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Best Bible Study Methods For Discipleship Formation: How Bible Study As A Spiritual Discipline Shapes Believers, Sandy Chery

Master of Divinity (MDiv)

Because the Christian faith depends upon Christ's life, teachings, death, and resurrection, believers should strive to become more like Him daily. In this regard, the late theologian C.S. Lewis would argue that every Christian should become a “little Christ.” According to research conducted by Barna Research Group, four of five Christians list personal spiritual development and having a deep commitment to Christ as a priority. However, only one in five Christians is involved in any spiritual development activities outside of attending church services. Thus, few Christians are actually investing energy into their spiritual growth. Discipleship formation, known interchangeably as spiritual …

A Rank-Based Analysis Of Word Order And Codification In The Greek Of The Pastoral Epistles, James Fickenscher

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

The relationship of word order and clausal structures with meaning, literary style, and authorial considerations in New Testament Greek is an often underdeveloped yet important field for reading, understanding, and interpreting the New Testament text. Navigating between a grammatical-historical and historical-critical reading of the New Testament, this dissertation analyzes the phenomena of word order and clausal structures afresh through the lens of systemic functional grammar, following the work of Michael Halliday. This project contributes a preliminary step forward in constructing a method that can account for and understand the purpose of word order patterns and variance from those patterns within …

The Homing Of The Word: Textual Intimacy In The Gospel Of John, Mary A. Craig Osf

Th.D. Dissertations

Christian spirituality is rooted in the Gospels. In proclaiming the truth of Resurrection and the presence of the Risen Jesus, each Gospel stories Jesus into human imagining. The Gospel of John is experienced as radically different from the Synoptic texts. Something in it affects everything of it. It seemingly knows Jesus differently, engages a reader differently, Gospels differently, even and actually loves differently.

This study considers what the Gospel of John does to a reader. Though not an exegetical study in the strict sense, it depends on a most simple, most beautiful, and most intimate line in all of Scripture: …

Creation Costs: Hermeneutical And Scientific Repercussions Through The Lens Of The Day Age And Young Earth Views, Mark Alan Langner

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Genesis’s creation narrative is crystal clear: God is eternal and preeminent, humankind is made in his image, and all nature results from God’s spoken word. Christocentric truth bursts forth from the opening words of creation, reality transcended by the Son of God. However, particularly in the years following the beginnings of Darwinian theory, questioning of the biblical creation narrative and variant versions of that narrative has exponentially expanded. This project is intended to biblically and systematically underscore the supernatural attributes of the Creator and the inerrancy of the Bible that God inspired, to determine hermeneutical and scientific costs associated with …

A Hermeneutic For The Aqedah Test: A Way Beyond Jon Levenson's And Terence Fretheim's Models, Arlyn Sunshine Drew

Dissertations

Problem

The works of Jon Levenson and Terence Fretheim highlight the problem of determining which interpretations of the biblical worlds of meaning around the text are congruent with the text of the Aqedah (also known as the Sacrifice of Isaac, Genesis 22: 1-19) and which should be disclaimed. A hermeneutical model is needed for Abraham's test that provides a text-based paradigm for sound interpretation of the narrative world (in the text), the historical world (behind the text), the theistic world (above the text), the cosmological world (below the text), and the present world (in front of the text).

Method

Four …

A Comparative Study Of Hermeneutical Approaches To The Seven Seals, Harold Novac

Master's Theses

Problem

From the beginnings God had a purpose with His prophetical messages to the world and we can see in the Bible clearly, that God always presented His prophetical messages in a certain order. A chronological method was favored by God. That is why from the beginnings, as Seventh-Day Adventists we believed that the best way to interpret the secrets of Revelation is through the historicist approach. Unfortunately this view is fading among scholars, even among SDA researchers.

Purpose

We are going to investigate why this is happening and we will show that historicism has a lot to say, even …

The Holistic Ministry Of The Anointed One: An Interpretive Analysis Of Isaiah 61:1-7, Daniel P. Lamastra

Master of Arts in Ministerial Leadership (MAML)

Isaiah 61:1-7 is a passage that is important to both the Jewish and Christian faiths due to the clear Messianic implications that it contains. The first two verses are especially familiar to the Christian community due to its quotation by Jesus in Luke 4:18-19 as one of only three direct quotes of the Old Testament made by Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. Isaiah 61:1-7 prophecies on Judah’s upcoming destruction, exile, and ultimate Messianic deliverance, containing references to both the near and distant future; all of these conditions must be considered when approaching this passage in order to arrive at an accurate …

Narrative Seam Antics In Luke's Gospel, James Waddell

Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers

By presenting the above seven text models at the beginning of this study my intention is to recreate a reading experience I once had. You might say, it is intended to recreate the experience of reading the Magnificat again for the first time.

