Biblical Interpretation

Dear Diary,

We all went to the baseball game the other night. There must have been at least a million people there! We just murdered the other team – hooray! Afterward, we stopped at our local hangout; and I must have eaten at least 3 hotdogs. I was starving! After we ate, we had to walk like 100 kilometers to the nearest phone booth so that Jerry’s dad could pick us up. It was raining cats and dogs as well. By the time I got home, I was almost 2 hours late, Dad hit the ceiling, and mom almost had a cow!

They grounded me for a week for not calling them sooner. I still had fun today.

What if 3000 years from now, people discovered this diary, and wanted to interpret it?

Which words and phrases will probably cause the most confusion?

What will they probably think each of the words and phrases mean if they interpret every word literally?

How else might the people 3000 years from now try to discover what the diary is really expressing?

LITERALIST:

People who read and interpret the Bible passages word for word based on the actual words in their ordinary meaning.

CONTEXTUALIST:

People who weave together the whole situation, background, or environment relevant to a particular event, personality, etc., when reading and interpreting the Bible (reading between the lines, looking for the message!)

 

EXEGESIS:

The study of scriptural texts in their ORIGINAL context

It looks at potential influences of the author: language, historical context, religious traditions, and other existing writings of the time

To understand where the author was coming from, we need to understand their world

Biblical Interpretation

literal - without interpretation; limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text (“literally” means also to interpret Scripture without considering outside factors or the meaning of other passages).

contextual - viewing the facts or circumstances that surround a piece of writing to help interpret writing. (“contextually” means also to take Scriptures and look at them according to when and where they were written and interpret them for our use today).

 

The Catholic Church bases its teachings on a contextual interpretation of the Bible. This means that the spirit of the entire text is studied.

The Bible is seen as the word of God, written by humans.

For this reason, some inaccuracies can be found.

However, Religious truths found in the Bible are seen as

without error. (Inerrancy)

 

Catholic teachings are based on a combination of divine revelation through Scripture and the tradition of the Church. What are the advantages/disadvantages of this approach?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of a literal interpretation?