The Hermeneutical Spiral

A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation

Grant R. Osborne

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780830878772
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Estudios bíblicos

Christianity Today Critics' Choice AwardIn this newly revised and expanded edition, Grant Osborne provides seminary students and working pastors with the full set of tools they need to move from sound exegesis to the development of biblical and systematic theologies and to the preparation of sound, biblical sermons.Osborne contends that hermeneutics is a spiral from text to context--a movement between the horizon of the text and the horizon of the reader that spirals nearer and nearer toward the intended meaning of the text and its significance for today.Well-established as the standard evangelical work in the field since its first publication in 1991, The Hermeneutical Spiral has been updated to meet the needs of a new generation of students and pastors. General revisions have been made throughout, new chapters have been added on Old Testament law and the use of the Old Testament in the New, and the bibliography has been thoroughly updated.A 1993 Christianity Today Critics' Choice Award winner in theology and biblical studies.

Part 1

General Hermeneutics

1

Context

The first stage in serious Bible study is to consider the larger context within which a passage is found. Unless we can grasp the whole before attempting to dissect the parts, interpretation is doomed from the start. Statements simply have no meaning apart from their context. If I say, “Give it all you’ve got,” you would rightly query, “What do you mean by ‘it’?” and “How do I do so?” Without a situation to give the command content, it becomes meaningless. In Scripture the context provides the situation behind the text. In fact, there is no meaning apart from context, only several possible meanings. Someone says aloud, “Right.” But how as a hearer do you know what is meant by right? Perhaps the speaker meant, “Write this down” or “Look to the right” or “Let’s perform this rite” or “It’s correct.” Without a context, any of them is possible.

Two areas must be considered at the beginning of Bible study: the historical context and the logical context. Under the first category we study introductory material on the biblical book in order to determine the situation to which the book was addressed. Under the second category we use an inductive approach in order to trace the thought development of a book. Both aspects are necessary before we begin a detailed analysis of a particular passage. The historical and logical contexts provide the scaffolding on which we can build the in-depth meaning of a passage. Without a strong scaffolding, the edifice of interpretation is bound to collapse.

The Historical Context

Information on the historical background of a book is available from several sources. Perhaps the best single source is the introduction to the better commentaries. Many contain quite detailed, up-to-date summaries of the issues. It is important to consult recent, well-researched works because of the explosion of information uncovered in the last few decades. Older works will not have information on the exciting archeological discoveries or the theories coming out of the recent application of background material to a biblical book. Old Testament or New Testament introductions are also a tremendous help, since they interact more broadly than a commentary normally does. A third source would be dictionaries and encyclopedias, with separate articles not only on books but on authors, themes and background issues. Archeological works and atlases enable us to grasp the topography behind a book. With books like Joshua or Judges, indeed all historical narrative, this is a critical consideration. Books on Old Testament or New Testament theology (such as George Ladd’s) often aid us in discovering the theology of individual books. Finally, books on customs and culture in the biblical period are invaluable sources to help us grasp the historical background behind particular emphases in the text.

At this stage we are using secondary sources to learn preliminary data for interpreting a text. (We will use them later when we begin the exegetical study.) The information we gather from them is not final truth but rather becomes a blueprint, a basic plan that we can alter later when the edifice of interpretation is actually being erected. These ideas are held by someone else, and our later detailed study may lead us to change many of the ideas. The value of this preliminary reading is that it draws us out of our twenty-first-century perspective and makes us aware of the ancient situation behind the text. We need to consider several aspects here.

1. In one sense the authorship is more important for historical-critical research than for grammatical-historical exegesis. However, this aspect still helps us to place a book historically. For example, when studying the minor prophets, we need to know when and to whom Amos or Zechariah ministered so that we can be aware of the situation behind their actual statements.
2. The date when a particular work was written also gives us an interpretive set of tools for unlocking the meaning of a text. Daniel would mean something quite different if it were written during the period of the Maccabees. James would be interpreted differently if it were addressed to a diasporate community of A.D. 110 (as Dibelius theorizes). I would argue for the traditional view in both cases, and it makes a difference in the way I approach the text.
3. The group to which a work is addressed plays a major role in the meaning of a passage. Their circumstances determine the content of the book. The situation behind the prophetic books (such as the state of the nation in Isaiah’s day) is critical for understanding the message of those works. It does make a difference whether the epistle to the Hebrews was addressed to a Jewish, Gentile or mixed church. In actual fact, the latter is the most likely, although the problem was Jewish.
4. The purpose and themes are probably the most important of the four areas as an aid to interpretation. We should not study any passage without a basic knowledge of the problems and situation addressed in the book and the themes with which the writer addressed those problems. Only recently have commentaries begun to discuss the biblical theology of individual books. Yet such is immensely helpful as an interpretive tool. By noting the broader perspective of a book, we can more easily interpret correctly the details of particular statements.
5. The information we glean from the sources becomes a filter through which the individual passages may be passed. This preliminary material is open to later correction during the detailed exegesis or study of the passage. Its purpose is to narrow down the interpretive laws so that we might ask the proper questions, forcing us back to the times and culture of the original writer and the situation behind the text. We will therefore have a control against reading twenty-first-century meaning back into first-century language.

