Subject: location-examples |
Bible Note: Dear Pew, Over time, we've had this kind of question asked quite a bit. The problem is that people start digging around for symbolism whenever the Scripture mentions a number, a quantity, a name, a location, etc. etc. The Alexandrian School of Interpretation runs rampant in our churches. It is, of course, common to the Roman Church. E. W. Bullinger, an Anglican, would be expected to have come under such influence. His hyper-dispensationalism necessarily promotes that kind of thinking. Our gracious host, the Lockman Foundation, explicitly affirms -- in their translation and in this forum -- the doctrine of sola scriptura. Thus, we might wish to take care to qualify anything that falls short of the Antiochian School of Interpretation; i.e., a commitment to historical-grammatico exegesis. Bullinger's "Spiritual Significance of Numbers" and similar numerological approaches to interpreting Scripture simply lack sufficient authority for us to assert them in such a definitive manner. So let's be very careful about promoting something in a manner that lends more credence to speculation than is rightfully there. Let's encourage people to see 40 days in the wilderness as simply 40 days, unless somewhere else in Scripture we are granted the authority to see it as something more. In Him, Doc |