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If you want to uphold the confessions, you need to share those presuppositions.
That was how I understood both Steinmetz and Muller. My sense is the assumptions deal more with accepting it as God's word and not so much endorsing allegory.Maybe I'm wrong, but I think its possible Muller appropriates the term "precritical exegesis" (and the concept?) from Steinmetz:
Steinmetz; Superiority of Precritical Exegesis - [PDF Document]
Steinmetz, The Superiority of Precritical Exegesisdocuments.pub
I think this needs qualifying. A dispensational hermeneutic is historical-grammatical.I mean exclusively historical-grammatical.
It has been called the "Jewish Hermeneutics school".Richard Longenecker says, in "Who is the Prophet Talking About?"
"It is my contention that, unless we are 'restorationists' in our attitude toward hermeneutics, Christians today are committed to the apostolic faith and doctrine of the New Testament, but not necessarily to the apostolic exegetical practices as detailed for us in the New Testament. What the New Testament presents to us in setting out the exegetical practices of early Christians is how the gospel was contextualized in that day and for those particular audiences. We can appreciate something of how appropriate such methods were for the conveyance of the gospel then and of what was involved in their exegetical procedures. And we can learn from their exegetical methods how to contextualize that same gospel in our own day. But let us admit that we cannot possibly reproduce the revelatory stance of pesher interpretation, nor the atomistic manipulations of midrash, nor the circumstantial or ad hominem thrusts of a particular polemic of that day--nor should we try."
What would you call Longenecker's hermeneutic?
Also presented succinctly by Lane here: https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/christotelic-hermeneutics-and-typology.103427/#post-1254451Richard Longenecker says, in "Who is the Prophet Talking About?"
"It is my contention that, unless we are 'restorationists' in our attitude toward hermeneutics, Christians today are committed to the apostolic faith and doctrine of the New Testament, but not necessarily to the apostolic exegetical practices as detailed for us in the New Testament. What the New Testament presents to us in setting out the exegetical practices of early Christians is how the gospel was contextualized in that day and for those particular audiences. We can appreciate something of how appropriate such methods were for the conveyance of the gospel then and of what was involved in their exegetical procedures. And we can learn from their exegetical methods how to contextualize that same gospel in our own day. But let us admit that we cannot possibly reproduce the revelatory stance of pesher interpretation, nor the atomistic manipulations of midrash, nor the circumstantial or ad hominem thrusts of a particular polemic of that day--nor should we try."
What would you call Longenecker's hermeneutic?
Thank you! That is extremely helpful.It has been called the "Jewish Hermeneutics school".
See the brief summary of different approaches here:
The New Testament Use of the Old Testament | Evidence Unseen
www.evidenceunseen.com
Also extremely helpful. I am including these excellent posts below so people can see them more easily.Also presented succinctly by Lane here: https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/christotelic-hermeneutics-and-typology.103427/#post-1254451
Also reminds me of the view of Robert Thomas from Master's Seminary who said that quotes from the OT were essentially, divinely taken out of context. Though he came from an uber conservative, dispensational hermeneutical camp.
Hi Trent,
Part of the problem, as I think you are discovering, is that the terminology is used inconsistently. People do not always mean the same thing by "Christocentric", "Christotelic" or even "two readings", which means that follow up questions are inevitably necessary. Some people associate "Christocentric" with typology on steroids (what we might call "Christotelic maximalism, where, for example, each of the judges forms a positive type of Christ) and therefore call themselves "Christotelic", when all they mean is "Christocentric lite". But at the other end of the spectrum, some who call themselves "Christotelic" don't see Christ as present in any meaningful way in the OT, and think that the apostles are engaging in a new hermeneutic (2nd Temple Jewish) that makes OT texts mean something entirely different from what their authors originally intended. And even people like myself, who would describe myself as firmly Christocentric can meaningfully talk about "two readings", the first, the one that would have occurred to the original audience and the other that includes all that we can see with the benefit of subsequent redemptive history. The key for me is whether those two readings are in principle harmonizable or deeply contradictory. So the first audience of Genesis is the wilderness generation with Moses; it's a useful question to ask how Genesis addresses their specific questions and concerns (for example, the role played by Egypt). That will often help us to understand how Genesis addresses us and our own temptations, even though for us "Egypt" doesn't have the same significance.
I think your follow up questions are getting to the heart of the issue and are much more useful than vague labels. I would want to hear people affirm a) the original authors understood some of what they were writing (for example, David in writing Psalm 110 understood that there was a greater king yet to come); b) the original authors didn't necessarily understand everything they wrote (David didn't necessarily know about crucifixion when he wrote Psalm 22); c) there is a fundamental unity between what the prophets thought they were writing (limited though their understanding was) and its fulfillment in Christ, so that when the prophets in glory saw the unfolding of their prophecy in the person of Christ, they said "Wow! That all makes perfect sense now" and not "No! That's not at all what I meant."
Trent, there are about 7 characteristics of 2TJ rabbinic hermeneutics: 1. kal-vahomer (lesser to the greater); 2. gezera-shewa (key-word exegesis); 3. deduction (specific to general); 4. several texts put together can furnish a conclusion; 5. general to specific; 6. analogy from another passage (situation, not verbal); 7. inference from context. As you can see, any kind of exegesis would share certain features of this kind of exegesis. These characteristics are not all distinctive to rabbinic. You can find examples of 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 in the NT writings, but the lack of 2 and 6 (6 is not typology, but analogy only) make NT exegesis different enough that it should not be called 2TJ hermeneutics. There is a further list of 4 categories of interpretation (literalist, midrashic, pesher, and allegorical) in rabbinic exegesis, only the first of which has any similarity to NT interpretation of OT.
It has been called the "Jewish Hermeneutics school".
See the brief summary of different approaches here:
The New Testament Use of the Old Testament | Evidence Unseen
www.evidenceunseen.com
They would tend to be most likely to identify with a strong version of the "Jeiwsh Hermeneutics"school: the disciples interpreted the OT just like their Jewish contemporaries did (and made messianic mountains out of molehills). Not everyone who holds to the Jewish Hermeneutics approach is historical critical, but almost everyone who is historical critical is likely to hold to something close to a Jewish Hermeneutics approach.Of the four schools of the NT use of the OT laid out by Bock (Full Human Intent, Divine Intent--Human Words, Jewish Hermeneutics, and NT Priority,) which would be considered historical-critical?