Why does God communicate through symbolism in the book of Revelation? Is Revelation to be understood primarily as literal or symbolic? Beale argues that the popular approach to Revelation—interpret literally unless you are forced to interpret symbolically—should be overturned.
Genealogies in the Bible are often neglected in our reading of Scripture. This article offers six tips for reading them that will benefit the reader.
People and actions are often presented in Proverbs in polar extremes—the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, and actions that lead to honour or shame.
Chapter 2 considers the genre of Daniel. The nature of narrative and apocalyptic is reflected upon.
What is the literary approach to the study of the Old Testament? Longman examines potential pitfalls and promises.
How does the Chronicler treat the reign of King Asa in 2 Chronicles 14-2 Chronicles 16? Dillard reflects on the theological method and interpretation of the book as an entrance into related problems like the historiography of Israel.
The final form of the Old Testament text as a literary whole is much more appreciated today. Sprinkle gives a general overview of modern literary approaches to the study of the Old Testament, noting contributions from Robert Alter, James Muilenburg, Meir Steinberg, Martin Kessler, etc.
How does God use symbols to communicate? The symbols God uses have their own significant reality. The author wants to encourage the use of symbols as a means of communication, but at the same time warns to use symbols with care.
Hermeneutics should not be divorced from the study of language in general. The Bible is written in human language by men who used the language conventions of the day. This essay focuses on the way in which figures of speech and figurative language function in texts. The author notes similes, metaphors, allegory, metonymy, irony, and so on.
Goldingay argues that apparent ambiguities at the beginning of Psalm 4 can be resolved and become clear by reading the latter part of the psalm. He compares the reading of this psalm with the understanding of a sentence, which cannot be done until we have reached the end of it.
The Old Testament sacrifices functioned as God’s revelation to his people, but they also functioned as types. This article shows how the Greek and Latin church fathers understood these types.
Does God repent? Does he have hands, eyes and ears? If not, why does the Bible speak of God in that way? Anthropomorphic language is what God frequently used to explain something to us in terms we can understand.
This essay intends to use techniques of text analysis pertaining to the larger organization of a given composition, to explore the issue of literary genre. The way genre relates to the principal message of Jonah is also explored.
This essay wants to examine Leland Ryken's work in the context of recent literary approaches to hermeneutics. The author surveys Ryken's methodology together with two other literary critics, Amos Wilder and Northrop Frye. They approach the biblical text with similar assumptions about its literary nature.
This article looks at the fulfillment of prophecy, conditional prophecies, the influence of human action and decisions on prophecy, predictions and the providence of God, predictions and unconditional/assurances by God, prophecy and an oath of God, promises and the human response in the covenant, covenant and predictions, and the
How should we look at the use of large numbers in the Old Testament? Fouts gives examples of difficulties with large numbers in Scripture and gives a short overview of the history of interpretation of these texts. Most of these large numbers occur in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. He argues that many of these large numbers are often simply figures of speech used to magnify Yahweh or David as king.
Repetition plays an important role in the suffering servant poem found in Isaiah 52:13-Isaiah 53:12. His sufferings and following glory are emphasized by a rhetorical device: word repetition. This article demonstrates this function.
How can the doxologies in Amos best be studied? This essay examines the ways in which form criticism approaches the hymnic elements in Amos. Those elements are at the same time used as a critique of the form-critical method. The theology and setting of the hymns are considered.
What is a wisdom motif? This essay demonstrates how wisdom motifs from Psalm 1 are taken up and repeated in Psalm 112.
This paper consider the way the author of the book of Joshua writes history (historiography).
This article examines the claim of hyper-preterism that since all biblical prophecies must be fulfilled as predicted, this means that the imminent return of Christ was fulfilled. The author shows that this claim fails to take into account the human contingencies of prophecy. Biblical prophecies are seldom fulfilled exactly as they are.
Is all prophecy in the Old and New Testament fulfilled? How should we understand prophecy? The author of this article looks at the text of Revelation 20, and adopts preterism as an approach to studying the prophecy and eschatology of the book of Revelation.
This article discusses the historical nature of the Gospels. The author compares the four Gospels to ancient and modern historiography in order to highlight the beauty of these books as historical narratives.
How can poetry like the Psalms best be analyzed? One method is formal analysis as practiced by the Chicago Critics. This paper wants to give examples of such an analysis—(Psalm 1 and Psalm 51)—and try to determine what it can add to other existing methods of analysis.
Chiasm is a Hebrew literary device. This paper give illustrations of chiasims in the book of Psalms.
How does Semitic poetry function? The argument of the article is that many of the Psalms were written in a chiastic pattern.
Whole psalms can be in chiastic arrangement. This paper wants to illustrate from Psalms 1-50 that many psalms were consciously or unconsciously arranged in a chiastic pattern.
How should Genesis 1 be read? Youngblood explores the characteristics and conventions of ancient writing and how they bear on the interpretation of Genesis 1.
Unaware of the origins of some of these thoughts, many pastors and church members may find themselves increasingly confronted with ideas like “story preaching” or “reading the Bible as literature.” Even though it may seem harmless at first, these phrases may in fact conceal trends of which the unsuspecting pastor, churchgoer, or Bible student may not be aware. This article will help us understand the unfortunate dichotomy between history and literature modern biblical studies have inherited.
What are our cultural presuppositions with which we approach biblical interpretation? The concern of the article is that not enough acknowledgment is given to the oral character of the first-century culture. This article considers what kind of literary culture the first century was and its significance for understanding the nature of the New Testament documents.
