Interpretive Rules

The most fundamental debates over what the Bible says ultimately reduce to how we should interpret the book.

Across the Christian world there are vastly different approaches to the text of the Bible. Different approaches yield different answers when questions are asked about what the Bible says.

Of course the Bible Time Theory is an interpretation of the text of the Bible. The theory is a statement of how one aspect of the Bible functions in real life. Of course the efficacy of the theory is based on a strong correlation between Bible stories and the modern headlines those stories match. In the end, the strength of the correlation is the evidence that the interpretive steps along the way are done correctly.

For many readers, though, an explicit statement of the interpretive rules behind the Bible Time Theory help explain the theoretical approach to the Bible used to derive the Bible Time Theory. They also provide a good foundation for study in other areas of the Bible, since interpretive rules apply more broadly than just time theory.

The following sections articulate the key interpretive rules used by the author in developing the Bible Time Theory.

All scripture is God Breathed

The most important principle, more important than any other, is the expression found in this passage: "God breathed". This idea supercedes the minds of the people who actually wrote the pages of the Bible and makes the Bible into a whole document different than what any individual might have written on their own.

Even if the people who wrote parts of the Bible also wrote other documents, and there is evidence this is so, those writings were their own work. The Bible itself, having been through a process called "canonization" has become a separate work, breathed by God himself and widely accepted by the Church as the authoritative writing for Christians to follow.

• The Bible is self interpreting. Difficult passages are unraveled through the discovery and use of other passages dealing with the same subject. External references, what the Bible calls "traditions of men" are of limited value, typically only useful for the understanding the natural languages used to write the Bible. The reason the Bible is self interpreting is because the only authoritative work God breathed was the Bible itself.

• The Bible can say more than the writers understood This is obvious in many of the prophetic passages where the writers clearly did not understand what they were told to write. It also means that symbols and types used in various passages may not have been obvious to the writers involved.

  Day-for-a-year repetition clearly works as a secondary application of all relevant Bible stories. The original writers of the Bible likely did not fully understand the modern fulfillments, though several clearly did understand how the principle would one day work.

Original Languages

2 languages were used to write the Bible. Most of the Old Testament is in Hebrew, though the second half of the Book of Daniel is in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Aramaic and at an early date translated into Greek. In the correct book order Daniel is the last of the Old Testament books and the language transition into Aramaic happens mid-Daniel, and not at the break in testaments.

Many readers will be shocked in my claim that Aramaic was the original New Testament language. By this statement I am asserting Aramaic Primacy and suggest Goggling on the term for more information on the subject. The assumption of Greek as the New Testament language is made by many in fulfillment of the 4th seal on the scriptures, where 1/4 of the scriptures, the New Testament, have been hidden from most of the world.

Aramaic has several important proof of originality, including extensive New Testament poetry and word-play not seen in the Greek. At a more fundamental level, the Aramaic language is built on the same alphabet and same word-picture system as the Hebrew and it exhibits many of the same Bible Code related attributes as the Hebrew Old Testament.

The authoritative, God breathed canon is the original language text of the Bible, not the later vernacular language translations. The authentic meaning of the Bible is the meaning understood by someone fluent in those original languages.

This is an especially important point when considering prophetic applications of the Bible's text. Modern translators are often unaware of what a particular prophetic passage means and so often translate into English with a meaning that hides the original intent. Occasionally, the study of prophecy must delve into the original language that a passage was written in. No English translations are authoritative as the God breathed original text.

The process of translation is fallible, and often shows of the biases of the translators. But, God is also sovereign over this process too, and we should not think we are completely in the dark when we read a translated version of Scripture.

Finding and Using Second References

At least 6 times does the Bible explicitly teach at all matters are to be established on the testimony of 2 or more witnesses. One example...

When this comes to establishing the meaning of Bible passages this principle means that every subject has been written about more than one time, usually 3 or more times. Many of the most difficult passages remain difficult only because the second references have not been found.

The quantitative references that make up the Bible's overall chronology and the various prophetic chronologies appear to all be given at least in duplicate. Many millennia before the introduction of double entry book keeping, the Bible's prophetic intervals were all built using this principle of duplication.