Feminism And The Major Female Characters Of Exodus, Scott Ashmon

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

The scope of this thesis is feminist interpretations of the major female characters of Exodus: Shiphrah, Puah, Moses’ mother (Jochebed), Moses’ sister, Pharaoh’s daughter, Miriam, and Zipporah. I will demonstrate that feminists interpret the major female characters of Exodus in three general ways. First, some feminists interpret the major female characters of Exodus in proper contextual, grammatical fashion and end up with a more accurate portrayal of the women. For this thesis, the term “exegetical” will be the shorthand term for this type of interpretation. Second, other feminists interpret the major female characters in exegetical fashion, but then exaggerate the …

Orality As The Key To Understanding Apostolic Proclamation In The Epistles, Thomas Winger

Doctor of Theology Dissertation

Redaction criticism and its modern successors in the literary field, while they give more credit to the text and the author, have at the same time mired the academy again into a modern mud of sources and manipulation. There is promise in certain new paths—rhetoric, reader-response, speech-act theory, methods which we will note briefly in the first chapter. But finally we must move out of the "academy" and into the church. For the orality of Scripture is not just about its origin but also about its use and purpose. The Scriptures are a liturgical piece. They belong not on the …

Hebrew Narrative: Theory For Proclamation, Alan Toenjes

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

While acknowledging (enthusiastically!) the close relationship between homiletics and exegesis, this paper will approach Hebrew narratives from the vantage point of the exegete, specifically, that of the Lutheran exegete who confesses Scripture as God's Word of both Law and Gospel. From this point of view, this thesis will posit a hermeneutical understanding of Hebrew narratives as Scripture that will be of value for the preacher.

A fundamental presupposition that this paper shares with the likes of Thompson, Gowan and others, is that it is important to preach on Old Testament texts. It is no secret that this assumption has not …

Reading 2 Corinthians 3:4-18: An Exercise In Exegesis, Vilson Scholz

Doctor of Theology Dissertation

Paul's letters have a reading history of almost two millennia. It is a history of readings and misreadings, of grasping the general drift of the texts and of being puzzled when it comes down to the details. Readers have felt this ever since the New Testament era. Already in the first century Saint Peter writes that some things in Paul’s letters are "hard to understand" (2 Pet. 3:16).

A Study Of The Old Testament Quote In Matthew 27:9, 10, Curtis Giese

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Upon examining the Old Testament quotations in the Gospel of Matthew, one observes that their wording occasionally differs from that of the Hebrew Masoretic Text,(MT) the Septuagint (LXX), or any other known text. Matthew27:9, 10 is an especially striking example of this occurrence. Such deviation is immediately surprising because Jews and Christians contemporary to Matthew held the words of the Hebrew Old Testament, duly represented by the present Masoretic Text, in high esteem.' In addition, the Septuagint held a position at that time as a respected translation of the Hebrew.2 One questions, therefore, why the deviations exist in the Gospel …

Luther's Summaries Of The Psalms (1531)--A Model For Contemporary Psalm Interpretation, Bruce Cameron

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Luther has left only one work in which he commented on all 150 psalms. The Summarien fiber die Psalmen of 1531 accompanied his extensive revision of the Psalter published that year and reflects his thinking after fifteen years of lecturing on, writing about, and translating the psalms. Some portions of this work--both suggestions for interpretation and details of translation--are untenable, or at least unfollowed. Many of his applications are dated, or at least unfashionable. The challenge for the contemporary Luther-minded interpreter of the psalms is to develop summaries and applications of the psalms for our time, using the principles Luther …

A Hermeneutic Of Sacred Texts: Historicism, Revisionism, Positivism, And The Bible And Book Of Mormon, Alan Goff

Theses and Dissertations

As methods by which texts are to be understood, positivism and historicism have a long tradition and continue to exert wide influence in all academic disciplines. Other approaches to textual concerns have recently emerged to challenge the dominance of these two approaches. Foremost among these new approaches are hermeneutics and deconstruction. Both of the latter approaches recognize that interpretation is inescapable. The latter challenges even the possibility of determinate meaning. A theoretical discussion of historicism and positivism uncovers questionable and troublesome difficulties. Hermeneutics in its conservative or radical variations overcomes the difficulties of interpretation that positivism and historicism can't explain. …

Hermeneutical Perspectives Of Biblical Typology, Deomar Roos

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

The presentation and development of the argumentation of this thesis follow a simple, logical and somewhat natural and progressive flow. The preliminary considerations of Chapter One go over a brief survey of the history of typological interpretation, focus on the notion of sensus plenior, and summarize the basic approaches to typology. Chapter Two delineates the necessary distinction between typology and allegory. The typology of the Old Testament, its terminology and hermeneutical implications, is discussed in Chapter Three. Chapter Four has the same topics but relates to the New Testament area. And all the emergent hermeneutical perspectives raised by the discussion …

The Hermeneutical Principles Of Theodore Laetsch With A Focus On The Relationship Between The Old And The New Testaments, James Bollhagen

Doctor of Theology Dissertation

This dissertation will summarize the findings which resulted from an in-depth study of all the published works of Dr. Theodore Laetsch, professor of practical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. These writings include a commentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations, a commentary on the Minor Prophets, and eighty-six articles which appeared in the Concordia Theological Monthly.

The study was undertaken with the specific goal of ascertaining the hermeneutical principles of Laetsch, particularly those principles that address the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. The phrase "hermeneutical principles" will be employed in this paper in the following sense: an exegete's …

The Material Principle Of Lutheran Theology As A Hermeneutical Presupposition, Ralph Blomenberg

Master of Divinity Thesis

The scope of this paper has been limited by suggestion of the advisor to a discussion of the material principle of Lutheran theology as a hermeneutical presupposition, although readings for the research elective included a much wider range of subjects related to contemporary hermeneutics. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate the theological background for the concept of the Lutheran material principle, to describe its function as a hermeneutical presupposition, and to demonstrate that certain presuppositions of some contemporary methods of interpretation contradict those underlying the material principle of Lutheran theology.

Hermeneutical Principles Evidenced In The Gospel According To Matthew, Benjamin Lorenz

Master of Divinity Thesis

The scope of the following study is the Gospel of St. Matthew. The main portion of the paper shall consist of an exegetical study of select Old Testament citations in the Gospel according to Matthew. The study is entitled, “Hermeneutical Principles Evidenced in the Gospel According to Matthew."

A Study Of The Hermeneutical Principles Involved In The Interpretation And Use Of Psalm 22 In Biblical And Extra-Biblical Sources, Harvey Donald Lange

Doctor of Theology Dissertation

This study seeks to answer the specific question: what principle or principles of interpretation--philological, historical, theological--guide ancient interpreters as they used Psalm 22? The writer does not propose to discuss in depth the theology of any particular writing except to indicate its significance for the question of hermeneutics. There will be no extensive exegesis of every passage which either quotes or alludes to Psalm 22. A complete exegesis of Psalm 22 will not even be undertaken except on those points which seem most pertinent to the objective of this dissertation. This study will consider the nature of midrash and its …

Pesher: Towards A Description And Understanding Of Its Use By The Qumran Sect And The New Testament, Donald Zimbrick

Bachelor of Divinity

Since the term "pesher" is a technical word in the vocabularly of New Testament research, a description of the “pesher method" might be a profitable undertaking.. The problem undertaken in this paper is an effort to bring together a collection of information concerning "pesher" and to present it in such a manner that the reader will obtain an understanding of the "midrash pesher" as it was used in the Qumran Scrolls and even in a limited use in the N.T. itself.

Hermeneutica Sacra- Principles Of Old Testament Interpretation In Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Orthodoxy, Kenneth Miller

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

It therefore became apparent that it would be worthwhile to investigate the hermeneutical principles of the seventeenth-century Lutherans, and to discover what principles they employed in their commentaries and dogmatics. The aim of this investigation, then, is to discover these principles and to evaluate their validity. The questions that naturally arises are such as these: Are the methods of the Old Lutherans consistent? Are they still valid today? Is the Bible used as little more than a source of proof-texts? Did the dogmaticians of that period go too far in seeing Christian doctrines in the Old Testament? Did they make …

A Historical Critical Analysis Of Rudolf Bultmann's Form Criticism As Related To His Demythologization, Lorman Petersen

Doctor of Theology Dissertation

The primary purpose of this thesis is to delineate Bultmann's method or hermeneutics in treating the New Testament, in particular his principles of Form Criticism and Demythologization. Bultmann is a many-sided man. He has been concerned with almost every topic and emphasis which theology has to offer today. He is an exegete, theologian, historian, linguist, philosopher, preacher, lecturer, and professor. As one man has said, "He knows everything and seems to have written on most everything." A. list of his works, appended to this thesis, will support this statement. Moreover , he has never stood still, and even now some …