The Logical Context

In a very real sense the logical context is the most basic factor in interpretation. I tell my classes that if anyone is half asleep and does not hear a question that I ask, there is a 50 percent chance of being correct if he or she answers “context.” The term itself covers a vast array of influences on a text. These can best be diagrammed as a series of concentric circles moving outward from the passage itself (see fig. 1.1).

As we move nearer the center, the influence on the meaning of the passage increases. Genre, for instance, identifies the type of literature and helps the interpreter to identify parallels, but these are not as influential as the rest of Scripture is on the passage. We can, for example, identify the book of Revelation as apocalyptic, yet although intertestamental and Hellenistic apocalyptic provide important parallels, most of the symbols are taken from the Old Testament. At the other end of the scale the immediate context is the final arbiter for all decisions regarding the meaning of a term or concept. There is no guarantee that Paul uses a term the same way in Philippians 1 as he does in Philippians 2. Language simply does not work that way, for every word has many meanings and a writer’s use depends on the present context rather than his use of it in previous contexts. A good example is the use of aphiēmi in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you,” and in John 16:28, “I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” We would hardly interpret the one by the other, for their use is exactly opposite. In the first Jesus gives something to the disciples, in the second he takes something (himself!) away from them. Even less would we read into the term its common use (as in 1 Jn 1:9) for “forgiveness.” The other passages help us to determine the semantic range (the different things the word might mean), but only the immediate context can narrow the possibilities to the actual meaning.

Figure 1.1. The logical context

Figure 1.1 also describes the succeeding chapters. Two aspects comprise what is often called “inductive Bible study”; namely, charting the whole of a book and diagramming the paragraph. An inductive approach normally means an intensive, personal study of a text without recourse to other study aids or tools like commentaries. Then I move immediately from the text and make my own conclusions about its meaning rather than use someone else’s conclusions to understand it. This critical control protects me from being overly influenced by the commentaries and other sources as I study the text more deeply. I must first form my own opinions before I can interact with other people’s conclusions. Otherwise, I will simply parrot these other ideas. The introductory material draws me into the ancient situation behind the biblical passage, and my inductive study gives me preliminary data with which I can critically assess the commentaries (it is critical to emphasize “preliminary,” for the study of the tools will deepen and often correct the original decision).[1]

1. Studying the whole: Charting a book. An invaluable service for biblical scholarship has been provided by literary criticism in the last thirty years. Commentaries have encouraged an unbalanced approach due to an overemphasis on word studies that have been strung together with little or no cohesion. Literary critics have pointed out, however, that the parts have no meaning apart from the whole. Only when the message of the whole passage is considered can the parts be studied for details of this central message. In reality, the hermeneutical process can be summarized in this way: first, we chart the whole of a book to analyze its flow of thought in preliminary fashion; next, we study each part intensively in order to detect the detailed argumentation; finally, we rework the thought development of the whole in relation to the parts. We move from the whole book to its major sections and then to its paragraphs and finally to its individual sentences.

Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren, in their classic How to Read a Book, discuss four levels of reading: (1) elementary reading, which centers on the identity of individual terms and sentences; (2) inspectional reading, which skims a book to discover its basic structure and major ideas; (3) analytical reading, which studies the book in-depth in order to understand its message as completely as possible; (4) syntopical reading, which compares the message with other books of a similar nature in order to construct a detailed and original analysis of the subject matter (1972:16-20). The first two levels are inductive, the latter two are research-oriented, involving secondary literature (interpretations of the book or subject by others) as well as primary literature (the text itself).

