Yesterday, I started doing posts on the psalms:
Psalm 1 and Proverbs 1:1-7
Today, Psalm 2
1. Psalm 2 is a royal psalm, a psalm that was addressed to the king of Judah. Some think it might even have been an "enthronement psalm," a psalm read at the enthronement of a king. The royal psalms then were often taken in a "fuller sense" later as messianic psalms, psalms whose content anticipated Jesus as the Christ.
2. 2:1-3 gives the situation surrounding Judah. Judah seems to be threatened by other kings, other peoples. They are setting themselves against Judah. Perhaps Judah has prevailed against them and they are wanting to revolt, to "burst their bonds asunder" (2:3).
In 2:4-6, YHWH laughs. He is the one who has set his king on Mt. Zion (a clear indication that Judah is in view, unless this psalm specifically related to Solomon). By the end of the psalm (2:10-11), those opposing kings will be warned not to oppose YHWH or his king. They will perish quickly if they oppose YHWH.
This is the context in which 2:7-8 appear. YHWH says to the king, "You are my Son; today I have given you birth." This is the enthronement of the king, the "birth" of the son of God. Yes, the king in the Ancient Near Eastern context could be considered a son of God (cf. 2 Sam. 7:14). God says not to oppose his anointed king. Otherwise, God will dash them to pieces.
3. Taken in a fuller sense, a sensus plenior, the earliest Christians connected this verse to Jesus' resurrection and exaltation to God's right hand (Acts 4:25-26, 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5). When Jesus sat at God's right hand, it was his enthronement as king of the world.
Proverbs 1:8-14
So the proverbs begin. These proverbs are directed to, "my son," who is first told to heed the instruction of his father and mother.
The first instruction is not to join the violent, sinners who ambush the innocent. He has in mind individuals who kill and steal. They call a young man to join a gang that shares with each other what they steal. Sounds like what happens in many inner cities.
As a side note, Sheol and "the Pit" are mentioned as places that swallow the dead. These are not places of punishment in Hebrew thought but ways of referring to where the dead go when they die. Perhaps for some they were just figures, metaphors of a sort. No doubt other Jews thought of Sheol as a literal place where the shadows of the dead go, just as in Homer.
Showing posts with label sensus plenior. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sensus plenior. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Beauty of Spiritual Interpretation
To any seminaries who might be interested...
Matthew 2:21-23
But Joseph, having heard that Archelaus was ruling in Judea in the place of his father Herod, was afraid to go there. And having received revelation in a dream, he withdrew into the regions of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called "Nazareth," so that it might be fulfilled what was spoken through the prophets [plural], "He will be called a Nazarene."
Isaiah 11:1
A shoot will go out from the stem of Jesse and a branch [nezer] from his roots will bear fruit.
Judges 13:5
The boy [Samson] will be a Nazirite [nezir] of God from the womb.
Any other suggestions? The entire guild of competent biblical scholars rests its case.
Matthew 2:21-23
But Joseph, having heard that Archelaus was ruling in Judea in the place of his father Herod, was afraid to go there. And having received revelation in a dream, he withdrew into the regions of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called "Nazareth," so that it might be fulfilled what was spoken through the prophets [plural], "He will be called a Nazarene."
Isaiah 11:1
A shoot will go out from the stem of Jesse and a branch [nezer] from his roots will bear fruit.
Judges 13:5
The boy [Samson] will be a Nazirite [nezir] of God from the womb.
Any other suggestions? The entire guild of competent biblical scholars rests its case.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Psalm 69 and "fuller senses"
If any one doubts my repeated claims that the NT authors read the OT "spiritually" with more tangential interest in the original meaning, I was looking at the NT use of Psalm 69 today.
The early Christians read a number of verses from this psalm in relation to Jesus' last days in Jerusalem:
vs. 9 in relation to Jesus' action in the temple and in relation to Jesus' rejection in general
vs. 21 of the cross
vss. 22 and 25 of Judas
But consider vs. 5 where the psalmist speaks of his guilt and folly, something that clearly would not apply to Jesus. In other words, the psalm had a distinct original meaning in which a psalmist cried out to God for help. And selective verses had a "spiritual" meaning to many early Christian readers of the psalm.
So as we see over and over again, the NT authors were not wired or apparently worried to read OT texts for what they meant historically. They naturally and predominantly found "fuller senses" and figural meanings in the words. Once again we see that a historical orientation to Scripture is a relatively recent orientation.
