This blog will take a quick look at a method the Apostles used to INTERPRET the OT, as seen when they quote it in the NT. The method I’m going to show you has 2 aspects to it:
1. The RESOURCE I used to find this method, and
2. The actual METHOD that was used.
I want you to take note of the RESOURCE I used so you can use it too. It’s an older RESOURCE, so you probably won’t find it being sold or used today by most ‘moderns’. We live in an age of mass propaganda brainwashing, so most good FACTUAL RESOURCES have been shunned and replaced by PROPAGANDA NARRATIVES. What is this RESOURCE I’m referring to?
DR. WILLIAM SMITH’S BIBLE DICTIONARY – AMERICAN EDITION.
The METHOD will become evident when you read the 5 PAGES, which I’ll post below after making my point. This Bible Dictionary is more like a Bible ENCYCLOPEDIA. It’s at least as good as my ISBE set. Here’s where you can access Smith’s Bible Dictionary. You can also access it on Google Books, although you have to search for all the volumes. Some of them are much ‘cleaner’ scans than the set in the above link.
So what’s the METHOD? How did they do it? Simple: They changed the WRITTEN O.T. TEXT AND INTERPRETATION OF IT to suit their POLITICAL AGENDA. The 4 categories of changes are stated below. Remember that I mentioned this in an earlier blog on Biblical hermeneutics (interpretation)? I believe I called it “rabbinic pesher”. I’m going to say it again in more detail, by quoting an authority on the subject. So make sure you get my point.
Let me tell you a short story to get my point across. When we studied NT Greek in college, the prof required us to do an exegesis on any NT text that we wanted. But that text had to have an ‘OT in the NT’ quote in it. The one question that stuck in our minds, based on the facts found in the wording of the parallel texts, was THE CHANGES WHICH THE APOSTLES MADE TO THE TEXT. So, their METHOD has to do with answering the question:
WHERE DO THE APOSTLES GET THE AUTHORITY TO CHANGE THE OT TEXT?
The answer is simple, but it makes no sense to us Westerners who like to believe we think with a scientific mind. Here’s the answer to the above question:
THEY DO IT BECAUSE THEY NEED DIVINE AUTHORITY TO SUPPORT THEIR POLITICAL AGENDA IN ORDER TO GIVE IT CREDIBILITY.
There you have it. Make sure you note that this was prolific among the sages and later rabbis. In other words, doing that to the OT text WAS NORMAL FOR THEM. So today, even though we don’t do that, we certainly can discover WHY they did it. In other words, if you want to understand WHY they did it, you first have to figure out what their POLITICAL AGENDA was. Then you should try to find the LAWS they made along those lines and see their RATIONALE for the making the laws the way they did. It’s only then that you will be able to make sense out of WHY they did it. Discovering that will also give a fuller meaning to your interpretation of the NT text you’re reading. I sure wish we learned this stuff in Babble Shoal!
According to Dr. Smith, the ONKELOS TARGUM (the Aramaic translation of the OT from Babylon) has FOUR DIFFERENT CATEGORIES of this kind of interpretation. Technically, this interpretation is a TRANSLATION. But for the sake of simplicity, we’re going to call it an INTERPRETATION. I talked about this in an earlier blog when discussing Biblical hermeneutics. I said words to the effect that ALL TRANSLATIONS ARE INTERPRETATIONS. So you can see why I say it really doesn’t matter that we simplify what we call this. The 4 CATEGORIES of INTERPRETATION are:
1. Text changed but meaning retained
2. Both text and meaning changed
3. Meaning retained and additions made
4. Meaning changed and additions made
Here’s the pages out of Dr. Smith’s Bible Dictionary, so you can read all the juicy details for yourself:
04.DictionaryBible.DrWillSmith.Hackett.Abbot.AmEd.1868.1892. 721
04.DictionaryBible.DrWillSmith.Hackett.Abbot.AmEd.1868.1892. 722
04.DictionaryBible.DrWillSmith.Hackett.Abbot.AmEd.1868.1892. 723
04.DictionaryBible.DrWillSmith.Hackett.Abbot.AmEd.1868.1892. 724
04.DictionaryBible.DrWillSmith.Hackett.Abbot.AmEd.1868.1892. 725
That’s pretty much all I wanted to show you in this blog. Now you can see HOW they did it, and WHY. I guess you can say that every society has their own VIEW POINT that they want to IMPRESS (brainwash) their people with using their MASS MEDIA, which in this case is the INTERPRETATION of the OT in ancient ‘Jewish’ society.
See you in the next blog!
Reality Bible 