Originally Posted May 20, 2007

As some of you know I'm studying theology which includes hermeneutics. That's heavy stuff but I'm going to try and explain it in every day language because I think this is really important. Let me know if it makes sense.

I'm going to try to explain what the word hermeneutic means. I will make up an imaginary conversation between myself and an imaginary fundamentalist. If you read the entire story and still don't know what the word hermeneutic means, please post a reply and let me know because that means I didn't do my job right. I apologize about the links. I don't know how to make live links with this program so you will have to cut and paste them into the address bar if you want to look them up. Quite a hassle, I know. Okay, here goes my story...

[align=center]The Bible Says So![/align]
ME: Excuse me, but exactly what does the Bible say???

Fundy: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. That's what the Bible says so we know it's true. Topic closed.

ME: Whose hermeneutics are you using?

Fundy: What's hermeneutics? I don't use herma-anything. I use my eyes and I read what the Bible says.

ME: Hermeneutics are the lens through which a person looks at something. For example, a homesteader who only wants a place for his children and grandchildren to call home looks at a piece of land very differently from a speculator from the Metro. Right?

Fundy: Yeah but what has that got to do with anything?

This: The homesteader uses the lens of home and family values. The speculator uses the lens of the stock market and monetary values. Those are two very different lenses or hermeneutics, I think you will agree.

Fundy: I agree. But the Bible doesn't say a thing about the stock market.

ME: I want to raise your awareness that the early Christians used a very different set of lenses to read the Bible than you do.

Fundy flips to NT and says: Here's the New Testament. You can see for yourself what the early Christians said.

ME: I'm talking about the Church Fathers. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine. They were writing after the New Testament. Do you know about them?

Fundy: I heard about Augustine. He was a famous person.

ME: Augustine of Hippo. He lived from 354 to 430.

Fundy: Okay.

ME: Augustine did not read the Bible like you do. He used a different lens--a different hermeneutic.

Fundy: He was a Catholic.

ME: All the Christians back then were either Gnostic or Catholic. So yes, Augustine of Hippo was a Catholic. Catholic just means the universal Christian Church. He wasn't Roman Catholic because the Church had not split yet.

Fundy: I don't think it's terribly important what Augustine said. I go by what the Bible says.

ME: Yes, that is your hermeneutic. You use the literal hermeneutic so you think when the Bible says God made the heaven and the earth that this literally happened this way.

Fundy: And it did.

ME: Long before Augustine there were two main schools of theology. One was in Antioch and the other was in Alexandria. The Alexandrian school said you have to read the Bible as allegory.

Fundy: Huh! That is the way the atheists say. If that is what the Alexandrians say then they are atheists.

ME: So you do recognize what I mean by hermeneutic?

Fundy: I guess. The atheists say the Bible is a fairy tale. We Christians know that things happened like the Bible says.

ME: Yes those are two different hermeneutics. Now for a bit of history.

1. Jesus used a "non-literalist interpretation of the Scriptures according to the testimony of the Gospels (cf. Mt 5: 17ff.; Mt 15: 1-20; Mk 2: 23-28; Lk 13: 10-17; etc.)" (Jeanrond, 1991:18 )

2. Alexandria(1)...was more allegorically inclined, and Antioch(2)...followed more a grammatical-historical strategy (Jeanrond, 1991:19).

3. Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp, who was said to have been tutored by John the Apostle. He believed in using the tradition of the church (Jeanrond, 1991:20). The Roman Catholics do the same. I think the fundamentalists do it that way, too.

Fundy: My church is NOT Roman Catholic!

ME: I agree.

Fundy: You said my church does things like the Roman Catholic Church does it and that is NOT true!

ME: You think you should read the Bible like your church tells you, right?

Fundy: My church says to read what the Bible says.

ME: Yes. The church tells you to use the hermeneutic to read what the words of the Bible say, right?

Fundy: Right.

ME: The Catholic church says to use the hermeneutic of the Catholic tradition.

Fundy: My church does not use the Catholic tradition.

ME: Of course not.

Fundy: Then why are you saying we do things like the Catholics?

ME: Because your church tells you what hermeneutic to use. The Catholic church also tells its people what hermeneutic to use. Does that make sense?

Fundy: I guess so. The Catholics use a very different hermeneutic than my church does.

ME: Right. And the early Christians used a very different hermeneutic than your church does. Your hermeneutic goes back about 150 years.

Fundy: Right! It goes back all the way to the 1800s!

ME: The Catholic hermeneutic goes back all the way to Irenaeus. He died in 202. Augustine had a slightly different hermeneutic than Irenaeus. How can so many Christians have so many different hermeneutics? How do you know your hermeneutic is correct?

Fundy: I know because the Bible says so!