The early Christians read a number of verses from this psalm in relation to Jesus' last days in Jerusalem:
vs. 9 in relation to Jesus' action in the temple and in relation to Jesus' rejection in general
vs. 21 of the cross
vss. 22 and 25 of Judas
But consider vs. 5 where the psalmist speaks of his guilt and folly, something that clearly would not apply to Jesus. In other words, the psalm had a distinct original meaning in which a psalmist cried out to God for help. And selective verses had a "spiritual" meaning to many early Christian readers of the psalm.
So as we see over and over again, the NT authors were not wired or apparently worried to read OT texts for what they meant historically. They naturally and predominantly found "fuller senses" and figural meanings in the words. Once again we see that a historical orientation to Scripture is a relatively recent orientation.
Friday, June 18, 2010
LOST and sensus plenior
I pretty much waited till after LOST was over to start watching it. Right now my wife and I are near the end of the second season. But I have read a couple spoilers, especially Witherington's, so I have a little sense of what's really going on. If you want to watch the series sometime without knowing, then you should stop reading this post now.
I don't know much, except that they're all dead. Fairly often, one of them will say something that's a double entendre in that light. In the last episode I watched, they have a guy they suspect is one of the "others," whoever they are (I know my lack of knowledge will be painful to the faithful). Sahid has tortured him. Anna what's her name has used her police interrogation skills. At the prospect of them keeping torturing him until they know whether they can believe him or until they kill him, he indicates that they will never find enough reason to believe him and says, "I'm dead already."
Last night I was teaching Biblical Interpretation in Indy, and this line struck me as a good way to communicate the notion of "sensus plenior" to the students, the idea that God implanted hidden meaning in the words of the Old Testament prophets that the prophets themselves did not know but that would leap out to New Testament authors who had seen the rest of the storyline.
The man does not know, presumably, that he is dead. When he says, "I'm dead already," he is speaking to an immediate situation. So Isaiah is speaking to an immediate situation when he tells king Ahaz God wants to give him the sign of a young woman giving birth to a son, probably an heir to the throne, perhaps Hezekiah, whose birth will symbolize "God with us," the fact that God is not going to let the kings to the north defeat him.
But those who have seen the rest of the story hear in these words something else. They hear words about the birth of an heir to the world who will be born of a virgin, a king who will be "God with us" in a much more universal and eternal sense. Isaiah does not know the words will take on this meaning in the light of the rest of the story, but those who know the ending do.
And of course, LOST had writers who knew, just as Christians think of God inspiring the prophets. I've at least started writing a good deal of fiction, the creation of dialog and plot is a kind of mystery. I can imagine that lines like this one were a mysterious mixture of knowing where the plot of LOST was headed and a funny double entendre that jumped out of an author's mind. I bet he or she smiled when they found those words flowing from their fingers, almost as if they were not writing them but were carried away by the characters they had created.
And this is something like what someone means when they speak of divine inspiration that is directive in some way and yet preserves the personality and gifts of the human authors.
I don't know much, except that they're all dead. Fairly often, one of them will say something that's a double entendre in that light. In the last episode I watched, they have a guy they suspect is one of the "others," whoever they are (I know my lack of knowledge will be painful to the faithful). Sahid has tortured him. Anna what's her name has used her police interrogation skills. At the prospect of them keeping torturing him until they know whether they can believe him or until they kill him, he indicates that they will never find enough reason to believe him and says, "I'm dead already."
Last night I was teaching Biblical Interpretation in Indy, and this line struck me as a good way to communicate the notion of "sensus plenior" to the students, the idea that God implanted hidden meaning in the words of the Old Testament prophets that the prophets themselves did not know but that would leap out to New Testament authors who had seen the rest of the storyline.
The man does not know, presumably, that he is dead. When he says, "I'm dead already," he is speaking to an immediate situation. So Isaiah is speaking to an immediate situation when he tells king Ahaz God wants to give him the sign of a young woman giving birth to a son, probably an heir to the throne, perhaps Hezekiah, whose birth will symbolize "God with us," the fact that God is not going to let the kings to the north defeat him.
But those who have seen the rest of the story hear in these words something else. They hear words about the birth of an heir to the world who will be born of a virgin, a king who will be "God with us" in a much more universal and eternal sense. Isaiah does not know the words will take on this meaning in the light of the rest of the story, but those who know the ending do.
And of course, LOST had writers who knew, just as Christians think of God inspiring the prophets. I've at least started writing a good deal of fiction, the creation of dialog and plot is a kind of mystery. I can imagine that lines like this one were a mysterious mixture of knowing where the plot of LOST was headed and a funny double entendre that jumped out of an author's mind. I bet he or she smiled when they found those words flowing from their fingers, almost as if they were not writing them but were carried away by the characters they had created.
And this is something like what someone means when they speak of divine inspiration that is directive in some way and yet preserves the personality and gifts of the human authors.
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