Biblical Interpretation: Word and Sentence Analysis PDF

reference to the history of its use in the Greek OT. (Note how the author of Hebrews plays on the two meanings of the Greek word ["will" and "covenant"] in Hebrews 9:15-22.) Where the biblical authors are clearly conscious of history of a term, diachronic analysis must be used in addition to synchro...

reference to the history of its use in the Greek OT. (Note how the author of Hebrews plays on the two meanings of the Greek word ["will" and "covenant"] in Hebrews 9:15-22.) Where the biblical authors are clearly conscious of history of a term, diachronic analysis must be used in addition to synchronic study. In other words, when a biblical writer picks up on a certain word which earlier Scripture has given a specialized meaning, we must go back to the earlier uses of the word to see what content that word had for the later writer.4 A special application of diachrony is etymology, the study of the origins and derivations of words. Etymology is sometimes useful in helping to establish the meaning of rare words.5 But etymological analysis is extremely dangerous when used to read more meaning into words that are already known. Users of a language are hardly ever conscious of the etymological origin of words when they use them, and hence etymology has very little role in establishing meaning.6 Few English speakers, when they use the word nice, are conscious of the derivation of the word from the Latin nescius, which means "ignorant." WORD AND SENTENCE When we speak of the meaning of a word, this is a different matter than the meaning of a sentence. A sentence actually says something. It is, to be sure, understood according to its context, but it nevertheless does say something. A word, unless it constitutes a sentence by itself, does not say anything; it is only a building block used to construct a sentence that says something. Words by themselves simply imply potential fields of concepts, which are made specific by the sentences in which they occur.7 This may be obvious, but it is worth stating, because a great deal of biblical interpretation tries to find what is effectively sentence-meaning in the use of particular words, and these words are then thought to suggest theological truth by themselves. Much of the scholarly world was led astray in this direction during the first part of the twentieth century. Scholars found theological meaning in the fact that, for example, the Hebrew word dabar could mean either "thing," "event," or "word," which was taken as an indication that the OT writers viewed words and deeds as the same thing. This has now been given an undignified burial,8 but it still crops up in popular works, where excessive information is sometimes found in a single word. More attention will be given to this matter in chapter 7 (under "The Grammatical Side of Exegesis"), but it must be stressed that the basic unit of communication is not the word, but the sentence. Unfortunately, sometimes our favorite passages are favorites because of a particular word, rather than what the sentence says. Of course, individual words are important details, but they mean something only in relation to other words in a sentence. For example, much interesting but dubious material has been extracted from the fact that Paul tells Timothy that he should be "rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15 KJV). It has been suggested that teachers should teach by dividing up everything in Scripture into certain slots or categories, or that, since the word was used in agriculture for "straight plowing," one should plow through the Bible from beginning to end, rather than studying themes. But in fact the verse does not say anything like this. We would urge readers to examine some of their own favorite passages, and make sure they are gaining benefit from what the sentences actually say, rather than from how a particular word or words may be used. SENSE AND REFERENCE Another distinction commonly made in language study is that between the sense or general meaning of a word, phrase, sentence, etc., within the language as a whole, and its reference, the reality to which it refers in a particular context.9 "The 'what' of discourse is its 'sense,' the 'about what' is its 'reference.' "10 For example, the Pharisees in Matthew 21:45 perceived that the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants was "about them"; they recognized that they themselves were the reference of the parable, although "Pharisees" is not the sense of any of the words in the parable. But this is tricky, because the sense of the parable as a whole is also not really a story about vineyards and tenants; the sense of the parable is that irresponsible behavior on the part of the caretakers of God's people results in their dismissal and punishment. The distinction is not always easy, because the sense and the reference are often bound up with each other, and very often the sense cannot be known apart from the reference. Sometimes the sense and the reference are so closely linked that we can almost speak of a direct relationship between the verbal symbol and the thing referred to.  The famous triangle of Ogden and Richards may be helpful here.11 The word is a symbol, which in a particular context generates a mental linguistic response, the sense, which in turn is connected by context to a referent, the extralinguistic thing referred to.12 Sense Word Referent The connection of the word to the referent is always by way of the sense, but the degree of connection between word and referent may vary greatly. Proper names (e.g., Julius Caesar, Republic of Ireland, World War II) and, under certain circumstances, scientific or technical terms (e.g., sodium, hemoglobin, justification by faith)13 have a fairly high degree of correspondence between word and referent, and we call these words or phrases denotative. Not all words-in fact, probably a minority of words-are so denotative. (What does the word beautiful denote?) Words can refer to a variety of referents, and referents can be referred to by a variety of words. Hence, the meaning of a word is not its reference, but a range of possible mental responses. But if most words do not derive their possibilities of meaning from their connection to a referent, where do they get their meaning from? There are two approaches to this question. One approach is concept oriented. Each word has a bundle of associated essential characteristics and stereotypical features. The second approach is field oriented. Words get their meaning from the complex of semantic relations within the language.14 As Cotterell and Turner point out, the main problem with the first approach is the difficulty "of deciding which components of the variety of discourse concepts are properly part of the lexical concept or sense of an expression."15 The main problem with the second approach is that it suggests that we cannot know the meaning of a word without knowing the other words in the field and their interfield relations. Like Cotterell and Turner, we think both approaches operate together. As already noted, Saussure likened words to the pieces on a chessboard.16 Each word has a set of dynamic relations with other words "on the board," and if any word shifts places, many other words are affected in their relationships. In the words of J. Trier:  The value of a word is first known when we mark it off against the value of neighboring and opposing words. Only as part of the whole does the word have sense; for only in the field is there meaning.17 On the other hand, each chess piece also has certain inherent characteristics that distinguish it from other pieces. Both the knight in itself and its position on the board in relation to the other pieces determine the meaning of the knight in the game. The "inherencies" of a word make it a candidate for usage; the relations of the word to other words in the user's vocabulary lead to its selection. These relations can be described in terms of their variation, their contrast, and their specificity. Variation involves the choice of words where meanings overlap. Words that are considered synonyms have a shared range where either word will do. "She is a strong athlete" and "She is a powerful athlete" mean the same thing. The words strong and powerful are not totally interchangeable in every context, however. "A powerful man is in the office" probably refers to someone who is politically or fiscally influential, but "A strong man is in the office" implies someone who is physically strong, or perhaps a decisive leader. Further, there are certain contexts where either one or the other is inappropriate. We do not usually speak about "powerful tea" or "strong cars," but about "strong tea" and "powerful cars."18 Contrast involves the choice of words in order to distinguish one meaning from another meaning. Contrast is of two types. Some words contrast by opposition (dark and light; up and down); many more words contrast by contiguity. Walk is not the opposite of run, but they are clearly distinguished from one another. The sign that tells us what to do in case of fire says "Walk, do not run, to the nearest exit." Specificity involves the choice of words according to the degree of particularity desired. Most nouns and many verbs can be placed in a hierarchical relationship. Mystery writer is subordinate to novelist, which is subordinate to author, which is subordinate to human being. Any of these can fill in the blank in "What wrote Shroud for a Nightingale?" The reference in all these sentences would be the same (P. D. James), but the sense has varying degrees of specificity. Failure to recognize the distinction between sense and reference can lead to problems in interpretation. The same word can have different references in different contexts, and yet in each case be an instance of a particular sense. G. B. Caird gives the example that in Colossians, mystery refers to the secret of God's incorporating people into Christ; in Ephesians, it refers to God's breaking down the barrier between Jew and Gentile. But these are not different senses of the word mystery. In both cases, the sense is "God's secret which is now revealed." Only the referent is different.19 Similarly, the word head is used in Colossians 2:19 in a way that suggests that Christ as "head" is the "source" of life from God. The reference or usage of "head" in this context is "source." But although head can occasionally refer to something that is a source, it does not bear the sense of "source."20 The idea of "source" can only come from the context. Thus, if one wishes to argue that in 1 Corinthians 11:3, when Paul says that a husband is the "head" of the woman, he means he is the source of the woman, rather than a divinely appointed authority over her, it is better to point to things in the context, such as verses 8 and 12, rather than the meaning of the word head. Of course, head does not bear the sense of "authority over," either. Whether head in 1 Corinthians 11 has in view "a source" or "an authority over someone" must be decided on the basis of the context, not any supposed sense of head as "source" or "authority over." The distinction between sense and reference comes into play with regard to sentences as well as words. For example, "Give me liberty or give me death!" originally had reference to Patrick Henry's preference of war, with its prospect of death, to continued subjection to the tyranny of the English king. Its sense, however, is that political liberty is worth risking death to achieve. This sense has been applied in many other contexts where political liberty has been threatened. It can have application to more than its original referent. But we would not know the sense of this sentence unless we also knew the reference. The phrase could have been uttered by a prisoner trying to commit suicide, in which case it would have nothing to do with political liberty and taking risks to achieve it. The meaning would be different. As a biblical example, the reference of Jesus' statement in Revelation 3:20, "I stand at the door and knock," is his appeal to the believers of Laodicea to repent of their pride and return to their true source of life. Its sense is thus a reminder to Christians of Christ's readiness to commune with his people and their need to receive strength from him. This