January 19, 2010
The Lord be with you
At Lamb of God Lutheran Church (LCMS), in our adult Bible study this coming Sunday, we will continue our series “Puzzlers and Questions about the Bible.” The submitted question we will consider is:
2 Kings 2:23-24 – Little children came forth out of the city and mocked Elisha’s bald head. Elisha cursed them, and two she-bears came out of the woods and ate 42 of the children. Are we to accept this as literally true?
As phrased, this is a question about “hermeneutics.” Hermeneutics is the branch of theology which deals with the study of the principles of interpretation. Obviously we will not have the time to do a full study of the various approaches to biblical interpretation. Instead we will quickly review four different systems and how they could treat this story, then zoom in on how this text can be handled using the “Historical-Grammatical” approach. (This part will answer the literal/figurative question from my point of view.)
We will finish by considering what we can learn from this text, even though that is not part of the question.
The study is titled: Literal or Figurative (How Can We Tell the Difference?)
Sunday Bible study starts at 9:00 AM.
Blessings in Christ,
Pastor John Rickert
No comments:
Post a Comment