Some have found fault with the biblical writers when the biblical writers say, all Capernaum came out to hear Jesus. And they'll jump at that and they say, well, that's not true. We can't trust the Bible when it talks like that. All Capernaum went after Jesus. Does that mean that every man, woman, and child in that city came out, that the shut-ins were carried on beds out to hear Jesus?
That every last human being that was a resident of Capernaum went out to hear it. I don't think the Bible means to convey that. The difference between a science textbook and a detective novel is easy to notice, and that's because each uses different literary conventions, clues that help us understand what genre we're reading. whether something is hyperbole, metaphor, or poetic. Because the Bible is made up of many different genres and uses various literary forms, we must interpret each differently if we're to take Scripture seriously.
That's why we're featuring RC Sprawl's Knowing Scripture series this week on Renewing Your Mind, and you can request lifetime access to all 12 messages and the study guide, plus receive a 12-month subscription to Table Talk magazine when you give a year-end gift before midnight tonight. as we are only hours away from this critical deadline. Any support you show today is greatly appreciated and helps us continue this year's outreach momentum into the new year. Thank you.
Well today, Dr. Sproll will teach us to recognize the different genres and literary forms so we can read the Bible as it was meant to be read. Here's Duck to Sprawl. We considered what is meant by the term literal. Interpretation of scripture.
And if you will recall, at the end of that lecture. I talked a little bit about the importance of being able to recognize different types of literary forms that are found in the Bible. Lest we make mistakes in translation and in interpretation by failing to understand that poetry has its own rules and prose has its rules and so on. And in this session, we're going to consider further This whole question of literary forms, how we can recognize some of them, and what are some of the unique problems that they. confront us with.
Now at the outset, I want to talk about one particular Dimension of biblical language that causes an awful lot of problems for people, and in fact, has been at the center of the storm of controversy in church history. and that is that the Bible When it tells narratives and recalls history and describes events and people and places. It uses a kind of language that we can call the language of appearances. or descriptive language, or the more technical term for it is what we call phenomenological language. Phenomenological language just means language that describes things the way they appear.
to the naked eye. How many times have you been involved in discussions or seen debates in the newspaper or on television centering on the alleged conflict between science? and the Bible.
Now, it would be naive to assume that there never is conflict between science and the Bible, because science works with human suppositions and hypotheses and the like. And it's readily understandable that from time to time there would be conflicts between theology and science that are not just a tempest in a teapot. You know, when some scientist stands up and says that life is simply a result of chance or of a cosmic accident and that therefore you as an individual have no eternal significance whatsoever. You're just a cosmic mistake, a grown-up germ or something like that. There, you're on a collision course with biblical teaching of the nature and the function and the dignity of man.
And so there are real areas of conflicts at certain points between certain scientists and biblical theology. But so often The controversies and the disputes that arise between science and the Bible have to do with a misunderstanding. Either of what science is saying or of what the Bible is saying. And the classical case in point, of course, is the black eye, the church god in church history over the Galileo episode. When The church and her bishops refused to even look through Galileo's telescope to see whether or not they could confirm the theory that the Earth is not the center of the solar system, but rather that the sun is the center of the solar system, because the church theologians had drawn inferences from some of the biblical statements about the nature of the relationship between this planet and the sun.
and they had put them in concrete and made them matters of dogma. On the basis, not of sound biblical exegesis, but on the basis of influence from earlier theories of science. And here pride and prejudice collided, and the church was very much embarrassed as a result of it. Had we realized that the Bible uses phenomenological language, the languages of appearance, With respect to describing events and the world around us, we never would have had that problem. was Galileo.
What do I mean by that?
Well The Bible speaks, for example, about the sun moving across the heavens. about the sun rising. And the sun setting.
Now it's If you go outside. tomorrow morning You will if you use your naked eye to observe the motions of the sun against the backdrop of the heavens from the vantage point of the earth You too will see the sun come up And speak of a sunrise, and you can watch and watch the sun move across the sky during the day and then set in the west. at evening time. And if you were to talk to one of your friends about it, you may even, as a twentieth-century, sophisticated, scientifically minded person, talk about a sunrise and a sunset. But you would be mistaken if you would draw the conclusion from what you observe with the naked eye that because the sun seems to move across the sky, that therefore we are stationary and the sun is moving around us.
And that the Earth is the fixed center point. of the universe. That would be a scientific error. But it would not be incorrect for you to use languages of appearance to describe things. as they appear to the naked eye.