Adler and Van Doren develop inspectional reading, the subject of this section, in two ways (1972:32-44). First, a prereading examines the introductory sections (preface, table of contents, index) and then skims key chapters and paragraphs in order to ascertain the basic progress and general thread of the work. In a biblical book this would entail the introduction and section headings (if using a study Bible) plus a perusal of particular chapters (such as Rom 1; 3; 6; 9; 12). Second, a superficial reading plows right through the book without pausing to ponder individual paragraphs or difficult concepts. This enables us to chronicle and understand the major ideas before we get lost in the particular details.

I would like to expand this inspectional reading to cover structural development and call this method a “book chart” (Osborne and Woodward 1979:29-32). Here it is critical to use a good paragraph Bible. We must remember that verse and chapter divisions were never inspired. In fact, the Bible was never versified until 1551, when a Parisian publisher, Stephanus, divided the whole Bible into verses over a six-month period as he publicized his latest Greek version. Tradition says Stephanus did it while riding his horse, and the subsequent divisions were the result of the horse jostling his pen! The problem is that Stephanus did it shallowly and quickly, so that many of the decisions were wrong. But Stephanus’s version became so popular that no one dared tamper with the results, and his divisions have continued to this day. Even though Stephanus often chose both verse and chapter divisions poorly, people today tend to assume that his decisions were correct and interpret verses and chapters apart from the context around them. Therefore, we should never depend on verse divisions for meaning. The paragraph is the key to the thought development of biblical books.[2]

When teaching Bible study method seminars to church groups, I have discovered that the most difficult thing for the novice to learn is how to skim each paragraph and summarize its main point. People get bogged down in details and never seem to surface for air. We need an overview here, and the student should try to read the paragraph in just a couple minutes (skim) then write a six- to eight-word summary for each paragraph. When we read the paragraph in too detailed a way, the summary statement often reflects only the first couple of sentences early in the paragraph rather than the paragraph as a whole. Such an error can skew the results of the entire study. So try to summarize the whole paragraph. In figures 1.2 and 1.3, I use Jonah and Philippians as examples to demonstrate how the process can work in both testaments.[3]

As the Jonah chart shows, each paragraph is encapsulated briefly in turn, and by perusing the summaries we can gain a very real feel for the flow of thought. Moreover, by looking across the chart the basic contours of the book become visible. For instance, we can see easily that chapter 3 gives the results of the original purpose of chapter 1, namely, the mission to Nineveh and the people’s repentance. Thus there are two parallel sections, chapters 1 and 3 and chapters 2 and 4. Further, the emphasis is on the latter pair, so that Jonah is not so much about mission as about Jonah’s (and Israel’s) attitudes toward God and those on whom God shows compassion. Chapter 4 contains the actual “moral of the story,” a lesson about divine compassion.

If we were to label chapter 4 “Jonah’s Anger” or “Anger Answered,” we would miss the crucial point that Jonah learned the meaning of divine forgiveness. Therefore, each heading must catch the essence of the paragraph. However, we must remember also that this is a preliminary overview and will be subject to correction if the detailed exegesis so warrants. This sort of overview of a book the length of Jonah or Philippians should take forty to forty-five minutes.[4]

Let us now go more deeply into the process and explore the stages by which the chart approach proceeds.

Step 1. The most efficient way to skim the paragraphs is with pen in hand. I try to summarize as I read. This helps enormously with my concentration. The major problem when skimming a text (or reading more carefully, for that matter) is a wandering mind. I often discover after reading a paragraph that my mind has shifted to a current problem or the events of the day, with the result that I must repeat the process (sometimes several times!). If I take notes as I go, stressing first impressions, I am able to concentrate far better. Also, I attempt to catch the progression of thought in a section (for instance, in the series of exhortations in Phil 4:4-7; see fig. 1.3), whenever a single summary is not possible. Again, taking notes as I skim helps tremendously. The value of the process is that the chart becomes a map tracing the flow of the entire book. When studying individual passages more deeply later, I can at a glance determine the progression of thought surrounding that statement.

Step 2. After charting the book, it is time to return and look for patterns of thought in the progression of the book’s paragraphs. We need to look for breaks of thought between paragraphs and then indicate them with a single line (see fig. 1.3). Paragraphs with similar material form major sections of the book and greater precision results. Some breaks of thought are quite easy to detect, such as the switch from Paul’s personal comments (Phil ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: General Hermeneutics
• Part 2: Genre Analysis
• Part 3: Applied Hermeneutics
• Appendix 1: The Problem of Meaning: The Issues
• Appendix 2: The Problem of Meaning: Toward a Solution
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Index to Scripture and Other Ancient Writings
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright