Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Some Hermeneutical Principles For The Biblical Historian, Paul J. Ray Jr

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

While the grammatical-historical method of interpretation, which focuses on the languages of the biblical text and its historical backgrounds to arrive at meaning, has long been the interpretive procedure of choice in many faith communities, modern methods of biblical study have tended to move away from text-historical, to text-exclusive or more reader-centered hermeneutics. Unfortunately, this trend has either basically removed history from the interpretive arena or left the field open to simplistic and sensationalistic historical explanations. Since one’s view of biblical history is predicated on background matters such as conceptions of revelation, inspiration, the Bible, and even history itself, I …

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 …