My favorite illustration of that has to do with the weather forecast. In fact, in this day and age, we don't even talk about weather forecasts anymore. We're far more sophisticated than that.
Now we talk about meteorological surveys. And the meteorologist comes on after the 11 o'clock news at night and he baffles us with technical scientific language and jargon. And he talks about high pressure centers, this and barometric pressure, that, and anticyclonic activity and so on that's going on and all these blips on the radar. And I know sometimes my mind is boggled trying to follow all of the technicalities of the weather forecast. I just want to know whether or not I should take an umbrella to work tomorrow morning.
I don't need to know all of the details of the technicalia that is involved in the weather forecast. But even after all of this scientific data and instrumentation that's presented to us on television, the last part of the weather forecast, they'll tell you what the temperature is going to be and they'll talk about the probability quotient for rainfall, precipitation, and all of that. And then at the end they'll say, sunrise tomorrow morning at 6.15, sun up at 7.15. Should I rush to my telephone and call the television studio and say, What kind of cranks are you people down there at the television studio? Are you trying to reintroduce the ancient Ptolemaic view of the universe that sees the earth as the center of the universe and that the sun moves around, that the sun actually rises and the sun?
Haven't you heard of Galileo? Haven't you heard of Kepler? Haven't you heard all of the knowledge that has been brought forth through the Copernican Revolution?
Well, of course not. I would be completely irresponsible to accuse the weatherman of lying. or of falsehood, or of any such thing, by using the simple day-by-day descriptive language of terms like sun-up and sunset.
Now we get into trouble when we want the Bible To be a precise Scientific textbook. to describe things In 20th century terminology, wouldn't you be suspicious if tomorrow afternoon somebody dug up a manuscript or found a manuscript in a cave in the Middle East and they dusted it off and they said, Oh, here is a lost book of the Old Testament that dates back to 2000 BC. We began to unravel the scroll and we began to see that Solomon tells us that the barometric pressure tomorrow afternoon and the probability quotient for precipitation will be such and such. You'd know right away it was a forgery. Because people didn't talk like that.
when the Bible was written. They had a different frame of reference, which cannot be called Incorrect or any such thing. It's just a matter of using naked eye. descriptions. We're not talking here about matters of fact.
as we are of matters of description.
Now We cannot expect the Bible. As I said, to be. A precise detailed technical scientific textbook. That does not mean that the Bible doesn't reveal things that have heavy bearing upon scientific questions. It does.
The Bible tells us that this world was created by Almighty God, that this world is not eternal. And if a scientist comes down the road and says the world is eternal, it has no creation, we have conflict. I don't want to minimize that. But I do want to say let's not try to force the Bible into a mode that it was never intended to be.
Some people are upset by the fact that the Bible is not written with the same kind of mathematical precision that we can expect from computers. The Bible is given to round numbers. when it describes crowds. You know, 5,000 people were there. On the day that Jesus fed people from fishes and loaves, does that mean that one of the disciples went around with a pocket calculator and carefully marked off every single person that was in attendance?
And isn't it wonderful that it came to exactly 5,000 right on the number? Or was that a round number crowd estimate? And at the same time as we have the use of round numbers in the Scripture, we also have. A legitimate use of the literary form of hyperbole. What's a hyperbole?
A hyperbole. is an exaggeration. Fact. It's an exaggeration of the truth. We could say a hyperbole is a distortion of the truth.
Now, we recognize that distortions of the truth are falsehoods. They're lies, they're errors.
So, how can we tolerate hyperbole?
Well, hyperbole is more. than an exaggeration of the truth, the key to the hyperbole. is that it is an intentional Exaggeration. of the facts to make a point. I've said in lectures that Here is a problem that I have encountered a jillion times.
Now, what have I communicated to you with that statement? Do you really take it? Take me seriously and say, I have so wildly exaggerated that as that I don't expect anybody seriously out there to think that I've actually encountered that problem precisely and exactly one jillion times. I don't even know if there is such a number as a jillion. But what am I communicating to you?
I have had to deal with that problem so many times that I am completely exhausted by it. And it feels like a jillion times I've had to face it.
Some have found fault with the biblical writers when the biblical writers say All Capernaum came out to hear Jesus. They'll jump at that and they say, well, that's not true. We can't trust the Bible when it talks to us like that. All Capernaum went out to Jesus. Does that mean that every man, woman, and child in that city came out, that the shut-ins were carried on beds out to hear Jesus, that every last human being that was a resident of Capernaum went out to hear it?
