Lesson 2) Differentiate Between Descriptive and Prescriptive

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Welcome back to lesson two in our quick introductory level study into hermeneutics.

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This is a week -long class. We're going to deal with five different topics. We already looked at the importance of context, and if you don't have that one right, wow, that is the most important thing.

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However, this next thing that we want to address, this next point, is very important as well because it is one that most people make a mistake with, and it is the understanding the difference between descriptive and prescriptive.

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So let me start by giving a definition of those two terms. So descriptive means having a quality of describing, characterizing by description.

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It is the idea of noting something, of characterizing something, so it is giving you background, shall we say, when you're

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When we look at the Bible, what we mean by descriptive is that it says what did happen, not necessarily what should happen.

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Prescriptive is what should happen. Prescriptive is defined as that which prescribes, giving directions or instructions or commands, injunctions, things like this.

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So the difference that you have between these two is that descriptive means it's describing the events that actually happened, where prescriptive is telling you what should happen.

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So prescriptive type of things are commands. When we have a command from Jesus and he says to repent and be baptized, that would be prescriptive.

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Why? It's a command. It's an order. It's something that's an instruction for you to follow. When you have something that's descriptive,

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Solomon had a thousand women, that doesn't mean you should follow that. Just look at Ecclesiastes and you'll realize the mess that got him into.

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Let's take a look at an example of this that may help. Many people look at the woman at the well in John chapter 4 and they see that after her encounter with Jesus, he basically tells her things about herself that no man could know, and we end up seeing this where the disciples end up coming and then in verse 29 she goes away and she said, and this is what we have in verse 28 actually, so the woman left her water jar and went into town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all things

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I ever did. Can this be the Christ? And they went out to town and came to see him.

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Now many people look at this and say, well this woman is preaching. Well first off, yeah it does seem that way.

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Preaching is the idea of speaking in the open air. Now it doesn't use the word preaching, but is she preaching?

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Yes she is. Now should women preach to men everywhere?

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Well let's back up and ask, should she have preached to the men there? You see this is descriptive, this is telling you exactly what the woman did do, and the

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Bible is accurate in saying what she did do. But if she's even a convert, she's a new convert, would you expect her to understand everything that the

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Bible teaches? No. She came out of a false religion, the Samaritan religion, and so she wouldn't understand everything.

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So what you see is that the Bible's recording what she did do. Should we then say that women should go out and do this?

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Well you can't make that case from here. Could you make the case from other places? Maybe. But this is not the verse to use.

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Why? Because this is a descriptive passage. What you would want is a passage that explains that specific thing, like women teaching, such as say 1st

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Timothy 2, 12 and following. That's prescriptive, and that would then give us an understanding of this specific issue.

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And have to ask, is this describing what actually happened, or is this a command for me to follow?

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That becomes very important when we're going to interpret the Scripture. Now what I want to deal with in tomorrow's class is that when we come to text the

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Scripture, we must understand the more difficult passages to understand by the easier passages to understand, because that makes a huge difference when it comes to interpreting