statement was not made in a context of inviting people to become believers, and thus it is not a general invitation to non-Christians to open their hearts to the Lord. LITERAL AND NONLITERAL One of the authors of this book heard an address a few years ago entitled "Why I Believe the Bible Is Literally True." What the speaker meant was that he believed that the Bible is really true. He certainly demonstrated a mastery of metaphor himself, and knew quite well that the Bible uses metaphors and other nonliteral language. Similarly, someone once wrote in an examination paper, "Our rector is literally the father of every boy and girl in the village."21 Let us hope this person did not mean "literally" literally. Language is considered literal when the referent in view is an instance of the ordinary meaning of the words and sentences used. That is, the usual or common meaning, or sense, directly points to the intended referent. A nonliteral reference occurs when the referent is connected to the sense of a word or sentence solely by context, not by the usual sense of the word or sentence by itself. "Literalness" does not indicate the truth or falsity, nor the precision, of the statement. A literal statement can be false, or even fantastic ("There is a ghost in my closet"), and a nonliteral statement can be true ("There is a skeleton in my closet"). Further, literal does not mean "expressed with scientific or mathematical precision." If the almanac reports that "The sun rises tomorrow at 6:08 a.m.," the statement is not scientifically precise (the sun does not "rise" from the astronomical point of view), but is nevertheless literal within the understood context. In Scripture, the distinction between literal and nonliteral is very important and also very difficult to make. It is here that much controversy in the church has been centered. Arguments have arisen over whether something is literal or nonliteral (e.g., the "thousand years" of Revelation 20). Or, if a word or sentence is regarded as nonliteral, what kind of nonliteral symbol is it, and what does it stand for? Symbols are highly adaptable things. And the more symbolic a text is, the more it can yield to various interpretations. Often "literal" is contrasted with "metaphorical," but there are other types of nonliteral language that we should mention before we discuss metaphor. These include hyperbole, sarcasm, synecdoche, metonymy, and merism.  Various nonliteral types. Hyperbole, or exaggeration for effect, is common enough in the Bible, especially in poetry. For example, when David says of Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:23 that they were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions, he is certainly not speaking literally. When Ezekiel prophesies concerning Pharaoh that God will "strew your flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass" (Ezek. 32:5), he is speaking hyperbolically. When Jesus tells his disciples that a person must "hate" his father and mother (Luke 14:26), he speaks in hyperbolic contrast (Matthew interprets for us: Matthew 10:37). But one needs to be a little careful with identifying hyperbole, lest one soften the radical demands and promises of the Bible. Sometimes the Bible may sound hyperbolic when actually it is simply radical and comprehensive. When Jesus says that our righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, this is not hyperbole. Sarcasm appears to be a feature of speech all over the world. In 2 Samuel 6:20, Michal exclaims to David, "How the king of Israel honored himself today!" The context indicates that Michal was not complimenting him. Paul appears to be sarcastically repeating accusations made against him in 2 Corinthians 10:1-"I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold to you when I am away!" Synecdoche occurs when a part of some entity is named in place of the whole entity, or the other way around. Frequently "Ephraim," which is only part of the northern kingdom, can mean the whole northern kingdom (Jer. 31:18, 20); on the other hand, "Israel," which properly includes all twelve tribes, can mean just the northern kingdom in opposition to the southern kingdom. Thus, when the gospel of John uses "the Jews" to mean "those who opposed Jesus," this is not anti-Semitism, but simply an application of synecdoche. Certainly John knew that Jesus and his disciples were also Jews. A special kind of synecdoche that is characteristic of the ancient Near East is merism or merismus. Merism is a way of referring to the totality of a subject matter by mentioning the pair of opposites that describe the poles of that subject. "From Dan to Beersheba" was a way of referring to all Israel, and "heaven and earth" is a way of referring to the whole created order.22 One particularly interesting merism in the Bible is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Good and evil are opposites covering the sphere of ethics or morals. The "knowledge of good and evil" is thus a way of referring to the totality of ethical knowledge, including the experience of both right and wrong and the ability to decide for oneself what is right and wrong.23 So the tree in the garden was not a means whereby Adam and Eve became ethical creatures; how should they have been expected to know that it was evil to disobey God? The tree represented the experiential knowledge of evil as well as good, and the "knowledge" of making moral judgments apart from God's word. To eat of the tree of total moral knowledge was to claim the ability to determine on one's own what is right and wrong. Metonymy is where something in close and definite association with something else is named in place of its associated thing. For example, "the crown" can represent the king or queen, who in turn represents the government as a whole. This is common in poetry, but frequently occurs elsewhere (see Galatians 2:7-9, where "the circumcision" means Jews, or James 3:5-6, where "the tongue" represents speech). A special form of metonymy is a circumlocution or euphemism, which is a word or phrase used to avoid direct mention of something. It is frequently used in the NT to avoid direct mention of God (e.g., "the Majesty on high" in Hebrews 1:4 or "the kingdom of heaven" throughout Matthew). But it can also be used to avoid direct mention of other subjects deemed delicate. The curious OT phrase "uncover the nakedness of" is an easily recognized metonymic euphemism for sexual intercourse. Metaphor. The most important and common form of nonliteral speech is the metaphor. The Oxford English Dictionary defines metaphor as "the figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable." Metaphors can extend to actions, ideas, sentences, paragraphs, and even whole books. Further, a metaphor is not expressed by an individual word; it is a function of a sentence and a context. Thus, we prefer the view that "when we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction."24 This takes place to a lesser extent with metaphor's cousin simile, even if the difference between them is simply the presence of the word like. Some would say that "Jesus is like a good shepherd" is a simile, and is basically literal, whereas "Jesus is a good shepherd" is a metaphor. But the simple presence of the word like is not terribly important, and we prefer to think of metaphor as the juxtaposition of unrelated things in a surprising manner, whether or not the word like is used. It is this element of surprise that marks out a metaphor. Similes compare similar things ("mules are like donkeys," or "prawns are like tiny lobsters without claws"); metaphors compare things that at first sight are dissimilar ("men are donkeys," or "prawns are heaven on a platter"). Somehow the latter seem to mean more than the former, because they are more surprising and highlight less obvious characteristics. Of course, there are varying degrees of surprise, and hence the line between simile and metaphor is not a sharp one. In any case, a metaphor is not merely an ornament; it has a communicative power that transcends literal language.25 Further, although it may make us a little uncomfortable, we must recognize that metaphor not only elucidates the world, but to some extent shapes it.26 For example, the metaphor "Time is money" is a controlling metaphor in Western life. Time is thought of as a commodity-we spend it, save it, invest it, need more of it, budget it, waste it. Some cultures do not think of time this way. The Bible likewise has certain controlling metaphors that ought to shape the way we as Christians think about the world and God -for example, the notion that God is our Father and we are his children. But the fact that this is a metaphor does not make it any less true; if anything, it makes the truth more accessible and real. Metaphors are the lifeblood of poetry, and thus are exceedingly common in the poetic sections of the Bible. Just open to any psalm, and you are likely to find numerous metaphors in it. Perhaps metaphor is even more common in the OT prophets, which are often poetic. But metaphor is not by any means confined to poetry. Jesus spoke in parables, which are special types of metaphors; he made statements like "I am the good shepherd" and "I am the vine." Even the most ordinary literal types of passages can use metaphors.27 It is therefore important to recognize how metaphor functions. Metaphor involves principal and subsidiary subjects. The first principle of metaphor is that, when a metaphor is used, there is a main subject, which is usually literal (i.e., involving the normal meaning of words), and a subsidiary subject. The commonplace "associated implications" of the primary and subsidiary subjects interact to expand understanding about the primary subject.28 A metaphor is thus a lens (if we may use a metaphor). Ordinarily, one does not notice the lens one is using; one's interest is in what is being observed through the lens, and the resultant expansion of information about it. So when Jesus says, "I am the vine and you are the branches," the disciples would not be thinking about how this sheds light on grape plants, but what it says about the nature of their relationship to Jesus. However, there is no formula for indicating what is principal and what is subsidiary. Paul says that Christ's body is the church (where "body" is subsidiary and metaphoric); he also says that the believer's body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (where "body" is principal and literal). A reference to a "winged criminal" could have in view either a literal criminal who is adept at escaping or a crow who keeps plundering my vegetable garden. Identification of the principal subject is often not available within the sentence using the metaphor, but is evident from the subject being discussed in the immediate context. In some cases, the principal subject lies in neither of the two juxtaposed areas of thought, but in the metaphorical activity set up by their juxtaposition. When Paul in Romans 3:13 cites Psalm 5:9 ("Their throat is an open grave"), the principal subject is neither throats nor graves. The "open grave" and the "throat" interact to give an image of death which swallows up, and this image in turn applies to the evil and deadliness of people. Similarly, although we recognize disagreement among Christians on this matter, we would argue that when Christ says, "This (bread) is my body," the subject is not bread (although that is involved), nor is it really his physical body (although that too is involved); it is the presence of Jesus with his disciples, based on his death, which the Last Supper, and later the church's Communion service, represents and "embodies." Metaphor is more than comparison. Second, metaphors are more than just comparisons, because the power of a metaphor goes beyond obvious similarities, and in fact sometimes plays on dissimilarities. Isaiah 24:7 says, "The wine mourns, the vine languishes." The dissimilarity between wine (which is associated with rejoicing) and mourning impacts the reader with the severity of God's judgment. To understand the way in which a metaphor is being used involves identifying the implied associations of the two subjects that are interacting. There is no way to predict what these associations may be, or what particular characteristics of the subjects may interact in a given metaphor, but one