I don't think the Bible means to convey that. Any more than the Pittsburgh Press meant to convey the same idea when the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl for the first time and they came home in triumph from the Super Bowl, and there was a festival scheduled for the center square of Pittsburgh to celebrate it. And I don't know how many people came, a couple hundred thousand people came to that. And the newspaper account said the whole city. Turned out.
to welcome the Steelers. The whole city didn't turn out. There were lots of people that stayed in bed. There were lots of people who were confined to hospitals. There were lots of people that had something else they wanted to do that day and just didn't bother to attend.
But the newspaper writer was trying to give us A picture of a thronging multitude and of an exciting event that captivated the imagination. of the populace of a city. And so he used hyperbole. I know of scholars who quibble about the New Testament teachings and whether or not they're really to be trusted, because Jesus Christ made the statement to his disciples when he was trying to illustrate that just a little bit of faith can make a lot of things happen. He said, if you have the faith of the grain of a mustard seed, You can say to this mountain, move and it'll move.
And he talks then about the mustard seed being the smallest of the seeds.
Now you know we can say that something's small. We can say that something is smaller. And we can say that something is smallest. We have the descriptive, the comparative, and the superlative. The superlative is the third degree.
And Jesus used the superlative. Jesus said the mustard seed is the smallest of the seeds.
Now did Jesus of Nazareth mean to communicate at that point that of all of the myriad of myriad number of seeds on this planet, That in fact, the tiniest, smallest seed in the whole world is the mustard seed. I doubt it. What Jesus was saying is from this tiny seed, this tiny ears, this extremely small seed comes a great big tree. That was the point that Jesus was making. Jesus was using hyperbole.
And so we need to be aware of the legitimate use of hyperbole and being able to recognize it when we see it. Otherwise, we reduce the Bible. to nonsense syllables, not allowing the legitimate literary forms to function as they should. All right, in addition. To the script of language or language of appearances.
We also have the use of hyperbole, the use of round numbers, and we also have the use of metaphor. And other varieties of figurative language. And here's another place where sometimes we can get in trouble in terms of biblical interpretation. We know that the Bible uses metaphorical language. Jesus was fond of it.
In fact, the Middle East, the Near East, the ancient people have a speaking style that is rich in the use of figurative language. End of metaphor. How many times does Jesus Use the metaphors drawn from nature to liken his role as the Redeemer. I am the vine. Abide in me and I in you.
And he makes that illustration, that analogy between vines and their fruit and their branches, and Christ and his people bearing fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches. He says, I am the good shepherd. He says, I am the door. through which men must enter.
Now let's impose a crass literalism upon Jesus' statement, I am the door. And this is really crass. That would mean, if we took it literally in the pejorative sense of literalism. It would mean that where you have skin, Jesus had veneer of some sort, oak. walnut mahogany.
Where you have arms, he had hinges.
Well, that's absurd. Jesus does not mean to suggest that he is a door, literally. He is a door figuratively. He is a door metaphorically. He is using that image to convey something that he is.
He is. The one through whom we must go. Just as a human being has to pass through a door to go from one room to the next, so we must pass through him to go from this world into the kingdom of God. That's the point that Jesus is making. And it's simple, isn't it?
We don't need to be PhDs in theology to be able to recognize a simple metaphor like that when Jesus uses it. Unfortunately. There are some cases in the Bible. when the literary structure is not quite so clear. as to whether or not it is metaphor or figurative language.
I think for example of Jesus' statement. In the institution of the Lord's Supper. Where in the words of institution, Jesus took bread. And when he had broken that bread, He looked at his disciples and he said, this is My Body.
Now analyze that statement. This referring to the bread. We could fill it in this bread. Bread is the subject. is the predicate And my body is, in this case, the objective part of the statement.
Now, Jesus is using the verb to be. The linking verb is. the verb that indicates at times an identity. between the subject and the predicate, Jesus said, this is my body. And he says, I am the door.
Again, we have. subject, predicate, object. The verb to be, I am the door. In the one case, it's clearly Figurative. Is it figurative or literal when Jesus said, this is my body?
You realize how much controversy has gone on in church history over the dispute of the interpretation of that? The whole Reformation suffered from a lack of unity over the interpretation of that single verse. Another dimension of biblical language that we need to be very much aware of. unless we fall into serious error, is that the Bible uses What we call Anthropomorphic. language.
Anthropomorphic language when it describes God.
Well, what is anthropomorphic language? We know what anthropology is. Anthropology is the study of man. It comes from the Greek word anthropos, which means man. And so anthropomorphic is just a combination of the Greek word anthropos, man.
