George Bernard Shaw said: “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says. He is always convinced that it says what he means.”
Shaw must have had Pesher in mind! But, what is PESHER?
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Scholar Bart Ehrman gives us a taste of the ancient interpretative schemes common in the early days of Christianity here:
"For ancient Jews and Christians, there were numerous ways sacred texts could be read. They could be seen as allegories, in which the literal meaning was simply the uninteresting surface of the text, and the real meaning was something else. They could be seen as containing secret teachings below the surface that could be unlocked by playing with the numerical significance of the letters of this or that word. They could be seen as looking ahead to people and events that the authors themselves were not aware of (but God, the author of the texts, was aware of). There were, in fact, lots of options."
Ehrman is referring to PESHER, which is Hebrew for interpretation. But, it is more than an interpretation because a secondary level consists of "reading into" the text, otherwise known in Greek as eisegesis. (The opposite of exegesis, extracting meaning.)
I can hear you asking your self, "WTF do I care?"
One answer to that is this. As Jehovah's Witnesses, our 'Truth' actually consisted of a similar scheme by various Watchtower Governing Body Presidents following the same tradition in modern times!
Why shouldn't we be interested?
The Dead Sea Scrolls community in Qumrum certainly depended on Pesher to fill their own day and time (2 B.C.E.--68 C.E.) with an extraordinary sense of prophetic significance--exactly the way modern day Bible students, such as in Pastor Russell's time, viewed the imminent arrival of earth shaking, supernatural happenings.
Such Pesher mentality was alive and well into the Apostolic period as well; " the literal meaning of these passages was not what mattered to the interpreter; indeed, the history of the Qumran community can be read from their own interpretations of the ancient prophecies." (Ehrmanblog.com)
Example?
"Matthew’s approach is very similar. Passages of Scripture that appear to us, who read texts literally, to be about one thing actually refer to something else – in this case, not his community but Jesus."
What Matthew and Paul were doing when they cited Old Testament Scripture and applied it to Jesus was Pesher.
The early Christian communities had their share of such Pesher interpretations, of course, and damned near became the most prominent branch of Christianity. I'm referring here to the Gnostics.
Example:
Some gnostics, for instance, believed the demiurge was ignorant and naïve rather than downright evil, and provided a very moving explanation to an otherwise ordinary story in the bible:
‘When [Jesus] entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” And he said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” When Jesus heard him, he was amazed…And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the servant was healed in that hour.’(Mt. 8:5-13)
The gnostics interpreted this paragraph with unparalleled beauty. The centurion, they argued, was the demiurge. The demiurge refers to his angels when he says he has soldiers under his authority. The paralyzed servant is humanity, which suffers from all kinds of spiritual diseases. The demiurge did his best to save humanity by means of the Mosaic Law. But the law brought only death; it failed to change people to the better and only brought penalties on the transgressors. Realizing his attempt to redeem humanity has failed, the demiurge resorts to Jesus. He tells him that he is not worthy to have him under his roof, which means that the demiurge doesn’t deserve to have Jesus come down to his lesser world. But he only asks Jesus to speak a word to heal his son. This perfectly accords with the gnostic doctrine, which holds that Jesus’ mission was to promulgate secret teachings, not to die for people’s sins. This interpretation is documented by Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.vii.4) and also survives in Heracleon’s commentary on John 4:46-54.
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A modern type of hermeneutics loosely akin to Pesher is quite common in some charismatic Christian circles who think much of the Bible is specifically tailored to individuals today. How? Well, they would pick passages and verses, sometimes at random, and then ask what God is speaking to them TODAY, with minimal attention to the passage’s context. For example, back in 2000, Bruce Wilkinson published “The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life” which went on to become an international bestseller selling 9 million copies. It abstracts 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 from original historical context, and makes it a universal blessing God makes to Christians today.
Another message popular with charismatics is Jeremiah 29:11 (“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”) interpreted to mean God has these prosperity plans for whoever is reading the Bible (provide they hold to the right charismatic beliefs). (Hon Wai)
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The above information, on Ehrmanblog.com, prompted a member of the Apostate community to chime in.
"I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and I can assure you this way of finding hidden meaning in Bible accounts is alive and well. Witnesses see the original stories as “types” and consider themselves to be the “antitypes.” For example, Noah and the flood can be seen to have a modern day, “antitypical” fulfillment. Noah represents Christ. Noah’s wife represents the “bride of Christ” who are considered to be those faithful members of the 144,000 of Revelation who are alive in our day (many of whom are directing the preaching work of witnesses from Walkill, New York). Noah’s sons along with their wives represent those who are brought into the safety of the modern day “ark” which is God’s organization, otherwise known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. These followers of God will survive Armageddon just as those on the ark came through the flood. After Armageddon they will repopulate the earth. I don’t know if witnesses still have the same fondness for types and antitypes as in the past, but they definitely used to teach this stuff!"
I found the above to be very timely in view of the fact the Governing Body has rescinded this sort of Pesher in their current mad rush to totally revamp their bedrock system of theology! How? By doing it again, of course.
It is a kind of "magic slate" approach whereby yesterday's Pesher had a shelf date, and this caused a need for a modernization Pesher!
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In Theological Seminary, the above would be studied under the boilerplate of HERMENUETIC.
So you can plainly discover from a brief consideration of Pesher, there is nothing unusual about the approach of Jehovah's Witnesses in 'pulling it out of their own ass' and making it up as they go along!