can list certain types of interaction. G. B. Caird lists four types of metaphor: perceptual, where there is a similarity in the perception by one or more of the five senses; synaesthetic, which involves a transfer from one sense to another, as when words are said to be "as smooth as butter and as slippery as oil" (cf. Ps. 55:21); affective, which involves feelings, as when the hearts of Joshua's troops turned to water (Josh. 7:5); and pragmatic, where the activity or result is similar, as when the kingdom of heaven is like yeast or a mustard seed (Matt. 13).29 Sometimes a metaphor may fit into more than one of these categories, but noting the points of the interaction is what enables one to gain information about the primary subject. Metaphor can have multiple levels. Third, a metaphor can go more than one level deep. In Matthew 6:22, Jesus tells his disciples, "The eye is the lamp of the body." Now at first this looks like a simple pragmatic metaphor: just as a lamp enables one to see, so does the eye. But the interaction of these subjects excites a number of thoughts-about the self as a body, the relation of vision to light, etc. As one goes on to read the whole paragraph, one discovers that the real subject is neither eyes nor lamps nor bodies. It is about what is most basic to a person's life and understanding. One juxtaposition of ideas (eye, lamp, body) is actually implicitly juxtaposed to a further juxtaposition (vision, life, self-understanding). Thus, to understand the metaphor, one must first identify from the context the chief subject under discussion, and then determine how the interaction of the two domains of thought sheds light on that subject. For the Bible student, this means first of all determining the field of associations and implications which each of the subjects in the metaphor would have had at the time of its writing, and then identifying how their interrelationship fits in with the context. Metaphor is fluid. Fourth, it is important to realize that metaphors are fluid. That most "fluid" of metaphors, water, can mean life (Isa. 55:1), cleansing (Matt. 27:24), trouble (Ps. 46:3), judgment (1 Peter 3:20), fear (Josh. 7:5), etc. The fact that a juxtaposition of words or ideas has a certain metaphorical value in one place does not mean that the same juxtaposition of words or ideas will have the same value in another place. For example, 1 Peter 2:2 tells us that we should be like babies desiring milk, but Hebrews 5:12-14 tells us that we should stop being like babies desiring milk. These are not contradictory passages; the former focuses on the baby's intensity of desire; the latter on the baby's immaturity. Similarly, the term "leaven" can be a metaphor for evil, as in Mark 8:15 ("Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees"), where the point is that even a little evil will spread throughout something. But Jesus also says that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven (Mark 4:30), not because it has evil in it, but because it starts out small and spreads throughout something. Birds in the parable of the sower are a negative metaphor associated with Satan's activity; in the parable of the mustard bush, they are positive, associated with the growth of the kingdom of God.30 If the birds in the parable of the mustard bush have any metaphorical symbolism other than illustrating how large the bush is, they probably hark back to Ezekiel 17:23, where the birds in the branches represent the Gentiles who take refuge in the tree of Israel, which God has prospered. This flexibility of the symbolic value of metaphors implies that their interpretation must be made very carefully, and be rooted in things in the context, but outside the metaphor. This is especially true of prophecy. During World War II, many Christians found Hitler, and various details about Hitler, in the pages of the book of Revelation. The symbols themselves could be made to fit, but neither the context of Revelation itself, nor the social-historical context of the book, give any indication of a connection between the symbols of Revelation and Hitler. Metaphor is descriptive. Fifth, metaphors carry descriptive and elucidating power, but not predictive power. In other words, a metaphor cannot be used to prove characteristics. Doors can keep people out, but when Jesus says "I am the door," he does not have in view keeping people out. And when Paul says that the church is Christ's body, that Christ is the head of the body, and also that no part of the body can say "I have no need of you," we cannot infer from this that Paul taught that Christ cannot get on without the church. Certainly it would be wrong to suggest that since the church is a body, it must sleep. Special nonliteral language in the Bible. There are certain kinds of metaphor or nonliteral language in the Bible that deserve special mention, either because they are so frequent, or because their nature is not easily apprehended by people today. 1. The first we shall call covenantal realism. When Jesus held the Last Supper, he said to his disciples, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20 NIV). The Supper, then as now, involved a participation by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ. Jesus was referring to the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31-33, which spoke of God's "new covenant." A covenant, as we indicated earlier, is a formalized statement of relationship, and biblical covenants are instituted by God through individuals who represent larger groups. Our representative in the new covenant is Jesus. But this relationship between us and our covenant representative is much deeper than simply representation. Paul says we are "in Christ," and thus have "died with Christ" and are "raised with Christ." These are not merely metaphorical descriptions of our repentance or our experience of forgiveness; they reflect a reality in God himself. God has reckoned us as covenantally linked to Christ, so that what happened to him happened to us. In our individualistic Western society, this is sometimes hard to grasp. 2. Anthropomorphisms are metaphors whereby something that God is or does is represented in language that is appropriate to describe what a human is or does. For example, God "repents" of having made man, or of the evil he was going to do to Nineveh, even though he is not a man, that he should repent. The "arm" of the Lord and the "nostrils" of the Lord are anthropomorphic metaphors. They no more indicate that the biblical writers thought that God had a body than we think a ship is female when we say "she" is on her "maiden" voyage. 3. Similarly, conventions of cosmological reference may be used without necessarily endorsing any particular cosmological theories. When we say, "The sun rises tomorrow at 6 a.m.," we are not endorsing a geocentric cosmological theory, and when biblical writers say that Christ came "down," they are not necessarily endorsing a three-story universe. Since Paul says in Ephesians 2:6 that we have already been raised and seated with Christ in the heavenlies, it seems evident that Paul did not think of heaven as literally "up." 4. We mentioned hyperbole in our list above; this is very frequent in Semitic literature. We already noted how Jesus in Luke 14:26 commends "hating" one's father and mother (cf. Matt. 10:37). The word "all" or "every" is frequently hyperbolic: "all" those in Judea and in the surrounding country went out to see John and were baptized, according to Matthew 3:5; this clearly does not mean that every single person in Judea was baptized (see v. 7: at least the Pharisees were not baptized). But "all" is not necessarily hyperbolic; it is defined in its context. So "all" in Romans 5:18 means in context "all who are in Christ." This is not a hyperbolic "all," but a defined "all." If a teacher says to his class, "Everyone is required to write a ten-page paper and hand it in to me by December 4," he certainly does not mean everyone in the world; the context of his statement defines "everyone" as "everyone in the class." A special type of hyperbole or metaphor is prophetic hyperbole. However, some of this hyperbole is not just hyperbole, but indicates that there is a more ultimate reality lying beyond what is present and visible. The promise in 2 Samuel 7 was hyperbolic with respect to its immediate object, Solomon, but that hyperbole pointed beyond Solomon to a real fulfillment in Christ (see Heb. 1). Isaiah 13:9-11 and Joel 2 spoke of the downfall of rulers in cosmic language (earthquakes, solar and lunar eclipses, etc.). But the judgment on Babylon (Isa. 13) or on the leaders of Israel (Joel 2) also pointed forward to the greater upheavals which Christ would accomplish. Peter quotes Joel 2 in Acts 2; according to this inspired sermon, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a cosmic upheaval of enormous proportions. The power of Satan and his subordinates had been broken, and God's reign was now disclosed. Likewise, the threat of judgment against Babylon in Isaiah 13 was hyperbolic ("I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place," etc.), but this hyperbole pointed beyond Babylon to God's judgment of the world, as Revelation 18 indicates. Another example of hyperbolic prophecy is the absolutely stated, but intentionally conditional prophecy. Hezekiah, when he was told he would die shortly, did not passively say, "Oh well, that's the Lord's prophecy, and the Lord's prophecies always come true," and give up; he began to pray vigorously, with the result that the prophecy did not "literally" come to pass. It did accomplish its purpose, however; the prophecy had an implied conditionality in it. Similarly, when Jonah refused to go to Nineveh, he knew there was an implied conditionality to God's prophecy of doom on the city, and that his uttering the prophecy was God's way of not fulfilling it. This intended conditionality was recognized by the hearers in Nineveh as well, who did indeed repent. 5. Sometimes language can be both metaphorical and literal. The Exodus is presented throughout the OT as a real, literal, historical event, but it also served as a metaphor for Israel's deliverance from bondage to Egyptian idolatry. The bondage in Egypt was both literal and figurative. 6. "Dead metaphors" are metaphors that have passed into common parlance, and are now essentially literal. E.g., the expression "rule of thumb" never (except occasionally for handymen) calls to mind the literal thumb. The phrase now has a standardized literal meaning. Now sometimes a biblical phrase that was a dead metaphor for the original writer and readers is no longer part of our common parlance and must be explained. Caution must be exercised that not too much metaphorical baggage be carried in, simply because for us the metaphor would not be dead. For example, the injunction in Hebrews 12:15 against allowing a "root of bitterness" to spring up might conjure up in our minds an idea of someone having a bitter attitude, but the metaphor was a biblical one (Deut. 29:18) that was probably essentially "dead"; it referred to hypocrites who wanted to be part of God's people, but keep their own religious ideas. Before leaving the subject of metaphor, we should point out that although the word spiritual is often taken in the sense of "metaphorical," this is not its usual meaning in the Bible.31 A "spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15:44) is not a metaphorical body, but an otherworldly body given and constituted by the Spirit. Spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12) are not metaphorical gifts, but gifts given by the Spirit. The "spiritual house" of which believers are living stones (1 Peter 2:5) is admittedly metaphorical, but its "spirituality" lies in its being a temple built by God's Spirit. Thus, "interpreting spiritual truths" (1 Cor. 2:13) is not the discerning of metaphorical meanings by allegorical methods, but the discerning of things that are taught by the Spirit of God (as opposed to things taught by human beings). CONCRETE LANGUAGE AND TRANSCENDENT TRUTH Although the biblical writers used concrete (phenomenal) metaphors to describe God's relation to man, we must warn against a "comprehensive view of metaphor" that suggests that biblical writers were unable to conceive of God and religious realities except in concrete