III. Proposals: Technical Proposals
To begin with, one should distinguish between being biblical and being literal. To clarify the difference, I recall one preacher who used to assert to his congregation that the prime principle of biblical hermeneutics is to interpret the Scriptures literally, “when Jesus said He is the door, He meant what He said.” He once said. I can still recall his words because his example contradicts his hermeneutical claim. Jesus did not mean that He was a physical door, but He used figurative language to convey the meaning to his audience, who perfectly understood what He meant. In fact, the Bible is full of passages that contain figurative language and imagery, and the biblical interpretation is not to literalize those passages. On the contrary, literalization would be twisting the meaning of the Scriptures and missing the correct message of the Bible.
Unfortunately, our above preacher is not the only minister who adopts poor hermeneutics. Many preachers and youth pastors are clever at inventing creative devotional messages that are detached from the intended meaning of the biblical passages they preach from. Please understand this: to be biblical is not the same as to be literal, but rather to understand the Scriptures on their own terms. Building on this critical distinction between being biblical and biblicism, I introduce my proposals for being biblical. These proposals can be divided into two main categories: technical and theological. Technical proposals deal with how to read and understand the Scriptures properly. In contrast, theological proposals deal with thoughts and priorities essential for an individual or an institution to be biblical. In the following lines, I will begin with technical proposals.
This first of these technical proposals is linguistic in nature; we should remember that the Bible was not originally written in the English language but in biblical Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic [The books of the Old Testament are mainly written in Hebrew, except portions from Danial, Ezra and Nehemiah, and few scattered verses in Genesis and Jeremiah that were written in Aramaic. Almost all of the New Testament was written in Koine Greek except for a few words.]
What we have in our hands then are English translations of the original. Therefore, it is wise to compare different English translations in order to gain a broader understanding of what we read. When it comes to Bible translations, there are two major approaches, as shown in the following table:
| Approaches to Bible Translations | |
|---|---|
| [Table’s data gathered from different sources, for example, the Preface of the NKJV Translation by Thomas Nelson.] | |
| Formal equivalence | Dynamic equivalence |
| The formal equivalence or word -for word translations, such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB) & English Standard Version (ESV). Pros: These translations strive to maintain the original structure of the biblical text. They realize that meaning cannot really be separated from the structure. Cons: as they opt to keep the original structure, some passages sound awkward, and the English reader misunderstands some idioms. | The dynamic equivalence or thought-for-thought translations, such as The New Living Translation (NLT) Pros: these translations strive to convey the same message of the biblical text in clear and understandable English, producing the same impact as the original text without the difficult or awkward structure of the original text. Cons: as they strive for clarity and to ease things for modern readers, they sometimes overlook many insights from the original structure—for instance, word order and intended ambiguity. |
Some translations attempt to take a mid-way between the two approaches. That is to balance word-for-word and thought-for-thought approaches. Whether this approach is possible or not, this inquiry is beyond the purpose of this essay, but it is good to know that this is what CSB and NIV translators aim to accomplish. At any rate, I advise any sincere reader of the Scriptures to counsel at least two different English translations: one formal and one dynamic. However, suppose the passage you try to understand is difficult. In that case, you might need to counsel more than two translations to gain a broader insight into the biblical text’s structure and flow of thought.
The second proposal is a literary one, and it is related to the structure of the text [syntax & context]. To understand any text, one should pay attention to how words and phrases related to one another and how a verse or paragraph relates to its surroundings. This is called “immediate context.” While understanding syntax is essential for those who care about specific details, it can only benefit those who know the original languages. On the other hand, context can serve as a faithful guide to those who know and those who don’t know the original languages. Even if you don’t know the original language, you can read a Bible verse in its immediate context. A term gains its proper intended meaning not from a lexicon but from the immediate context in which it fits. The immediate context to terms is like the good natural soil to seeds. For instance, you could look up a word in a lexicon to find a wide range of meaning/ meanings. Still, to narrow down your choices of the intended meaning by the biblical author, you should read the word in the light of the immediate context in which it originally occurred. Thus, it is not an exaggeration to say that Immediate context is key in interpreting any term or passage of the Scriptures. [Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral. 2nd ed (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 39.]. To be continued…
Out of Egypt 