These are the notes from our 1st hermeneutics course through Equip.
Download Handout – Session 1 – Hermeneutics
HERMENEUTICS
SESSION 1: THE TASK OF HERMENEUTICS
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. -2 Tim. 2:15
BOOKS:
- 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible by Robert L. Plummer (Kregel, 2010)
- Grasping God’s Word by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays. Revised (Zondervan, 2012)
- BEFORE SEPT. 10, READ GRASPING GOD’S WORD, CHAP. 1-9
Dangerous Ways to Read the Bible
- Like a yearbook
- Like a fortune cookie
- Like a book scrap
Overview
- You cannot fully discover the biblical content until you rightly study the biblical context.
- If you study the Bible out of context, you study it just like the devil [Luke 4:1-11].
- Exegesis: discovering the original meaning of a biblical text
- Hermeneutics: interpreting the Bible into different contexts
- The Bible has eternal relevance: It speaks to all people at all times in all cultures.
- The Bible has historical particularity: It was first written to a particular people at a particular time in a particular culture.
- A text cannot mean what it never meant.
The Interpretive Journey
- Grasping the text in their own town. What did the text mean to the original audience?
- Measuring the width of the river to cross. What are the differences between the biblical audience and us?
- Crossing the principlizing bridge. What is the theological principle in the text?
- Consult the biblical map. How does our theological principle fit with the rest of the Bible?
- Grasping the text in our town. How should individual Christians today live out the theological principles?