metaphorical terms. There is a difference between using concrete language and being limited to concrete thought. Sometimes an argument has been based on peculiarities of the Hebrew language that have little relevance: e.g., the claim that the Hebrews made no distinction between "word," "event," and "thing" because the same Hebrew word was used for all three.32 More commonly now, it is argued that metaphor is our only access to ultimate reality.33 Although we can only see "unclearly as in a mirror," we are also "image bearers," and thus our linguistic thinking is a genuine imprint from the divine linguistic pattern, and our relationships are patterned after God's. When 1 Peter 5:7 tells us that God cares for us, the words are being used in their normal sense, where sense and reference are directly, not just contextually, related. Nevertheless, it is true that many of the Bible's statements about transcendent reality are expressed in concrete terms. Here are two examples: 1. Ordinarily, only the "visible" church is addressed. This explains some difficulties, such as why NT writers envision and warn against apostasy (Heb. 6:6; 1 Cor. 8:11), even though true believers cannot be let go by God, who saved them (John 10:28-29; Rom. 8:38-39). We cannot know who is elect and who is not; we cannot see the invisible church. Hence, the NT writers speak to the visible church, in which there are hypocrites.34 2. Promises, especially in the OT, are often given in concrete terms that are comprehensible to God's people at the time. Thus, the promise to Abraham and his seed focused on a patch of land in the Middle East, although the promises went beyond that to the whole earth (Dan. 7:27; see Matt. 5:5), and also had a spiritual dimension that was more important than the physical (Gal. 3:14; Rom. 4:13). FIXITY AND FLEXIBILITY One characteristic of language that never gives us problems in everyday use, but leads to much grief in interpreting the Bible, is that words and phrases are flexible. This allows them to fit into a variety of circumstances and be used for a variety of tasks. What this means for interpretation, of course, is that a word may have different meanings in different passages. This is why the same Greek or Hebrew word in the original may be translated a variety of ways in English. It is also why a "literal" translation is not "more accurate" than an idiomatic one. Quite the reverse; an idiomatic translation, if it is a good one, is much more likely to convey the exact meaning than a literal one.35 That a word does not always mean the same thing should be apparent. It should be especially apparent when more than one human author is involved. For example, the word "works" in Paul is usually shown by the context to mean "works done according to the law with the intent of thereby winning God's acceptance,"36 whereas in James, "works" are the evidence that one's faith is genuine. Similarly, "faith" in Paul means a living relationship to God; but for James, "faith" can mean "intellectual assent to a proposition as true" (as in James 2:19). And Paul and James also mean different things by "justification." The differences in the way these words are used mean that the alleged conflict between Paul's "justification through faith alone, apart from works" and James's "justification by works, not by faith alone" is only an apparent conflict.37 Even within a particular author's work, this is true.38 Just within the confines of Galatians, Paul uses the word "flesh" to mean "physical material of which our bodies are made" (Gal. 4:13), "humanity" (1:16; 2:16), "the aspect of our existence having to do with this world" (6:12), and "the aspect of our existence which reflects our evil character and rebellion against God" (5:13-24).39 It is a mistake to try to read the same meaning into all occurrences of the word.40 But words are not totally flexible; they have finite ranges of meaning, which are basically fixed within the synchronic state of the language.41 That is to say, words are flexible, but not fluid. Fluids can take any shape; flexible objects retain the characteristics of their own shape. We cannot, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass, make a word or phrase mean whatever we wish (unless we desire to be misunderstood). Further, although words and phrases, and even sentences, are sometimes ambiguous by themselves, the ambiguity is almost always resolved by the context, either the textual context or the social situation in which the utterance occurs. The Oxford English Dictionary lists fifty-eight meanings for the verb run (plus another twenty-eight for the noun run), but ordi-narily no one has any trouble immediately identifying which meaning is in view. There are very few instances in which there is ambiguity over which meaning of flesh Paul has in mind in a particular passage. In actual use, words and phrases usually become much more specific.42 Let us take, for example, the highly ambiguous sentence, "The officers were ordered to stop drinking at midnight." Now two words here, "ordered" and "drinking," are by themselves ambiguous (contrast the sentence "I ordered a milk shake and began drinking it), but are immediately clear in the context of the sentence. But the sentence can still mean several different things: 1. The police officers were commanded at midnight to cease the alcoholic consumption in which they had engaged up until that time. 2. An order was given at midnight that police officers should become teetotalers. 3. The police officers were commanded to quit the habit of getting together for drinks at midnight. 4. The police officers were commanded to put a stop to other people's habit of consuming alcohol late at night. 5. At midnight, the police officers were commanded to put a stop to other people's alcoholic consumption. Five more permutations can be developed by understanding "officers" as "armed service officers," rather than "police officers," and undoubtedly the reader can find other possibilities. But once the social or textual context of the statement becomes known, this ambiguity would evaporate.43 And in most cases, when such ambiguous sentences are uttered, the context already exists and there is no perceived ambiguity at all. Ambiguity in the Bible. However, interpreters of the Bible do not always know the exact social context, and thus certain texts are ambiguous for us. When Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:10 says that women should have an "authority" on their head, although many translations understand this as being a veil (assuming a veil was a symbol of authority, which is only a guess), we are not quite sure what he meant, and endless debate has been precipitated because of it. The ambiguity would only be resolved if we had more information. Sometimes the ambiguity may be lessened by new discoveries or careful observation. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul writes, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman" (NASB). It is well documented that "touch" in this sort of context is a euphemistic metonymy for "have sexual relations with," and this could lead to the conclusion that Paul thinks sexual intercourse is bad, or at least is something one should avoid if possible. But it could be that Paul is responding to a series of Corinthian sayings. In 6:12, the Corinthian saying is "All things are lawful," but Paul responds by pointing out that not all things are helpful. And in 8:1, the saying "We know that we all possess knowledge" is answered by "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (NIV). If this is the case, then Paul is simply quoting the Corinthians' statement, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman," and responding in the next verse: "But... let each man have his own wife" (NASB). If in fact 7:1 is a saying of the Corinthians being referred to by Paul, some of the difficulty is removed. But there is no way to know this for sure; the Corinthians would have known what was in their letter (see 1 Cor. 7:1); we do not.44 The ambiguity must remain. The problem of ambiguity is especially severe when symbolic metaphorical language is used. Symbols are highly adaptable, and symbols in one cultural situation may mean something quite different in another (see "Culture and Understanding" below ). For example, when an American has just arrived in Oxford, England, and attempts to drive north on Woodstock Road, he is confronted with the following symbols in the three lanes of traffic: (North) (South) Assuming he remembers that the English drive on the left, his first thought will probably be, "Aha, I know what this means: there are two lanes of traffic going north and one going south." Such a meaning might appear plain to him. But this conclusion could have disastrous results, because in fact there are two lanes heading south; the dashed line divides lanes going in opposite directions, and the solid line marks off a bus lane. The apparent meaning is wrong, because the symbols involved are not universal. Ambiguity in prophecy. Prophecy is a genre in Scripture which is particularly full of symbolic language. When prophecy is speaking of God's future for his people, much of it is cast in terms that would have been meaningful to the original hearers, while also indicating a transcending of those terms. To interpret a prophetic symbol's subsequent historical referent unambiguously requires a thorough knowledge of how that symbol would have been perceived by the original hearers (no small feat!) and a knowledge of how the pattern of God's redemptive activity indicated by the symbol has worked itself out in history (see chap. 8, under "Prophecy"). There is a lot of room for interpretive humility here, especially regarding prophecy of things yet future. We may certainly draw conclusions from prophecy about the nature or pattern of God's activity and character, but to identify a precise historical referent is very difficult, and such identifications often remain ambiguous even after the prophesied event has occurred. But the problem of ambiguity should not be overemphasized, particularly in nonprophetic texts.45 Although the sentence in 1 Corinthians 7:1 is ambiguous for us (though not for its original readers), its function in the chapter is not. It serves as part of Paul's general teaching that God intends for some to get married, and that sexual intercourse is not only allowed, but necessary, in marriage. The ambiguity of the sentence does not render the whole discourse ambiguous.46 And even the ambiguity of prophecy does not make the overall meaning of a prophetic utterance inaccessible. The general nature of God's threats and promises can still be understood. Ambiguity versus inexactness. Further, there is a difference between ambiguity and inexactness. Ambiguity is where more than one meaning is linguistically possible; inexactness is where the one meaning is not precise. However, inexactness becomes ambiguity when one tries to remove the inexactness. For example, in the phrase "the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," the word "of" is inexact, not ambiguous. It simply qualifies the word "gospel" as "the one having to do with Jesus Christ." But ambiguity results if we ask, "What kind of 'of'?" Does the "of" mean Christ is the source of the gospel, is he its content, does he possess it, or something else? It is not illegitimate to ask such questions of "of," and frequently the context will enable an interpreter to answer them, but "of" by itself simply does not carry such precision. Had the author been concerned about such questions, he could have said something like "the gospel that is about Jesus Christ." Ambiguity is rarely intentional. Before we leave this topic of verbal fixity and flexibility, a particular application should be drawn. Although words have a variety of functions, an author almost always has only one of those functions in mind. The common exegetical practice of finding several meanings of a word in a particular instance of its use is therefore illegitimate.47 For example, the Greek word katechein can mean "to hold down, suppress," as in Romans 1:18 (men "suppress" the truth in unrighteousness). It can also mean "to restrain," "to hold tenaciously onto," "to occupy a position," "to possess," or "to control." But it would be wrong to argue that in Luke 14:9, "And