Rules for Interpreting Scripture | Rapp Report Weekly Wrap-up 0005 | Striving for Eternity

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Welcome to the Rapping Bull, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity. This week we were addressing, and really wrapping up from last week, is the issue of how to interpret the

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Bible. I wanted to look at different types of genres or literary styles, because each of them have different rules to be obeyed, and that becomes important to understand how to interpret the

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Bible. I want to also give a shout out to one of the other podcasters on the

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Christian Podcast Community, James Tippins. He has a podcast I want to encourage you to go look for and listen to.

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It's called Straight Outta Context. It is similar in line with what we're teaching here.

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You're going to see a lot of the same things. We're trying to teach people how to interpret the Bible accurately. So if you want more than what

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I've given you so far, you can go there and start listening to that and get even more of this type of teaching.

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But I want to wrap up this week by playing all of the episodes that you might have heard on the daily edition, so that you can reinforce it in your mind and also have it all in one spot.

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So thanks for listening, and I do encourage you to go to the ChristianPodcastCommunity .com and listen to other podcasts that we partner with.

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As we continue looking from last week on the rules of interpretation, we said that the first and important lesson when you want to interpret the

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Bible is to identify the type of genre or literature you're dealing with, because each of these types of genres have different rules.

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Last week we focused almost exclusively on one style, historical narrative. This week, however, we want to address another one, and it is poetic literature.

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This one is a little bit different. You're going to see the Psalms, Song of Solomon, books like this that are going to be poetic.

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And Hebrew poetry is different than, well, English poetry. It doesn't have rhyme, which kind of says something, because the

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God who knew that the Bible was going to be translated in different languages, yeah, maybe rhyming wouldn't work well.

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Because if you take something in English that rhymes, translate it to another language, it doesn't rhyme anymore.

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So how is it that we interpret poetic literature in Hebrew poetry?

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It's not based on rhyming, it is based on parallelism. You're going to find parallels between one thought and another, or one line and another.

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We're going to give you some examples this week of those different types of poetry and those different types of parallelisms to look for.

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And so check those out. We're going to be going into this a little bit so you can start to identify when you're dealing with the

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Book of Psalms, how to interpret the Book of Psalms, how to interpret poetic literature in Hebrew.

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Hope you listen to this and the other podcasts on the Christian Podcast Community. This week as we look at how to interpret scripture, we are looking at styles of genres or styles of literature in the

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Bible, and we're looking specifically at Hebrew poetry. We said yesterday that Hebrew poetry is not based on rhyming, but is based on parallelism.

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That is where you have two thoughts that are either going to be contrasting one another, reinforcing one another, different things like that.

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And that's what we're going to end up seeing. There are many, many different types of parallelism that you are going to find.

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But when interpreting poetic literature, you have to look at what type of parallelism do you have.

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Do you have something that is antithetical? In other words, the first line is contrasting the second line?

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Or do you have something that's going to be synonymous, where the first line is saying the same thing, but with a different type of emphasis than the second line?

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Or are you going to have something that is where it is building up, it's climactic, and so then you're going to have the second line completes and expands the first line?

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Maybe you're going to have a formal parallelism where the two lines together express a one thought or theme.

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But the thing that you have to do when it comes to Hebrew poetry is you must identify what type of literature, what type of parallelism you're dealing with.

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Because that's going to tell you whether the first line is emphasizing, contrasting the other.

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That's going to tell you what the author is trying to emphasize in the poetry that he's using.

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So the parallelism is important to understanding the emphasis. This week we've been examining the different styles of literature in the

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Bible and the rules that each of them have in interpretation. Today I'd like to address the one of wisdom literature.

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Wisdom literature is one you're going to see in the book of Job. You're going to see much, if not all, of the book of Proverbs and even

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Ecclesiastes contain wisdom literature. Now wisdom literature is one of the more difficult ones to interpret, and it is very similar and requires an understanding of the

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Hebrew poetry that we dealt with earlier this week. Now as we look at wisdom literature, we will see the parallelism that we see in Hebrew poetry that we already addressed.

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But there's other things that are going to help in understanding the meaning of wisdom literature.

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You want to look for comparisons throughout the Proverbs. The fool is compared with the wise, the poor with the rich.

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Throughout you're going to see those kind of comparisons. You're going to see the contrasts. Look for metaphors and similes.

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These are some of the key things that give us the interpretation. You'll also see in wisdom literature sometimes either portraits or vignettes, and those are going to, again, be something that is not necessarily trying to teach a specific doctrine.

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But understand that wisdom literature, specifically in Proverbs, are generalities.

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They're not promises. They're general principles that usually work.

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Don't take wisdom literature as a promise for you today, because it's not a promise.

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It's a principle. One of the more difficult styles of literature to interpret is prophetic literature, or sometimes called apocalyptic literature.

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Now, this is difficult because it is often something that is masked in imagery, something that is still future.

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Obviously, for the prophetic literature that has already been fulfilled in Christ's first coming, we can look back and we have the advantage of hindsight.

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However, it is not always as clear to the readers as it is when it is not fulfilled.

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Just like the first coming of Christ, there were things that people didn't see as clearly until after he completed his coming.

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The same with the second coming. And you see much of the Old Testament is this type of prophetic literature.

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Now, some of it is going to be harder to understand when it talks about the future that is yet to be fulfilled, and yet some of it is not so much.

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When we look at the prophets, we must identify who the prophet is, who he's speaking to, who his audience is, because that's going to play into what it is he's prophesying.

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Much of the prophecies of the prophets are going to be about future judgment on the nation of Israel that we have already seen completed.

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And so what we do is we want to look at prophetic literature and look at it historically, but understand that sometimes it is a thumbnail sketch and not as detailed as many people want to think it is.

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And most cults abuse this type of literature. The last type of literature that we see in the

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Bible that we want to address when interpreting Scripture is called instructional. It is the easiest to interpret.

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And if you are new to Scripture or interpreting Scripture, this is where you want to focus most of your time.

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The books that we see that are epistles, letters, Romans all the way through Jude, these are going to be the easiest to interpret.

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Why? Because these are doctrinal in nature. They're instructional. These are meant to be taken as instruction and meant to be taken literally and not looking for hidden meanings in things.

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It is not meant to be historical as much as it is instructional.

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And so this is the type of literature that we are going to focus in on when we want to understand doctrine.

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By the way, this is going to be a type of literature that you will see cult groups avoid the most.

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Why? Because it's easy to understand, it's instructional to understand, and therefore it condemns much of what they end up believing.

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Like when they say that Jesus Christ is not God, and you have Paul very clearly in Colossians teaching, not only is he

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God, but he created everything. Everything's held together by his nature. So he holds everything together.

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He is the firstborn, not in the sense of birth, but in the sense that he's preeminent.

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And so you end up seeing that when we look at this style of literature, it is going to be the easiest to interpret and is the one that you should focus on when you start looking at interpretation because it will teach you principles to obey.

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This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.