Part 2: Presuppositions [Cont.] - What does this have to do with interpreting scripture?
Since we are talking about presuppositions that should clue you in to what the key is in answering the questions. The reason I like this illustration is that even knowing this it is still difficult to get the right answers.
The problem is that in reading anything, not just scripture, we have presuppositions that we don't even realize we are imposing on the text.
So lets look at this story one last time. This time I'll give you the 3 most important rules in interpretation to help you figure this out:
Context, Context, Context [Click]
He jogged a little ways and turned left. He jogged a little ways and turned left. He jogged a little ways, turned left and jogged back home.
As he was jogging home, he noticed two masked men waiting for him at home.
1. Who were the masked men?
2. Why did he leave home jogging?
I have yet to meet anyone that didn't have the look on their face that you have right now. Now you know exactly what you could not see before, and that's because you were presupposing a definition of the word 'Home' that the author did not intend.
As you see with that one little word you imposed an entire context that had nothing to do with what was going on, and therefore you were unable to answer 2 questions that are obvious if you were thinking baseball.
Please add your comments/questions/etc. and next week we will talk more about these issues we need to deal with in interpretation.
Excellent illustration of the need to do one's homework when interpreting Scripture. Being 2000 years removed from that culture, we have to pay particular attention to "context, context, context".
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