then you will begin with shame to take (katechein) the lowest place," Luke meant that we should also "suppress" it, or "control" it, or "hold tenaciously to" it. Unless the author was deliberately making a wordplay, we have no warrant for finding several meanings in a particular word. There are wordplays in Scripture, of course. The gospel of John is particularly rich in them. For example, the word anothen in John 3:7 ("You must be born anothen") can either mean "again" or "from above." John uses the ambiguity of the word to demonstrate the confusion of Nicodemus, who thought that Jesus was speaking of reentering the womb. But Jesus was speaking of being reborn into God's new age ("seeing the kingdom"), which is also being born from above, by the sovereign act of God. Less clear is John 1:5, where some translations have "darkness has not overpowered it," while others have "darkness has not understood it." But even in the cases of deliberate ambiguity or wordplay, the meaning is not in itself inherently ambiguous; the several meanings have been deliberately superimposed. And unless it can be demonstrated that the author intended a double meaning, it is dangerous to try to extract multiple meanings on the basis of alleged wordplays. Conclusion. Words, phrases, and sentences are not ordinarily ambiguous in context. Ambiguity results from insufficient knowledge of the context, or from asking questions of the text which it does not address, not from the flexibility of words. Our interpretive humility comes not from the inherent ambiguity of a text or the variety of meanings that a word, phrase, or sentence may have, but from a recognition of our #### of comprehensive knowledge of the context. Interpretive humility acknowledges the need for constant progress on the spiral of understanding, but it strives toward a goal that is real; it is not an embracing of "ambiguity forever." Indeed, unless a reader is deliberately misconstruing, progress on the spiral is almost always possible, because language is very redundant. We chose a word at random and eliminated it from the previous paragraph, replacing it with ####. Most readers can supply the missing word lack or the equivalent with only a moment's hesitation, because the clues to meaning in the sentence are many. Redundancy usually minimizes ambiguity for the reader. Miscomprehension will usually result in a conceptual conflict with other elements of the discourse, and can be rectified by a shift in our understanding of the text. Noncomprehension can be minimized by "fill" from the redundancy of the discourse. This is why readers usually feel reasonably confident that they understand a text. Let not confidence become arrogance, however. No earthly human's interpretive framework is so complete and perfect that his or her understanding is without error, and what seems "obvious" may not be correct. We are always in this life on the way. CULTURE AND UNDERSTANDING Interpreting the Bible is more difficult than interpreting something written within our own time and culture, because the forms of language may function differently in different cultural contexts. This is because words are specialized symbols, and symbols are meaningful only as human convention gives them meaning. A linguistic example of this is that in England, at the time we are writing this book, the word brilliant is often used with the general sense of "very good." If someone produces exact change to purchase something, the shop assistant may say, "That's brilliant." If said to an American, this would likely be interpreted as a sarcastic insult of his intelligence, suggesting surprise that he or she was capable of producing the correct combination of coins. KEEPING OUR DISTANCE This illustration, like the earlier example of the road markings on Woodstock Road in Oxford (see p. 141), demonstrates that to understand a linguistic symbol in another culture, one must first be aware of the difference between the text's cultural and linguistic environment and one's own. Just as the lane marks look familiar, but in fact are quite different, so the American must deliberately hold lightly his judgments on what he thinks brilliant means, and seek more knowledge of this new environment in which he is operating. Similarly, although many things in the Bible are so strange that we are immediately aware of the distance, some things may look the same as something in our own linguistic/cultural environment, but in fact be quite different, and judgment must be suspended until we understand how that symbol functioned in its own environment. This process is what P. Ricoeur calls "distanciation," that is, recognizing the "otherness" or strangeness of a text.48 Like the plasterer repairing a crack in the wall, the interpreter must widen the gap before attempting to close it; otherwise, his work will remain only on the surface and will actually fail to close the gap. We must point out and even accentuate the sociocultural-linguistic differences, so that we may understand the original in its own setting. BRIDGING THE CULTURAL GAP How do we bridge the cultural gap? Although we can never really hope to accomplish it perfectly, two things can help us to move on the hermeneutical spiral with respect to understanding the differences: study and a sane imagination. Study can make the interpreter aware of the cultural differences in general, and the informed and sane imagination can make good guesses about how those cultural differences would affect the meaning of a text. This is hardly warrant for a fevered imagination. To be sane, an imagination must be well informed about the cultural differences and social circumstances of the original text, and will be controlled by what is actually in the text. But there is no substitute for "putting oneself in someone else's shoes" when it comes to understanding how that other person would perceive an event or a text.49  Perhaps one example will suffice. When Jesus began to preach, he declared that "the kingdom of God has come near." Now "the kingdom of God" is frequently bandied about as a slogan having something to do either with a sociopolitical program or else with the church in some spiritual sense. More frequently, perhaps, the phrase is simply passed over with incomprehension, or with some vague idea that the place where God rules is in people's hearts.50 But study will turn up, first, that the phrase translated "the kingdom of God" actually means "the sovereignty or power of God." In Palestine before and at the time of Jesus' ministry, the phrase was used to refer to the time when God's sovereign power would be fully manifested. So when Jesus says that "the kingdom of God is near" or "has come," he is saying that the manifestation of God's sovereignty is about to take place. This occurred in the redemptive-historical acts of Jesus. It has nothing to do with present-day political matters, or even with the church, except insofar as God's sovereignty manifested in Christ forms the basis for the church.51 Imagination can put the informed reader in the place of a Palestinian Jew of the first century, who groans as his parents and grandparents have groaned under harsh Roman rule, who sees a corrupt priesthood interested more in worldly success than in leading God's people, and who wonders whether God even cares any longer. Such an imagination will perceive the excitement and awe of hearing the radical proclamation, "The sovereign reign of God, his fully manifested sovereignty, is about to begin!" It is no wonder they called it "good news." THE REDEMPTIVE-HISTORICAL GAP The various parts of the Bible are not only distant from us, but also sometimes distant from each other, partly because of the great temporal distance between the different parts, but especially because of the changes in the redemptive-historical situation that took place. With the fulfillment of the OT in the events and revelation of the NT, there is a shift in the meaning of certain symbols. The book of Hebrews makes it clear that the meaning of the sacrificial system is somewhat different from what it was before Christ came. Now that the fulfillment of that system has come, the practice of animal sacrifice is obsolete (Heb. 8-10). Similarly, Paul vigorously argues that circumcision, which formerly marked the people of God, is now superseded, and that for a Gentile Christian to be circumcised now would be to deny the fulfillment of the law in Christ. An OT mandate cannot simply be applied directly without considering the difference in the redemptive-historical situation. For us this means that the distance between ourselves and Paul is not the same as the distance between ourselves and Moses. Our redemptive- historical situation is essentially the same as that of Paul and the other NT writers after the Resurrection, after the coming of the Spirit, but before the return of Christ in judgment. But even though we are living in the same redemptive-historical age, we are still faced with cultural, social, and linguistic distance between ourselves and the people of the NT. For example, the command to greet one another with a holy kiss (1 Cor. 16:20) certainly meant a sincere, literal kiss, and might still bear that meaning in some countries, but it would not mean a literal kiss in our Western culture. Similarly, women wearing head coverings in worship (1 Cor. 11) had a certain cultural meaning that is no longer evident in our Western world. The principle and concerns behind such commands are of course still valid, but their form may not be. Also, although our situation-after the resurrection of Jesus, but before the final judgment-puts us in essentially the same redemptive-historical situation as the NT writers, there is still some difference. At the time the NT was being written, naturally the whole NT was not yet written, and so God's people did not have the full written revelation. God thus provided apostles and prophets, who completed the NT and interpreted the OT and the events of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and present reign, providing a foundation of understanding for the church (Eph. 2:20). Now that we have the entire canon, such direct, ongoing, revelatory activity is no longer of critical necessity. This does not predetermine the issue of whether certain believers today are given the revelatory gifts of prophecy and apostleship, but it does indicate that our situation is not identical to that of the early church. Thus, when Paul tells the Corinthians to desire above all the gift of prophecy (1 Cor. 14:1, 39), we cannot apply this injunction unreflectively to our own situation. CONCLUSION With all this emphasis on distanciation, the reader may be getting the impression that one has to be an expert in ancient Near Eastern history and Greco-Roman society to understand the Bible properly. Experts do have an advantage, but although expertise may help and may increase the ability to interpret correctly, even a nonexpert can interpret many things quite well if he is sensitive and tries to develop a "historical sympathy."52 Although the cultural perspective of the original hearers may differ remarkably from our own, the human imagination can adopt another culture's different perspectives temporarily. God has made us capable of identifying with the original author's and hearers' cultural and social situation, so that we can obtain a reasonable understanding of any text. This is true because all people of any age are created after the same pattern, in God's image, and our thinking and language, for all our cultural and linguistic differences, are still within this basic pattern. Translation, not only from one language to another, but also from one culture to another, is always possible, and even where a particular item may not be known, the meaning of the whole is always generally perceivable. No one really knows what a "parbar" was, but anyone can understand the basic meaning of 1 Chronicles 26:18. Even more importantly, the Bible deals principally with the relationship between God and people, and people and their relationships always remain essentially the same.53 Culture, language, social situation, history, ideology, and worldviews may change, but people are always people, sin is sin, and God does not change. Hence we have confidence in the perspicuity of Scripture (see chap. 2, under "Perspicuity"). In