The Jewish and anti-Jewish schools of interpretation.
Tradition and authority:
a. Heretics—private teachings.
b. Authority of the church.
Alexandria and Antioch:
a. Alexandria—Platonist.
b. Antioch—Aristotelian.
Schools of interpretation:
a. Alexandria—allegorical (Philo).
b. Antioch—literal meanings.
Origen leaned to allegory—Paul was a literalist, but dealt in types and anti-types.
Jerome and Augustine:
a. Jerome was Antiochean. Translated Hebrew Old Testament into Latin.
b. Augustine regarded the Septuagint as “inspired.” Looked upon Jerome as a “forger.” Followed Origen—allegorical.
Later, Augustine leaned more towards Antioch school.
Jerome was a scholar—Augustine a theologian.
(One of the great debates of this time was whether God had hair and nails.)
Augustine published his “Christian Doctrine”; in 397.
Augustine had much to say about figurative and literal language.
a. Calvin was the best Bible student of the Reformation.
b. In his “Institutes” he quoted the Old Testament 1,755 times; the New Testament 3,098 times.
c. He almost completely neglected the Song of Songs and Revelation.
d. He wanted to assert the infallibility of the Bible—but was compelled to admit minor errors.
e. Calvin was worried by the careless way Paul quoted Scripture. See Eph. 4:8. “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” This is Ps. 68:18, which reads: “Thou didst ascend the high mount, leading captives in thy train, and receiving gifts among men.”
f. If the Bible was “inspired,” Calvin thought Paul should have quoted the passage verbatim.
Rise of Biblical criticism, 1650-1800. There were three great groups of influence which led to a re-examination of the Bible:
a. The physical sciences:
(1) Ptolemaic universe—demolished.
(2) Copernicus discoveries. (1473-1543) (The Pope denounced all of this.)
(3) Kepler. (1571-1630)
(4) Galileo. (1564-1642)
(5) Newton—gravitation. (1642-1727)
b. Textual study:
(1) Valla’s “Donation of Constantine.”
(2) Philosophy of Bacon and Descartes.
c. Bibliolatry.
End of making an idol out of the Bible. Recognition of the progressive character of revelation.
Liberation from the strait-jacket of orthodoxy.
Cappel, in the sixteen hundreds, was the first textual critic.
Erasmus (1516) had already pointed out how different manuscripts differed in text.
John Mill (1707) began the search for original texts—he all but destroyed belief in verbal inspiration.
The philosophers— Hobbes and Spinoza—attacked the idea that the Bible was “the word of God.”
The philosophers asserted that the Scriptures were “faulty, mutilated, and tampered with.”
In 1655 Peyrere said mankind had been created long before Adam. The Inquisition burned him at the stake.
A generation later Richard Simon became the father of Biblical criticism. He concluded that the Old Testament did not have its present form until after the Exile.
Richard Bentley (1699) was the father of the school of evaluating Scripture by “internal evidence”—as in the two stories of creation in Gen. 1 and 2.
Johann Semler was father of the “historical method” of Bible criticism.
Gotthold Lessing (1724-1781), a German critic and dramatist, a layman, wrote a book “Nathan der Weise” in 1779. In this work he introduced a new idea—the difference between “the religion of Christ and the Christian religion.”
This is the identical teaching of the Urantia Book—the religion of Jesus contrasted with the religion about Jesus.
Leasing’s father was a Lutheran minister. He wanted his son to study theology. But he dabbled in theology, philosophy, and even medicine. He wrote numerous plays, but in his later years took to writing on philosophy and religion.
This book on “Nathan the Wise” was a play dealing with three principal characters—a Jew, a Mohammedan, and a Christian.
The government confiscated many of his books and he suffered petty persecutions.
He was greatly interested in the early history of Christianity and in the philosophy of Spinoza.
He never attached himself to any particular church or system of philosophic teaching.
Bengel (1755) published his historical criticism of the New Testament. This book influenced John Wesley’s “Notes on the New Testament.”
Schleiermacher dominated much of the thought of this era. While he rejected the uniqueness of the Bible he insisted on a Christo-centric faith.
In 1864 his “Leben Jesu” insisted on getting religion directly from the living Christ.
There was an attempt to ascertain the theological intention of the Biblical writers.
There was a final unraveling of the various strata of Biblical authorship.
There was an improved attempt to find out God’s purpose and the real history and destiny of mankind.
From Amos on down through the prophets they looked for Yahweh’s lordship over nature and history.
They decided that the “suffering servant” of the Second Isaiah was the Messiah.
Discovery of many new fragments of both Old Testament and New Testament led to improved textual criticism.
Intensive study of the fourth gospel led to placing its writing early in the second century.
At the present time the vogue is the formulation of a Biblical theology.
The “total Scripture” school of interpretation:
a Determination of the text.
b. Literary form.
c. Historical situation.
d. Author’s meaning.
e. Relation to total context.
f. Background of origin.
g. Literal interpretation.
“Higher criticism” has about run its course. Common sense has taken over the stage. The time is ripe for the real interpretation of the Urantia Book to appear.