Category: Interpretation
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Walk: A Metaphor
Walk is a much-used metaphor in Scripture. Its meaning is clear: walking stands for how we live life; our walk is our lifestyle. Paul uses the metaphor extensively in Colossians and Ephesians. One could say it is the subject of the entire second half of Ephesians: Walk worthy of your calling (Eph. 4:1), with Paul…
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For
I kept it short. The title I mean. It is the shortest title I’ve had; it does not get much shorter than this. I also kept it small. After several issues dealing with an entire book of the Bible, this one is about a single word, and a short one at that: the conjunction for.…
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Crucifying the Warrior God (Boyd Project 5)
It is time to wrap up. How does Boyd’s cruciform hermeneutic work when it is applied to actual Bible passages? In the first volume of The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Boyd posits the cross as the centre and foundation of Christian theology. From this, he derives, through deduction, what God can and cannot have…
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A Peculiar Blend of Cruciform (Boyd Project 4)
The previous issue dealt with chapter 1-6 of Greg Boyd’s monumental book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. It presents Boyd’s general theory of interpretation, which can be summarized in one word: cruciform. The second half of volume 1, chapter 7-12, deals more specifically with the problem of violence in Scripture and discusses possible solutions.…
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A Cruciform Hermeneutic (Boyd Project 3)
In this third issue on Boyd’s monumental work, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I begin to interact with the book itself. In the first six chapters, Boyd gives us his general theory of interpretation or, in one word, his hermeneutic. Before I dive into this, I need to vent a major frustration I have…
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Narrative Criticism
The term is misleading. Narrative criticism is not about critiquing authors and their stories. As with all the various criticisms that are practised in biblical studies, it is a way to approach a biblical text and analyse (not critique of criticise) it from a chosen perspective. In the case of narrative criticism, it is about…
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How to Boggle Your Mind: The Miracle of Language
Language is mind-bogglingly complex – as illustrated, in a small way, by the strange word “mind-bogglingly”! The Bible is written in human language. If we care about interpreting the Bible, it pays off to think about how language works. This month, therefore, I made an excursion into linguistics, the science that studies language. What I…