closing this section on distanciation, we should note that not only is a knowledge of the original culture important, but also a knowledge of our own culture. If we are unaware of our own culture, we will be unequipped to evaluate in what way our cultural conditioning is influencing our reading of a text. And if we wish to apply the meaning of the text to a present situation, we had better understand how our present culture works. John Stott entitled his excellent book on preaching Between Two Worlds54 because preaching, which is properly an application of the Bible to Christians today, requires not only a competence in the biblical cultures, but also a competence in the culture of one's audience. It is an arduous task, but it can and must be done. CONTEXT AND UNDERSTANDING All texts have contexts; as human communicative acts, they do not take place in a vacuum. One of the authors of this book was recently in a discussion group where someone said, "I agree with everything everybody has said...." This might appear ridiculous apart from its context, but no one suspected he meant anything other than, "I more or less agree with the remarks that the people in this particular group have just addressed to the group." Meaning is not just a function of words, but of the complex of words and context. Words and sentences are set within a larger linguistic utterance or conversation, they are set within a particular historical situation, and they occur within a particular cultural, social, and linguistic setting. TEXTUAL CONTEXT The importance of textual context is widely recognized. It has given rise to the aphorism, "A text without a context is a pretext." Even the seemingly isolated pithy sayings of Proverbs are set in the context of a particular book, and could be misinterpreted if removed from that context. The fear of the Lord as the basis (not just the beginning) of understanding (Prov. 1:7) provides the foundation for all of the proverbs that follow. If this is true of Proverbs, it is certainly true of the remainder of Scripture. Often mentioned is the ridiculous example that Psalm 14:1 and 53:1 say, "There is no God." The context clarifies: "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" More difficult to spot is how larger contexts may clarify smaller units that appear to be perfectly plain in themselves. Ecclesiastes 9:1-10, by itself (like many other passages in Ecclesiastes), seems to echo an American beer advertisement's advice that, since "you only go around once, grab all the gusto you can get." But in the context of the whole book, we see this as part of the argument that all human striving is vanity; only God's good pleasure counts. When Satan quoted Psalm 91:11 (in Matt. 4:6), he seemed to be doing it right; Jesus was the Messiah, God's anointed, and God had promised to protect him. But the psalm as a whole teaches that the Lord protects the one who trusts in him, and putting God to the test would be evidence of distrust, not at all in line with the psalm as a whole. All this points up the importance of understanding the overall meaning of a whole text in order to understand a part of it. When we receive a letter from a friend, we do not read it a paragraph at a time, set it down, ponder what it might mean, and wait until the next day to read the next paragraph in isolation from the first. And yet that is what we often do with the Bible. We are reserving most "how to" matters for the next chapter, but here is a basic "how to" that is so important it ought to be mentioned here: Before beginning to interpret a particular text in detail, read through the entire communicative unit. This means in most cases the entire biblical book from which the text is taken. There is, however, a hierarchy of contexts. All levels and types of context play some role in determining meaning, but the most significant context for the meaning of any individual unit (word, sentence, paragraph, discourse, or book) is its immediately superior context, not its ultimately superior context. If we want to know the meaning of a word, for example, the most important question is what meaning is expected in the immediate sentence in which it occurs. Secondarily, we look at other uses of that word elsewhere in the paragraph, chapter, and book. If we want to know the meaning of a sentence, we look to see what the paragraph is about, and then secondarily to what the chapter and book are about. CIRCUMSTANTIAL CONTEXT Earlier in this chapter (under "Context and Understanding"), we noticed how the meaning of the words "everybody" and "everything" is narrowed down by the context in which they are spoken. This is an example of the meaning being specified by the circumstances. A similar situation is recounted in 1 Kings 22:10-17. King Ahab was inviting Jehoshaphat to cooperate in a battle against Syria to recover the town of Ramoth-gilead, and Jehoshaphat insisted on obtaining prophetic advice. Four hundred prophets were brought in, and they advised Ahab: "Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the LORD will give it into the hand of the king" (v. 12). When Micaiah son of Imlah was brought in, he said virtually the same words (v. 15), but Ahab recognized that Micaiah did not mean the same thing. Something in the circumstances indicated that Micaiah's words were a sarcastic rebuttal of the other prophets. REDEMPTIVE-HISTORICAL CONTEXT The context within redemptive history must be understood in order to determine the meaning of a passage for today. When Moses is given the commandments on Mount Sinai in Exodus 20, he is also given a number of case laws. One of them is: "Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex. 22:20). Similarly, verse 18 indicates that sorcery must be punished by death. This seems incredibly harsh, and out of accord with our situation today, where the idea of such religious compulsion is repugnant. Now most of this repugnance may be due to our failure to appreciate just how offensive to God idolatry and sorcery are, but there is also a difference in our redemptive-historical situation. Paul does not tell his churches in the Roman Empire that they should start killing idolaters and sorcerers. On the contrary, Christians should "be subject to the governing authorities" (Rom. 13:1), even though those authorities are idolatrous. Does this mean that Exodus 22:18 and 20 are without meaning today? No, but the meaning is indirect. Exodus laid down the covenant obligations of the theocratic nation of Israel, which was both a political entity and a spiritual entity. Since its physical existence served as a pattern or "type" of its spiritual life, preexilic Israel had to be not only internally pure (as the church must be today), but also externally pure. Exodus 22:18 and 20 remind the church today of the seriousness of idolatry and sorcery, and demand that any trace of them among Christians be expunged, but not by killing errant Christians. Paul dealt with an actual case of textual misinterpretation similar to this in Galatians. Some Jewish Christians had argued in their zeal that all male converts to Christianity had to be circumcised. This probably seemed biblical to them. When a man became a Christian, he became a "son of Abraham" and part of the historic people of God. Therefore, they probably argued, the sign of circumcision, originally given to Abraham as a sign of his inclusion in the covenant of promise (Gen. 17), should be applied to all male believers, as it was applied to all of Abraham's physical seed (Gen. 17:12). But, as Paul points out, such thinking failed to place the scriptural command of circumcision in the proper redemptive-historical perspective. Circumcision was a sign of the typological covenant, and indicated a situation of waiting for the coming Christ. Now that Christ has come, the religious participation in circumcision by a Gentile is essentially a denial of the completion of Christ's work (Gal. 5:2-4). It ceases to symbolize an inclusion in the covenant of Abraham and becomes a symbol of bondage to the Law of Moses. A more subtle example of how the historical context affects interpretation is the heavily debated Isaiah 7:14 (cited in Matthew 1:23): "Behold, a virgin [or young maiden]55 will conceive and bear a son, and she [or you or they]56 shall call his name Immanuel" (authors' translation). Many critics have argued that Matthew is misusing Isaiah 7:14, because the following verses speak of the coming desolation brought upon the enemies of Judah. Chapter 8 then speaks of the desolation of Damascus and Samaria by the Assyrian king, and in this case the sign is the son of Isaiah, Maher- shalal-hash-baz, for "before the child knows how to cry 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria" (Isa. 8:4). Hence, some regard the "son" of Isaiah 7:14 as either a son of Ahaz (see vv. 10-12)57 or perhaps Isaiah's son (see 8:3-4),58 and the "virgin" as not a virgin at all, but the wife of Ahaz or Isaiah (8:3).59 But closer attention to both the historical and the textual situation might undermine this argument. The text speaks of the child eating "curds and honey" (v. 15). No evidence suggests that curds and honey were baby food, and verse 22 says that everyone left in the land after its desolation (see v. 23) will eat curds and honey. This describes the situation of a remnant, returning to the land after it has lain fallow for years and living off the "fat of the land" (as in the exodus from Egypt and entry into Canaan-Ex. 3:8; Deut. 31:20; Josh. 5:6). It could not refer to Isaiah's own time of civilized agriculture. And, as the KJV indicates, Immanuel would eat curds and honey in order to know how to refuse evil and choose good, not "when" he knows how to do so.60 The child Immanuel will know the postexilic life of direct dependence on God's provision (trust), rather than human endeavor, in order to make him a righteous judge of his people (see Heb. 2:13-18, which quotes from Isa. 8). The text looks forward not just to the immediate future of the events of the Assyrian invasion (in the late eighth century), but beyond the time of exile, i.e., after the sixth century.61 Ultimately, Isaiah is looking forward to the messianic deliverer, and Matthew did not misuse the text.62 In conclusion, the historical context of the Bible includes more than the immediate historical context, because biblical history points beyond its immediate situation. A redemptive-historical context is more than just the historical situation. The historical situation is itself in the context of the entire purpose or plan of God, and knowledge of both is essential to the interpretation of biblical texts. Any OT text or event will be placed at a certain point in the unfolding plan, and its meaning will depend on its place in that plan. And the interpretation of any biblical text, by virtue of its inclusion in the Bible as a whole, is informed by the whole Bible.63 SOCIAL (CULTURAL-LINGUISTIC) CONTEXT Frequently, knowledge of the culture will clarify some seemingly cryptic statements in the Bible. A simple example is Jesus' statement recorded in Matthew 11:16-17: To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn. (NIV) Now if one happened to know that the flute dance was a wedding dance for men (rather like a square dance), and the dirge was a funeral dance for women, we see the whole range of adult activity, male and female, happy and sad, reflected in the play of the children. "This generation," like truculent children, refused to participate in the activity of God, whether it be the austerity of John or the bounty of Jesus. Of course, much of this could be guessed from the context, but knowledge of the social situation clarifies it. Much more difficult examples occur in Paul's letters, some of which are responding to situations in a cultural context that Paul himself does not mention, because they were obvious to his recipients. Earlier (on p. 140) we mentioned Paul's culturally relative command to women that they should have an "authority" on their heads, presumably some kind of symbolic head covering (1 Cor. 11:2-16).64 Paul is addressing a social context where it was for some reason shameful for a woman not to wear such a covering; perhaps she would thereby be declaring herself independent of all authority.65 In any case, head coverings in our Western culture have a different social