And the Greek word morphos, form. Put it together, and what have you got? Anthropomorphic, which means man, form. That is, the Bible uses human forms. to describe God.
It talks about God's eyes. His head. His hands, his feet. It talks about his throne. He's seated on the throne.
The earth is his footstool. The Bible, from beginning to end, speaks in human forms and in human descriptions. to describe God and yet at the same time the Bible warns us that God is not a man. But we don't have any frame of reference to relate to something that's a pure spirit being. We don't know how to describe pure spirituality.
We've never seen it. We are bound by space and time. We are physical creatures. And the only terms in which we can communicate about anything are human terms because we're human. And so we use analogies to describe God drawn from human experience.
And sometimes we think that we are able to escape this by using fancy and abstract language, like we say that God is omnipotent. And we think that by that we've somehow captured the essence of what God is. But even an abstract word like omnipotence, all powerful, is just a more sophisticated and subtle form of anthropomorphic language. Because the only way we understand power It's human life. And when we talk about all power, all we're saying is, well, we know what partial power is and greater power, we've seen different levels of power, and so we just sort of project abstractly with our mind the idea of ultimate power.
But our understanding of it mentally is still Bound By our own human forms of speech. Does that mean that our language about God is meaningless, as some have suggested in the 20th century, since God is not man and yet we use human terms to describe him? No. Even though God is not me. And we are not God.
The Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God and that there is some sense in which we are like God. That point of likeness makes it possible to speak In terms of analogy, that God is like man. He's not exactly like man. There's not an equation between God and man, but there are points of contact. And not only that, God in His Word is the one who is taking the initiative to address us.
And the supreme form of address is in His own Son, who is the incarnate Word. God becomes a man. He takes upon Himself a human nature and He speaks to us in human terms because we don't have the mind of God. We don't have the perspective of God. We have human perspective, and the only way we're going to be able to talk to God at all is in our terms.
And God, in His mercy, condescends, He stoops down and addresses us. Inhuman Terms. And it's because we are in His image, and because He's become incarnate, and because God has the ability to communicate to us. That language. is meaningful.
It's not exhaustive. And if you push it too far. You're going to get yourself in a pack of trouble, just like the Mormons have, you know, when they have to actually come to the conclusion that God has a body, a spatially temporally defined, geographically located body. You know, that he's not a spirit being, he's a physical being. And that kind of crass physicalism that you find in Mormonism is because of a fundamental error of hermeneutics.
an error of dealing with the biblical language of anthropomorphic description.
Well, there are other categories and other problems, so in our next session, we'll continue this examination of the different types and forms of speech. and literature that we find in the Bible. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was R. C. Sproll, the founder of Ligonier Ministries.
Today's message is from the Knowing Scripture series, in which Dr. Sproll focuses on how to properly interpret the Bible. And we're beginning to see how genre, figures of speech, and metaphorical language should affect the way we read and understand God's Word. Knowing Scripture was designed to give you the tools you need to take a literal approach to Scripture. This is a 12-part series and you can request access to all the messages and the study guide when you give a year-end donation at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343.
Today is the final day that you can make a year-end donation to support the growth of Renewing Your Mind and to fuel the global outreach of Liginar Ministries.
So any gift, large or small, or any additional support you can give today is needed and appreciated. To thank you, in addition to this series, we'll give you a 12-month subscription to Table Talk magazine. Each month there are articles on a specific theme, along with a weekday and weekend devotional. This year, issues we'll consider sadness from a biblical perspective, the church in the wilderness, William Tyndale and the English Bible, and more. to use the link in the podcast show notes or call us at 800-435-4343.
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Earlier this year, you heard an episode recorded inside Bib Correctional in Alabama. And you learned about Reformation Bible College's first ever remote campus.
Well, in addition to that four-year degree, for some time, Ligonier has been providing trusted teaching and partnering with prison chaplains through a program we call Ligonier Inside. This is just another way your support through Renewing Your Mind is helping minds to be renewed and lives transformed. From inside Bib Correctional, here's some of what a recent graduating class shared with us. It's my pleasure to read these names of our graduates. Mr.
Meyer. My parents don't get to really see me, but I talk to them on the phone. And they tell me they can hear the change, the way I taught, do Bible studies with my mom over the telephone. I try to live life as a Christian now instead of doing the old things. I try to be a good role model to the other people in the program, the dorm, outreach, go to people I see struggling and talk to them and tell you, hey, You know, that's not the way we're supposed to live.
We're made in God's image, and we need to reflect God's image. Mr. Peacock. It's been a good year. What's next is my second year of legionnaire, just to get even more equipped to be able to spread the gospel to people.
