Bible Interpretation, Student Workbook, SW05

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B I B L E I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

Scripture are reliable and accurate, that the stories are written with artistic skill and mastery, that we can encounter God in the story text, and that God often provides his own commentary on the meaning of the biblical story accounts. • Lay out the key propositions of story theology: that stories introduce us to sacramental presences, they are more important than facts, they are normative for the Christian community, that Christian traditions evolve and define themselves by stories, and that stories precede and produce community, censure and accountability, and produce theology, ritual, and sacrament. They are history. • Provide and explain the general elements of narrative in Scripture, including the setting, characters, author’s point of view, plot, and theme of the story. • Explain the general principles underlying prophecy as a genre of biblical interpretation, including how prophecy offers truth about God and the universe, that it flows from the Spirit and is a specific mode of revelation from God which manifests itself in personal and literary modes. • Define the elements of apocalyptic literature as a biblical genre, including its definition, the types of apocalyptic in the Bible (i.e., Daniel and Revelation), the two main types of Jewish apocalypses, and the most distinctly apocalyptic book in Scripture, the book of Revelation. • Reproduce the three interpretive principles for the prophetic and apocalyptic genres of Scripture: the need to focus on the person of Jesus Christ, to refer the prophetic messages to the call of the Kingdom of God, and to emphasize the fulfillment of God’s sovereign purposes even in the face of evil, suffering and injustice.

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Devotion

Ps. 78.1-8 - Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! [2] I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, [3] things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. [4] We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. [5] He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children,