meaning, and thus discussions about whether women today should wear hats in church are rather off target. An example from the OT is the curious behavior of Naomi's closest kinsman, who has first right to redeem the inheritance of Elimelech (Naomi's deceased husband). At first he is willing to redeem it, but when he finds out that he must marry Ruth as part of the redemption, he says, "I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance" (Ruth 4:6). This seems incomprehensible until we learn that the children of the marriage would be regarded as Elimelech's, and unless he could afford to have another wife as well (which would have been difficult, especially after a lengthy famine [Ruth 1:1]), he would end up with no progeny of his own. It is interesting that another custom-that of removing and handing over one's sandal to finalize a property transaction (narrated in vv. 8-9)-had already become culturally distant by the time Ruth was written, and so an explanation of it is given (in v. 7) for the enlightenment of the original readers (and us!). The issue of social and cultural context is crucial; it can also be vexing. Recently, several scholars have undertaken an extensive reexamination of the sources of Jewish culture and religion in the first century. Stimulated particularly by the work of E. P. Sanders,66 who concluded that in fact Judaism was not legalistic at all, at least in the way Luther had portrayed Paul's description of it, a whole new way of reading Paul has developed, often termed "the new perspective on Paul."67 This "new perspective" has shown very pointedly that when one's view of the sociocultural environment changes, it also changes one's interpretation of the texts that were written in response to it. Several new theories have now emerged about what Paul is combating in Romans and Galatians, and in particular the nature of "justification by faith alone" has been thrown into question, all because Judaism is now seen differently.68 GENRE AND UNDERSTANDING The fourth task in grammatical-historical exegesis is to determine what kind of literary work the text is. A parable may by itself sound like a historical narrative, but the way in which it "means" something is quite different. When Jesus says that "a man was on his way to Jericho" in the parable of the good Samaritan, it is not understood in the same way as when Matthew tells us that "Jesus was on his way into Jericho." Recognizing the particular genre is the key to understanding.69 This example is fairly obvious, but others, particularly in the OT, are less so. Many Christians believe that the book of Jonah belongs not to the history genre but to the parable genre.70 This is not a question of whether Jonah is true; it is a question of how it is true-a question about what the book of Jonah is saying. If it is not intended as a historical narrative, interpreting it as such would be an error. The issues in this example are confused, however, because those who claim that Jonah is not historical often do so because they do not believe its miraculous elements. But this is to use a modern, anti-biblical assumption to prejudge the genre issue. Miracle also characterizes the book of Acts, which the author clearly claims is historical. If Jonah is a parable, rather than history, there should be clues in the text itself to indicate that it is a parable.71 According to T. D. Alexander, Jonah does not bear the linguistic markers of a parable.72 And B. S. Childs points out that Jonah bears certain features that are not at all characteristic of parables.73 We cannot relegate a text to a nonhistorical genre simply because we have trouble believing that something it narrates could have happened. Even with texts that seem to be at least partly historical, genre recognition is clearly necessary. In the book of Job, the primary concern surely is not the historical record of Job's sufferings, but the question of why a good God would allow someone who is faithful to him to suffer? Unlike the recent book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by H. Kushner, the book of Job answers in terms of God's sovereignty. But our point is that Job is not exactly history in the modern sense of the word, but wisdom poetry. It is no more likely that Job's friends argued in lengthy, complex Hebrew poetry than it is that Henry V addressed his troops in iambic pentameter (Shakespeare's meter). Further, as poetry, Job uses complex imagery and metaphor, which again is different than historical writing. Thus, we should be very careful about deciding what Job actually asserts. Not only might we attribute assertions to God which he has not really made, but we may miss what God is really trying to tell us in the book. Other questions of genre may be raised. Was Ecclesiastes written by Solomon, or is it a kind of literary genre that calls Solomon to mind, but does not really claim to be written by him?74 Is the Song of Solomon the historical account of something that happened in the court of Solomon, or is it a love poem that was simply set in that historical location, like a Shakespearean play? Is the gospel of Matthew a historical narrative or a mixture of history and theological embellishment, as R. Gundry suggests? 75 Again, these are not questions about the truth or falsehood of Scripture, but about genre. Each particular text demands particular interpretive treatment.76 But now an awful specter has raised its ugly head. If we allow for variability in genre, what prevents anyone from using the genre argument to deny most of the historical value of the Bible, or to make the Bible say whatever one thinks it should say? The answer to this lies in the dependence of the genre of a text on the cultural environment in which it was spoken or written, and the author's stance, which is itself determined by reference to the sociolinguistic conventions of the author's audience. Did the author of Jonah (we are not told who he was) intend to write history or to write a parable? And would Jonah's intended audience have heard it as history or as a parable? Ordinarily the clues to the author's purpose lie in the text itself. Otherwise, how could even the original readers have recognized the genre? Occasionally the clues come from the cultural-linguistic situation, and recovering those clues is more difficult and less certain. But usually, it is not difficult to identify genre. If we simply ask what the author was trying to accomplish, we are well on our way to identifying the genre. Is the text's purpose to convey history, to illustrate, to confront, to entertain, to persuade, to develop artistically a philosophical point of view, to produce a work of art, or a combination of some of these? Almost all the time, the text itself will answer that question. If the author wishes to be understood, he is going to include the clues to genre within the work itself, unless the cultural context makes it obvious.77 Recognizing genre involves both identifying the purpose and character of the work as a whole and knowing what particular types of literary devices are being employed in smaller sections. The Gospels are historical, but they contain parables told by Jesus. Although the overall character of Luke is history, the story of the prodigal son, although not declared to be a parable, is nevertheless clearly of that genre. It is marked out by the fact that it resembles other parables that are so declared. Particularly in prophecy, genre identification on both the macro level (what genre the book is) and the micro level (what genre a particular text within the book is) is especially important. For example, prophecy is often stated in concrete and hyperbolic terms. The prophecy to Hezekiah was stated absolutely ("Set your house in order; for you shall die, you shall not  recover"), but Hezekiah understood its genre as warning, not as purely predictive prophecy; he prayed, and was spared forthwith (2 Kings 20:1-6). It is this question of genre that enables us to address the question of allegory. There is a difference between allegory and allegorical interpretation, or allegorization. Allegory uses extended metaphor to elucidate life, and is intended as such by the author.78 In Isaiah 5:1-6, an allegory is intended, and this is clearly stated in verse 7. Likewise, the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants in Matthew 22 was intended as an allegory, and was recognized as such by the Pharisees against whom it was directed. On the other hand, allegorization interprets history as a metaphor. This appears to be what Paul does when he understands the account of Sarah and Hagar in Genesis as a metaphor for the situation of the Christians of Galatia (Gal. 4). Grammatical-historical exegesis, if it identifies a passage as an intentional allegory, will so interpret it, but it will not interpret the genre of history as metaphorically representing something else. This does not necessarily make metaphorical interpretation illegitimate, since it may in fact be that God has constructed history in such a way that it represents something (see chap. 6). It may also be a way of illustrating something. But discovering such metaphorical meaning is a different task than ascertaining the original meaning, and must therefore be reserved for the next chapter. The meaning of words and phrases; the effort to understand the cultural distance between text and reader; the textual, historical, circumstantial, and social contexts; and the identification of genre, are the key elements of grammatical-historical exegesis, which helps us to understand the original meaning of a text.79 In chapter 7, we will look at the nitty-gritty of grammatical-historical exegesis; here we have simply shown the elements involved in it.  6 REMOVING THE VEIL: FROM WHAT IT MEANT TO WHAT IT MEANS Grammatical-historical exegesis is an attempt to control meaning scientifically. It attempts to recover the "literal" or historical base of meaning, the author's original meaning. B. Mickelson claims that "principles of hermeneutics are valid or invalid depending on whether or not they really unfold the meaning a statement had for the author and the first hearers or readers."1 But should biblical interpretation end with such a limited meaning? Does our bias against any extension of meaning that might be castigated as "allegorism" stem from biblical norm or from our "scientific" worldview?2 Does not any attempt to move from "what it meant" to "what it means" involve the whole Bible, as well as a changed situation, and will this not take us beyond what grammatical-historical exegesis can accomplish? The NT certainly finds meaning in OT texts that goes beyond the meaning recoverable by strictly grammatical-historical exegesis, which focuses on the human author and his immediate audience-and, as we argued in chapter 3, we need to take our methodological cue from the Bible itself. Paul seems to suggest in 2 Corinthians 3 that a veil lies over the minds of those who do not believe in Christ, so that they cannot understand the real meaning, and in 1 Corinthians 2 he claims that only those who are "spiritual" can understand the spiritual things in God's Word. There are also indications in the OT itself that it had a greater divine purpose than just addressing the immediate situation. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were both told to prophesy, even though they would not be listened to. Presumably a later audience was the intended beneficiary. The fact that the Bible is not just a collection of individual writings, but a unified literary work, behind which lies a divine authorial intent, suggests that grammatical-historical exegesis by itself is not enough.  