Free Study Notes by Craig Keener on Biblical Interpretation

Thanks to the Boston Bible Geeks for bringing to our attention the availability of study notes by Craig Keener for a beginner's class he did in Africa on Biblical Interpretation.  They are made available through The Pneuma Foundation.  The notes are in pdf form and, if printed, come to 88 pages.  It is also available in a zip file (link is available at Boston Bible Geeks). I did a quick scan and they look very good.  Of course, I would expect nothing less from Keener.   Here are a few paragraphs in discussing the importance of context:

"Many people assume that the thief in John 10:10 is the devil, but they assume this because they have heard this view many times, not because they examined the text carefully in context. Of course, the devil does come to steal, to kill, and to destroy; but we often quote the verse this way and miss the text’s direct applications because we have not stopped to read the verse in context.

When Jesus speaks of “the thief,” he speaks from a larger context of thieves, robbers, wolves, and strangers who come to harm the sheep (10:1, 5, 8, 10, 12). In this context, those who came before Jesus, claiming his authority, were thieves and robbers (10:8); these tried to approach the sheep without going through the shepherd (10:1). This was because they wanted to exploit the sheep, whereas Jesus was prepared to die defending his sheep from these thieves, robbers, and wolves.

The point becomes even clearer if we start further back in the context. In chapter 9, Jesus heals a blind man and the religious officials kick the blind man out of the religious community for following Jesus. Jesus stands up for the formerly blind man and calls the religious leaders spiritually blind (9:35-41). Because there were no chapter breaks in the original Bible, Jesus’ words that continue into chapter 10 are still addressed to the religious leaders. He declares that He is the true Shepherd and the true sheep follow His voice, not the voice of strangers (10:1-5). Those who came before Him were thieves and robbers, but Jesus was the sheep’s true salvation (10:8-9). The thief comes only to destroy, but Jesus came to give life (10:10).

In other words, the thief represents the false religious leaders, like the Pharisees who kicked the healed man out of their synagogue. The background of the text clarifies this point further. In Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34, God was the shepherd of His scattered people, His sheep; these Old Testament passages also speak of false religious leaders who abused their authority over the sheep like many of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and not a few religious leaders in our own day." (11)

There is some really rich material here. 

Be Still and Know That I Am God - What Does it Really Mean?

For as long as I can remember I've heard this verse cited with the encouragement that God is telling us to be still and make ourselves aware of who he really is.  In that time of "stillness" we will experience God in ways that could not be done apart from being still.  I came across this again in something I read recently so I thought I would look up what John Goldingay had to say in his commentary on the Psalms in the Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms.  I found part of it surprising and part of it alarming. I put in italics what surprised me and in bold what alarmed me. 

"'Be still and know that I am God' is a common invitation in Christian spirituality.  This involves a reinterpretation of the psalm.  Nowhere do the psalms have an ideal of silence.  Their assumption is that one finds God not in silence but in noise.  In noisy Western cultures, we may need to cultivate silence, and the use of the psalm to this end may be inspired by the Holy Spirit, even though it does make the words mean something that the psalmist did not say and would not have dreamed of saying.  Spirit-inspired interpretation often works by making the words of Scripture mean something quite different from what they actually meant, because new situations make it necessary for God to say new things.  At the same time, we have to be wary of missing what the text actually did say.  Here it issues an important challenge to the superpower to stand still and recognize that God is God and that the superpower is not."  (vol. 2, p. 73)

I was surprised, though not terribly so, to see that the verse taken from its context had acquired a life of its own and had taken on meanings not found in the text.  But then Goldingay goes on to offer a justification for this very practice.  As it turns out "spirit-inspired interpretation" can make "the words of Scripture mean something quite different from what they actually meant."  Now he is not writing a book on hermeneutics so I understand him not going into much detail on this point but this seems to open a pandora's box for subjective interpretations under the guise of "spirit-inspired interpretation."  I appreciate his caution that we should "be wary of missing what the text actually did say" but couldn't some one say "What does it matter what it originally said since I have a spirit-inspired interpretation that is not confined to the original meaning?"  At the end of the day what is there to be wary of?  I suppose if you're trying to say what it originally meant then the caution is applicable but with that out of the way the door is open to just about any thing that fits my fancy since a new situation may be making it necessary for God to say something new.