biblical hermeneutics has sought to read texts according to the grammatical-historical method, seeking to discern God’s intent through the human author’s intent by setting the text in its historical setting, understanding the rules of language the author is using, analyzing the syntax, textual variants, word meanings, figures of speech, and literary structure, including the genre of the text.”
Epochal Horizon
“seek to read texts in light of where they are in redemptive history, or where they are in terms of the unfolding plan of God. Scripture is progressive revelation and text are embedded in a larger context of what has come before” Locating texts in their place in God’s unfolding plan helps illuminate intertextual relationships between early and later revelation.
Canonical Horizon
Scripture is God’s word and thus a unified revelation, in the final analysis texts must be understood in relation to the entire canon. Read scripture as unified story
Typology
a method of biblical interpretation whereby an element found in the Old Testament is seen to prefigure one found in the New Testament. Various persons, types, and institutions are intended by God to correspond to each other. (a) Typology is symbolism with a prospective reference to fulfillment in a later epoch of biblical history. Typology finds its fulfillment in Christ.
(b) Typology is rooted in historical realties (=contra allegory). Allegory is grounded in a linguistic system of ‘signs’ and presupposes parallels between ideas that is dependent upon an extra-textual grid or key.
(c) Typology involves an organic relation, in history, between events, persons, and institutions in one epoch and their counterparts in later epochs. The early event, person, or institution is called the ‘type’ and the later one is called the ‘antitype.’ A ‘typical’ relation links some event, person, or institution in one epoch to another event, person, or institution in another epoch in some fundamental or essential way.
(d) Typology is prophetic and predictive and thus divinely given.
(e) The typological relation is the central means by which particular epochal and textual horizons are linked to later horizons in redemptive revelation. It links the present to the future, and it retroactively links the present with the past. It is founded on the organic connection of God’s promises with his fulfillment of those promises.
Sensus literalis
literal sense. This is not an arbitrary or indeterminate reading of the text. The literal sense determines that to which the signs refer; the rule of faith (=church tradition) and the principle of charity determine that to which the things refer. What is meant by sensus literalis is not that every text in the Scriptures is given a “woodenly literal” interpretation, but rather that we must interpret the Bible in the sense in which it is written.
Sensus plenoir
“fuller sense” or “fuller meaning”. [1] This phrase is used in Biblical exegesis to describe the supposed deeper meaning intended by God but not intended by the human author
Sola scriptura
scripture alone. Scripture is the supreme authority of doctrine and practice
Biblical theology
in order to be biblical (true to scripture), our reading and application must reflect and do justice to what scripture is. It is the discipline which seeks to do justice to what Scripture is. In light of what scripture claims to be and on its own terms. Progressive revelation. Exegesis in light of the ‘big picture’ (=not proof texting). Not taking scripture out of context and examining it in light of where is in the redemptive plan. The task of BT is to trace the historical unfolding of redemptive history and the focal point of BT, then, is not only the historical unfolding of God’s self-revelation, but also the organically related, and expanding movement of that revelation pressing on toward its consummation in Jesus Christ
Allegorical intepretation
treats a text as meaning something other than what it apparently says
Literal interpretation
plain and ordinary meaning. A literalistic reading is one that insists on staying on the level of ordinary usage, even when another level is intended by the author
Analogy of faith
a key principle of interpretation taught by the Reformers which which teaches that Scripture should interpret Scripture. This principle is stated in the Westminster Confession (1.9) in this manner: “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.”