The NT writers' approach certainly confirms this.3 If God is the author of the entire Bible, and if that Bible is a coherent communication from God, then his earlier statements will have some relationship to his later statements, and thus mean more than would have been perceived by the human authors of those earlier statements. As Paul says regarding the commandment (in Deut. 25:4) not to muzzle a working ox, "Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely4 for our sake?" (1 Cor. 9:9-10). Further, as we saw in chapter 2, the NT presupposes that the OT events (such as the Exodus) and institutions (such as the sacrifices), as well as the explicit prophecies, were leading up to and pointing toward fulfillment in Jesus Christ. This is central to the NT faith, and if we hold to that faith, we too must see the OT as leading up to and pointing toward Christ. According to Paul, only the Spirit of the Lord can remove the mental veil that blinds people to the Word of God. If the Spirit is the one who removes the veil, can we not rely on him to guide us into the true meaning of Scripture for us today? But we can also identify certain aspects of seeing the full import of the Word of God once the veil is removed. This is exciting, because it means experiencing not just ancient documents, but a living Word speaking to us today. But it is also dangerous, because all kinds of our own ideas can be read into the Word. Going beyond grammatical-historical exegesis safely involves four tasks. First, we must sort out how the biblical texts transcend their original historical setting. Second, we must identify the ways in which earlier events and institutions point to the later and fuller fulfillment (i.e., the "typological" correspondences). Third, we must observe the context of the canon as a whole, applying the so-called analogy of faith. Finally, we need to identify how changes in the redemptive-historical situation have affected the texts' applicability to the pres-ent situation. HISTORY AND BEYOND All texts that have become "classic" (i.e., have helped to shape society and culture) speak to the human condition in such a way that they can be adapted to changes in culture and history. An author of a text originates a text's meaning, but, with time and changing circumstances, the functional meaning of a text can grow beyond the conscious intent of the author. Even among students of the Constitution of the United States who wish to preserve the "framers' intent" as the basis for the Constitution's interpretation, there is an admission that many of the problems we face today could not have been anticipated by the framers. Somehow the interpreter of a text must recast it to address the contemporary age in such a way that it preserves the integrity of the text in relation to its original context and author. A transhistorical meaning must be extrapolated from the historical meaning. If such a thing is true of classic human works, how much more is it true of the text given by God to his people. The human author's intended meaning must be preserved, but if Scripture is going to address our problems today, its meaning cannot be limited to what may have been in the original human author's mind. Paul addressed his exhortations to specific people with specific problems; to the degree that our situation with regard to those issues parallels that of Paul's original recipients, we can transfer the reference of those exhortations to ourselves, even though our situation is outside the bounds of what Paul could have envisaged. God, speaking through Moses, addressed the Ten Commandments to his people at Sinai; to the degree that our situation with regard to the issues addressed in the Ten Commandments parallels that of the Israelites at Sinai, the commandments also command us. Most Christians make the transfer unconsciously. The Ten Commandments address such universal human conditions that very little translation is necessary (except perhaps with regard to the Sabbath; most Christians observe the first day, rather than the seventh day, and the observation itself takes a different form). But when Exodus goes on in chapter 22 to prohibit lending money at interest, much more effort is required. Somehow the underlying principles at work in the specific case laws of Exodus 22 have to be extrapolated; then such principles may find some application in our contemporary situation. With regard to interest, in a modern free-market society, where money is itself a commodity and not just a medium of exchange, the prohibition of interest would create an unfair advantage for the wealthy; it would eliminate the middle class, and ensure that the poor were permanently poor.5 It is also true, of course, that in our society exorbitant interest rates and the encouragement of unnecessary borrowing continue to be means of exploiting the poor. But for ancient Israel, which was an agrarian, rather than an industrial society and had the corrective of the Sabbath year, the Jubilee, and the law of land inheritance, lending money at interest was primarily an exploitation of the poor.6 The historically transcendent meaning would be derived by observing the principle of fairness in business relationships and the prohibition against exploitative practices. All of God's Word applies to us, but the way in which it applies is not always easy to see. It is not simply the ordinary need for legal texts to transcend their original historical context which obtains in the Bible. Divine authorship implies that the earlier parts of revelation have something to do with the later parts. The divine plan implies that earlier events give an indication of later events, even as the floor plan of a building gives an indication of what the finished building will look like. As we pointed out earlier, the meaning that God intended in the earlier events and words only comes out with later events and words. As Paul says, the OT read by itself was a "mystery," but this mystery has now been made known (Col. 1:26; Eph. 3:9).7 This "increase" of meaning can be looked at in two ways. From the standpoint of history, later and more important events, persons, and institutions are foreshadowed by earlier ones. We call this "typology." From the standpoint of language, if we look at the meaning of a text "growing" or unfolding as God's plan develops, we refer to the "fuller sense," or sensus plenior which a text takes on. TYPOLOGY AND "FULLER MEANING" Typology is "the interpretation of earlier events, persons, and institutions in biblical history which become proleptic entities, or 'types,' anticipating later events, persons, and institutions, which are their antitypes."8 It is thus actually a way of looking at history.9 Typology cannot exist without history; in particular, it requires a history that is under God's sovereign control and is proceeding according to a divine plan. TYPOLOGY History cannot be purposeless or aimless, going nowhere in particular, if a meaningful typology is to be founded upon it. It cannot be an infinite circle, as the Greeks imagined. Biblical history is linear,10 and events are indicative of where history is moving. Thus, typology is possible only if history has a purpose, that purpose being ordained by an intending Person who controls it and intimates within it where it is going (see Eph. 1:9-10).  This intimation is not just a construct after the fact, when similarities can be noticed between the recent past and the ancient past. As G. von Rad eloquently observes,11 Israel's prophets projected their hope for the future in the form of analogies from the past, which built Israel's tradition of expectation. What God had done in the past was an indication of the greater deeds of God in the future. When Israel faced exile, the hope of deliverance from exile was cast in the language of the Exodus. And the hope for a final redemptive work of God was also cast in this language. Thus, Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of Israel's tradition-building process. Israel's past was constantly redirected toward the coming deliverance by God's anointed, the Christ. He carries out Israel's ultimate "exodus" (Luke 9:31; see p. 46). Christological typology is not only possible, but necessary to truly understand the ultimate point of OT history as well as prophecy. Thus, typology implies that, just as earlier revelation is ultimately understood only in the light of later revelation, so the later revelation can only be understood in relation to the earlier. As L. Goppelt points out, "Typology demonstrates not only the nature of the new in comparison with the old, but it also shows that the new is founded directly and solely on redemptive history."12 It is therefore not surprising that the NT understands events and institutions of the OT to be "types." This is explicitly stated in a few texts (1 Cor. 10:6, 11; Rom. 5:14; Heb. 9:24; 1 Peter 3:21), but is implied in many places, because the NT writers understood Christianity as the fulfillment of OT expectation, and understood the OT as pointing to Jesus.13 When Jesus declared that he had to be killed and rise on the third day because of the Scriptures, he established an essential relationship between his redemption of his people and the expectations of the OT. If the NT fulfills the OT tradition, then we cannot understand the NT apart from the typological expectations of the OT. Typology is evident in the OT, both in prophetic texts and in historical and descriptive material. Hebrews specifically informs us that the OT sacrificial system was a type or "shadow of the good things to come" (10:1), and proceeds to show how the sacrificial system clearly pointed beyond itself to a more perfect sacrifice (Heb. 8-10). OT predictive prophecy often has a built-in indication that there is both a typological fulfillment in the near future and a more complete fulfillment in the distant future. For example, the prophet Nathan speaks God's word in 2 Samuel 7:12-16 to David, promising that one of his offspring would "build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son" (NIV). This has a preliminary reference to Solomon, but the language of the passage indicates the coming of a person who would far exceed Solomon in his accomplishment of the dominion of God, and so Hebrews 1:5 can quote this passage as referring to Jesus Christ. Sometimes people speak of this as "double fulfillment," or a two-part fulfillment, a typological and an antitypological (see p. 234). "FULLER MEANING"14 If the divine plan gives early indication of later events through typology, when we look at the older revelation from the standpoint of the completed revelation in Christ, we may expect to find there a "fuller sense" than would have been evident to the first hearers. "Sensus plenior" is thus simply another way of looking at how later revelation relates to earlier. By showing how the later revelation reflects and completes the earlier (typology), the earlier revelation itself can be seen to take on an expanded meaning (sensus plenior), which is evident to us, but would not have been evident to its first readers. The events, people, and words of the new revelation "fill up" or fulfill the OT as Jesus fills up the promises. The typology of promise and fulfillment "permeates the thinking of Jesus and the early church and is the ultimate validation for their extensive use of the Old Testament to depict and characterize their own situation."15 This idea of "filling up" the meaning of the OT is not restricted to prophecy; Jesus says that he came to fulfill the law (Matt. 5:17). Even the commandments strain toward fulfillment in Jesus Christ, and this is why Paul can refer to the law as a pedagogue (Gal. 3:24). To some, this may sound suspiciously like reading things into the text that are not there. And, indeed, this can happen. Justin Martyr, along with many other early church leaders, believed that the scarlet thread that Rahab hung from her window typified the blood of Christ.16 True sensus plenior is organically related to the historical meaning. That is, it should be a "fuller" sense, not an entirely "other" sense. It is like the oak tree within the acorn. Just looking at an acorn, one could not see the full end result, although one could tell that the acorn is intended to grow into something bigger, and from a later standpoint one can look back and see how the oak tree gradually grew out of the acorn. But the "meaning" of the acorn is only "fulfilled" in the tree, not in the acorn itself. Thus, the meaning of Genesis 3:15, which prophesies that the seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent, is only fulfilled in the NT recognition of Christ's victory over Satan. One way in which an "organic" relationship between original meaning and the fuller meaning may be recognized is by referring to the distinction between sense and reference made in the previous chapter. The reference is the specific object that is in the author's immediate purview. The sense is the meaning of the sentence that transcends the im