Homiletics 2 File 19 Professor Carl Fickenscher II Question by: Nick >> NICK: Eventually we've got to get down to the nitty gritty, figure out answers to our questions. How do you do that? >> PROF. FICKENSCHER: Well, this what I would call Step 5 in the invention process is where it really is very helpful to be able to use the original language, either Hebrew or, for the New Testament, Greek. In Step 5, we're going to examine the text in detail. Here, if you can use the original languages, you have a whole wide vista opened to you that is not available if you're unable to look at the Greek or the Hebrew. But even if you're not, there are a number of very specific things that can be discovered that are really quite close and analytical, quite quite detailed. Look at your gospel text now that we've talked about, Luke 9, beginning at Verse 28. One of the first things to observe in looking at the text is the literary genre of the text. That's going to affect an interpretation very significantly. The genre of the text is the form of literature in which it is written. A poem, for example, would be the kind of genre used in the psalms. Here, in the gospel of Luke, we're obviously talking about historical narrative. A story, a telling of events that actually took place. And when we're talking about a historical narrative, we're going to be talking about things that have very straightforward, direct impact by their very happening, whereas by contrast, for example, if the genre is poetry, we're going to be looking for symbolism, we're going to anticipate that the inspired author is seeking to elicit a sort of emotional response from us by use of picture language. If the genre, on the other hand, is an epistle, then it's going to be very self explanatory, very straightforward in a doctrinal teaching kind of mode. Here we're talking about historical narrative, and of course that means that we're going to anticipate that the events are really true, they really happened, and that the impact is in the very happening of the events themselves. Let's look at the text and examine things like whether we understand all the words in this or any other text. Obviously, to begin, that's a question we might ask in some cases using the English. There may simply be words in the English translation that are difficult for us. Not so much here in a in a narrative, but in an epistle lesson, a fairly complicated, complex kind of text, we might want to look up expiation, or words of that nature, propitiation, and find out what words like that in the English translation might mean. However, if we're able to look a little deeper into the original language, we have a real advantage. Now, this can be done even if we're not really accomplished in using the Greek language. Let's talk about a couple of shortcuts. By the way, these are not the ultimate recommendations. But if you're not able to use the original language, an interlinear is of course a Bible that gives a side by side or over/under combination of the original language here the Greek with the English words very closely associated, very closely aligned next to them. In this particular text, if we were reading in Luke 9 and we saw in Verse 31 that Moses and Elijah were speaking of Jesus' departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem, now, that of course says quite a lot already. He's going to depart from Jerusalem, and we know from the broader context that that's going to be the matter of his death on the cross, his resurrection, and finally his ascension back to heaven. But if we look at an interlinear, we would notice that the word that is used for that departure is actually "exodon." Underneath, we are told it's exodus or exodon. Now, that suddenly gives us a much more provocative kind of idea, doesn't it. When we think of Moses and we think of exodus, we think of moving out of Egypt, being delivered into a promised land from a land of slavery. Once you've identified a word like that, "exodon," if you're at least able to read the Greek alphabet even if you don't understand all the words and don't know anything about the language then it does become possible to look up that word, "exodon," in a Greek lexicon. This is a Greek/English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian Literature. This is the revised edition of the very classic Bauer lexicon, and this is available to be purchased. As I said, if you know just so much as the Greek alphabet, you're able to go from the interlinear to find comments on the word "exodon" and get a little more detail than you could get in any English dictionary in simply looking up "departure," for example. Further, as you look through the text, you want to struggle with the grammar. Again, this begins and a great deal is accomplished just from the English. You want to note, for example, which clauses in the text are simple indicatives, simply talking about what is happening, as opposed to, for example, those that might be imperative, calling upon the reader or the witness in the text to do something, or subjunctives that have an uncertainty or an implication of things that might happen. This sort of thing can you can very often be discerned simply from the English grammar as well. But it's possible to go a little more in depth here also. A couple of sources that can be useful even to someone who is not accomplished in the Greek would be, for example, "A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament" by Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor. We speak of this as a linguistic key. This is divided up by canonical text, so one could actually look at Luke 9, beginning at Verse 28, and can find here definitions of the words that appear, but also, in this case, more importantly, also the grammatical forms of the words as they appear in the text, indicating whether you're working with a Greek subjunctive or a Greek imperative, and there are even some very helpful comments here on what that might imply. And a similar tool, although a little more difficult to use for someone who does not use Greek, would be an analytical Greek lexicon. This, the analytical Greek lexicon, is one that is published by Harper & Brothers. It's a rather older edition but this is also still available, and in this particular kind of volume, every word according to its various forms will be listed. In other words, in an ordinary lexicon, the words are always listed by their dictionary forms, whereas here in all the various forms that the word might take, you could actually find those. And that can actually be very helpful if you do not know anything about Greek morphology, so you're not able to tell that a word in this particular form is actually this other word, as it would appear in dictionary form. And so this will then tell you the parsing of the particular word, what the case and number and so on would be. And that also can be helpful. As you're looking for all of this, you're struggling also with things like whether a particular clause in the text is the main clause or a subordinate clause, whether it might just be a prepositional phrase and one would anticipate that the portions of the verses that are main clauses would be more important, would have a higher priority in importance as you're examining them. And these sorts of things often can also be discovered from the English alone. Now, also certainly from the English but, again, this is a significant element in the detailed analysis would be the thought progression of the text. To consider how the text moves from one thought to the next to the next in an orderly pattern. To see the point that ultimately is being made as the author moves forward. As you work through the detailed analysis, you also want to think back to those translations that you compared a little while ago, and see if one of them does appear to be a little more helpful overall in elucidating for you what the text is all about, and then very important at this point is to ask the law/gospel questions. Which elements of the text are law? Which elements of the text are gospel? And how do they interact one to the other? How does this element of gospel answer that particular element of law? Or in some cases, where there are law elements that are not answered in this text by the gospel, you'll want to understand how other portions of scripture outside the text answer that particular law problem, and so on. As you look at the law/gospel issues here, of course you're always thinking in terms of application. How do these law issues, these gospel answers, apply to the lives of your members, your congregation, how do they apply to your life, and consider then how those would create relevant applications in the sermon itself. As you're working through Step 5, obviously you are answering many perhaps all of the questions that you raised in Step 4, but perhaps at the end of Step 5, at this point, there may still be some unanswered questions remaining.