The reason this is to be done is given in another place:

Duplication in the things of God is not tiresome, or difficult, for God to do and it is to safeguard people trying to understand what God is saying. Paul was writing here as carried along by the Holy Spirit. He is revealing how the Holy Spirit was working when the Bible was organized.

Every Bible story is given more than once as a safeguard to readers.

Beware of Context

The Bible is a very large book. The Hebrew language used to write much of it is the densest natural language used in the world. It gets density using a convention where the reader is assumed to know much about the message, so the message can be written in a form of code. For example, the Hebrew language omits the vowels because the reader should be able to figure them out. Even many simple verbs are omitted because the reader should be able to understand.

Jesus made extensive use of this writing style when he told parables in New Testament times. He never interpreted his parables in public, but only later to his disciples in private. Even then the interpretations where often not clear. The reason was his reliance on the Old Testament as the foundation for his parables. His listeners, and even his readers today, need to know the field of Old Testament stories from which the New Testament material is mostly drawn.

The Apostle Paul was also well versed in the Old Testament even before he was saved on the road to Damascus. Much of Paul's New Testament writing is similarly steeped in Old Testament vocabulary.

The context for any particular passage is usually an Old Testament story from which the New Testament story is drawn. This is a trap the Bible Time project works hard to avoid.

Christians are Abraham's Adopted Seed

This principle teaches that Christians are Abraham's spiritual descendants. Christians have a place in God's dealing with mankind that is akin to being adopted children of Abraham. This is at severe odds with much of the dispensational components of the Tribulation camp. As will be shown later, God never stopped his prophetic clock at all, and history is riddled with prophetic events on predicated dates. We are not in a separate "dispensation" as some would call it. Time continues to march forward following a scheduled plan laid out many millennia ago. When the relationship of Christians to Abraham is not acknowledged, many of the key points in end-times prophecy are missed.

Note carefully, I am not saying that we should practice the Old Testament. The law, and its various requirements, was fulfilled in Jesus. We are told that we are under a different agreement with God and we nullify that agreement when we as non-Jews practice various Old Testament teachings.

Note also that there are people today who are both Jewish and Christian called "Messianic Jews". Messianic Jews have a special, complex, situation not addressing here at all.

The New Testament interprets the Old

The Old Testament pattern for the New Testament being in a different language is found in the Book of Daniel. The first half of this book is in Hebrew and then it switches to another ancient language, Aramaic. That change in language patterns what will happen when the New Testament, about 500 years future to Daniel, comes along in Greek. The relationship is similar. Much of the future history of God's dealing with mankind will switch from the Hebrew speakers of the Exodus from Egypt to the Greek speakers of the Gentile world. The Bible explains much about why this would be, but as a simple memory peg, the New Testament mostly interprets the old. A verse to remember as a memory peg is this:

The key expression here being "You have made known to us the dream of the king."

Mankind had a dream. It was recorded in the Old Testament. No one generally understands what it means. Buried there, for example, is a complete chronology of everything Jesus intends to do in the affairs of mankind. But, the story is packed as a riddle, a dream.

Some who lived in that time, like Abraham, and many others (See Hebrews 11) did understand and did not need interpretation. They needed nothing else. But, most people need dreams interpreted and so the New Testament interprets the Old, much like Daniel can interpret the dreams of pagan king Nebuchadnezzar.

The new testament teaches the same thing. The following story from Luke ends with a similar punch line.

The key idea here being that Moses and the prophets are enough, for those who can hear, to hear and know about Jesus. The New Testament will have no effect on those to whom the Old Testament has no effect. The New Testament says little not already spoken of in the Old Testament. Much of it is just as veiled.

Summary

Interpreting scripture with scripture is the central key. Traditions of men nullify the meaning of scripture.¹ Traditions should not have a central place in Bible interpretation.

The Old Testament is important because God breathed the Old Testament to the family into which Christians are adopted. As will be developed shortly, the bulk of the end-times prophetic passages are hidden deep within the Old Testament.

Phil Stone
Written: 2008-10-02
Updated: 2008-10-02

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¹Mark 7:13