You know, and teach them, teach them what I've learned. Mr. Medina In the environment we live in our community, a Christian community, you can feel it when you go into our dome, the environment, you can feel the atmosphere. It's different the way we carry ourselves. And since I've come in here, since I've become a real Christian, and I can say I'm a real Christian now, I wasn't before I came into prison.
It's changed my life, and I hope that for everybody. I don't ever want to see anybody in this place. I have a sense of peace and a joy that I didn't have before. I know that old me's sitting in the corner somewhere waiting to be fed, but I don't feed him any more. Legan Air has given me an opportunity to leave behind a legacy, which is what I was supposed to do.
Seeing that these men are so committed to studying, and many of them found faith in Christ while they have been inmates here at Bibb County or perhaps elsewhere. And what you see is the transforming power of the gospel. Dr. Sproll understood that theology is more than just a topic for debate. For scholars in the seminary.
The lessons learned in seminaries have informed and enriched our theology at every level of ministry and work. He believed that we should teach good theology and that good theological training Would lead to right thinking about our world and our lives. Dr. Skroll continues to be a blessing. The prisoners around the wall.
Our hope is Jesus Christ. Our hope is in the resurrection. What that hope looks like. For us in prison is that We don't have to allow our circumstances or the environment define us. We don't have to believe all these things that we're worthless or that there's no hope for us and we're always losers and will never amount to anything.
The hope is this, that I don't have to feel like I'm a prisoner. I don't have to act like I'm a prisoner. I don't have to talk like I'm a prisoner. I can live. As a man, I have regained my identity in Christ.
I'm more than a prisoner, I'm a Christian. And we're free. We can live as free men on the inside. The men who graduate today are not perfect men. But we strive.
And more than strive, we trust our God to transform us into the man that He wants us to be. And we know there's a lot of work to be done. I'm proud of what we have accomplished here. We're looking at her inside. Our minds are being removed.
I've seen a lot of people Just confused about Lithe and just uh down and out. Certain people you get to talk to about Jesus, and when you do, it just you can see a light. Come on now. You know, and it's not nothing we do. It's all Jesus.
Now, one of the main things that has been a real blessing to me is just guys coming up and, hey, how do I handle this situation? What does the Bible say about this? What does this passage mean? Those are great opportunities. We might be in prison.
but we can live as free men, you know what I'm saying? And we can go out. and use our freedom to help others. Spread the word, spread the gospel. Let them know the promises of God, your salvation.
What more can we do to help other people?
so that when they get out they're equipped to do what they need to do to not come back. To be able to have that opportunity, seeing how it's been. helping these guys along the way. It is it's priceless. You can't put a tag on it.
It's been a blessing to be a part of this journey thus far. And we are prayerful that things only get better as we prepare. to do just like my brother said. to advance the kingdom.
So please keep us in prayer. As we continue on this group with his group as well as his next. To be able. A hard road ahead of us. We're giving them something that is for the heart.
And we're getting more guys coming to classes, we're getting more guys signing up for classes, we'll be giving them the truth, giving them gospel, and letting them know that no matter what the situation is, that God is walking with them, the more we have, the more we can grow. I don't know what I would not surrender my identity as a Christian to be free.
So I see in God's sovereign providence that because of my own waywardness and my own willingness to sin, that he brought me here so that my light might shine. My hope is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ when this life is over and I see Jesus face to face.
Okay. But Hope hope to me looks like salvation. My hope is not getting out of prison or getting rich or having a lot of friends or. Being really respected by other inmates. My hope is that I'll finish the course well, and my father will say, Well, Don.
Our God is so gracious, and He is at work behind prison walls throughout the United States and around the world. When you give a year-end gift today, you are helping this outreach and many others by God's grace to flourish. Consider giving a year-end gift today and as I said earlier, we'll unlock digital access to the Knowing Scripture series and study guide and send you a 12-month subscription to Table Talk magazine. TableTalk is also a very popular and often requested resource from inmates. you can give your gift at Renewing Your Mind dot org or when you call us before midnight to night at eight hundred four three five four three four three.
Thank you.
Some people simply write off the portions of the Bible that seem too fantastic to be true. Perhaps you heard scholars explaining various passages as fable or myth. But many of these stories claim to be historical accounts of things that actually happened.
So how can we discern between true events and fiction? Tomorrow, Dr. Sproll explains the fundamental differences between biblical history and myth. That'll be Thursday, here on Renewing Your Mind.
