How hard can it be to read and understand personal correspondence?

First, God spoke to Moses directly (“mouth to mouth, clearly”), whereas he would speak to the prophets in “dark speeches” (i.e., riddles).

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• Second, God appeared to Moses directly, while he would reveal himself to the prophets in visions and dreams.

• This surely marks a contrast between the clarity, ease of interpreting, and directness that is to be observed in Moses as the receiver of prophecies and all others in the Bible.

• However, this admission must not be pushed to the extreme of saying that nothing can be understood of the prophetic material until God establishes the word of his servant in its fulfillment.

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• There is a sense in which all prophecy was intended to communicate an adequate understanding of the future for the first audience to whom it was directed, even if it came in a riddle form, often accompanied by symbols, clothed in a vision, and not being entirely clear.

• Such observations have led to long discussions and debates over whether prophecies should be understood “literally,” “figuratively,” or “spiritually.”

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• What is meant by the literal sense? Raymond Brown defined it as “the sense which the human author intended and which his words convey.”

• Although prophecy indeed uses far more figurative language, including symbols, figures of speech, allegories, and parables, than does narrative or didactic prose, this is not to say that the words or terms used are any less literal.

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• One must assume the primacy of the grammatical, plain, straightforward, simple sense before one searches for what is “contained in” or “falls within” or “is below” or is “based on” the literal sense.

• It is preferable, then, to take prophecy in its natural, straightforward, literal sense.

• But one must remember that “literal” here simply means that words are to be taken according to their normal grammatical and philological sense; indeed, this is the meaning of the classic grammatico-historical method of interpretation.

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• Although a fair portion of the words are of a figurative type, they are no less meaningful for being figurative, for the author still meant to say something by his use of these words.

• The question of the so-called spiritual sense is much more complex.

• This sense is usually not determined from explicitly stated authorial intentions or from the fact that figurative language is used in these prophecies.

• Often it is said to be between the lines rather than something identifiable from the grammar of the verse itself.

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• Alternatively, it is first identified in the NT and then viewed as a new value given to an older reading, since in the progress of revelation, it is argued, God has the right to introduce such new values for older readings.

• A related question is, Can ancient word values intended by the OT writers to have one set of values be given another new set of values without distorting the general intention of the original statement?

• One key issue that has divided interpreters into separate schools of thought is the way we interpret “Israel” in the OT text.

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• Since it is clear from Scripture that there is only one “people of God,” some have concluded that the word church can now be read and substituted for certain key OT prophecies about the future of “Israel.”

• The rationale for this substitution is usually stated as being the progress of revelation and the unity of the people of God mentioned here.

• But unless this identification can be formally located in the Old Testament text itself, this interpretation would be a case of eisegesis, or reading a meaning (here, gained from the NT as a whole) back into an earlier text (here, the OT).

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• Those wishing to maintain such a “spiritual sense” would perhaps appeal to what has been called the analogy of faith, a method that would apply insights from systematic theology into the practice of doing exegesis.

• Some have argued against just such a practice, however, wishing to base exegesis as much as possible solely on the conclusions that are supported by the analysis of particular texts.

The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• The Characteristics of Biblical Prophecy

• In response, those defending the use of “analogy of faith” argue that it is appropriate to “read into” the OT, since the author of both Testaments is the same—God—and he is the one who kept adding to his own revelation in the course of giving us the two Testaments. We will deal with this issue further in chapter 11, but for the present let us note that both “progress of revelation” and “analogy of faith” must be defined much more accurately if we are to reflect what the church has meant by these terms.