*************

Hopefully readers can see what I mean (if not, let me know; it seems rather confusing to me). My point is that Christian hermeneutics changed over time. The first Christians read the Bible very differently from fundamentalists today. Irenaeus believed he was in the direct tradition of the Apostle John. And he believed the Apostle John got it straight from Jesus. So his church had to be right.

Augustine came later and he used a different hermeneutic. Thomas Aquinas came still later in the Middle Ages and used yet another hermeneutic. Still later, in the Reformation in the 1500s Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli used yet another hermeneutic. And the fundamentalists today use still another. They are all using the same Bible. How can they all be right? Did God change his mind over time?

I think that would be a pretty strong argument to undermine fundamentalist beliefs. I am afraid, though, that most of them will be like the one in this story. Comments are invited.

The book I quoted is:

Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance, by WERNER G. JEANROND, 1991.

[align=center]Footnotes[/align]
(1) Late Roman and Byzantine period

Even as its main historical importance had formerly sprung from pagan learning, now Alexandria acquired fresh importance as a center of Christian theology and church government. There Arianism was formulated and there also Athanasius, the great opponent of both Arianism and pagan reaction, triumphed over both, establishing the Patriarch of Alexandria as a major influence in Christianity for the next two centuries (FROM: Wikipedia on Alexandria)

(2) Early Christian-Byzantine period

The chief interest of Antioch under the empire lies in its relation to Christianity. Evangelized perhaps by Peter, according to the tradition upon which the Antiochene patriarchate still rests its claim for primacy (cf. Acts xi.), and certainly by Barnabas and Paul, who here preached his first Christian sermon in a synagogue, its converts were the first to be called Christians (Acts 11:26) (FROM: Wikipedia on Antioch).

Originally posted on exChristian's Main Blog.

What does the Bible really mean? Jesus got it wrong, too. It is an open question whether Jesus ever existed. This goes for other biblical figures, too. For this article, I will work with the premise that Jesus and the other biblical figures existed.

Is there a chance that today’s Christians know what the Bible actually means? Not one. Why? First of all, even Jesus got it wrong. How do I know? In Jesus’ time, there were many different ways on how to understand Jewish Scripture. Some said you had to take it literally. Some said you had to take it spiritually. Some said both those ways were wrong.

Also, they did not agree which was the right "Bible." Which was most important: the law? the prophets? the "writings?" Which writings were what God meant: psalms? proverbs? Judith? Sirach? other?

Into this confusion Jesus was born. With this confused background, the early Christians made up their own ways or methods on how to understand what Jesus said. None of those methods are used today by any Christians anywhere. The literalists did not take it literally like Christians do today; today’s Christians invented their own literalist methods.

This article is based on the book "Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church," by Karlfried Froelich, published in Philadelphia by Fortress Press, 1984. Not until several centuries after Jesus supposedly lived did the Christians come up with a method resembling what is used today. And today’s Christians think they know what God wanted?

Larry said:

"But the BIBLE says so."

Exactly!

But does it really?

That's the point I'm trying to make. They THINK the bible says so. But nobody knows what the bible actually says. All we've got is a batch of words. And most of those words don't fit together into comprehensible thoughts. The ones that do hang together are at odds with their doublet or triplet. The first two chapters of Genesis are a prime example.

Then there's the ones that actually line up with historical events recorded elsewhere, such as the House of Omri. Omri was a king of Israel who built a lot of cities and did a lot of commerse with his neighbours. He reigned a long time--I think the bible says 40 years. Extra-biblical records exist to prove that this man actually lived and did a lot of work as recorded in the bible.

The fact that he did all this building and business tells us his was a reign of peace. A guy who could hold ancient Israel together and out of trouble for decades on end was doing something right.

How does the bible treat him? It gives him perhaps four verses, and writes him off as an evil king.

But king david whom the bible makes out as the sterling king of all time did nothing but lead rebellions, invade the neighbouring lands, and fornicate when he was young. When he was old and stiff he fled from his enemies. He gets major coverage in the Bible.

So WHAT does the Bible say? Does it say to kill all your neighbours to make room for your own dozens of kids from all your fornications? Or does it say to deal fairly with your neighbours and look after your own people and promote peace and prosperity?

Or is the real meaning something totally different? A lot depends on whose method of interpretation we use. Are we going to use fundy interpretation of today? Or are we going to use the Church Father Origen's interpretation of around 400 C. E.? For the record, Origen did not think Moses wrote all of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible). He actually used his head and I am not sure why he is considered a Church Father. The fundamentalists of today would hate him.

So why do Christians today accept Jesus' version of the Pharisaic interpretation and not the rabbinic tradition? Or the interpretation of the Essenes?

I forgot to mention that King David probably did not exist. The archaeological evidence his accomplishments (if real) should have left behind does not exist.