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When speaking of divine revelation, it means that God designed the message to be understood by the original audience in their own context.

Approach to interpreting Scripture that interprets people, places, things and events as if they were symbols or metaphors for spiritual truths.

It refers to the way God sometimes speaks or behaves in ways that seem almost human.

The "father of modern science"

The "father of modern rationalism"

Approach to interpreting Scripture that involves a type of conversation between the reader and the text, coming to understand it better and better

Theological term for the process of analyzing a Bible passage. It means literally to "lead out" the meaning.

Phrase used in this course to mean the total significance of a text, consisting of its original meaning, all its biblical elaborations, and all its legitimate applications 

He invented the printing press in the 15th century.

The study of how to interpret the meaning and significance of Scripture

A work (now lost) of over 50 volumes written by Origen of Alexandria, in which he made a word-by-word comparison of various Hebrew and Greek versions of the Old Testament

Scottish skeptic philosopher who believed that our emotions, desires and mental categories always influence our thinking

The Holy Spirit’s work of conveying a proper understanding of Scripture to a human being

Theological term used to refer to the way in which the Holy Spirit moved human beings to write God’s revelation as Scripture and superintended their work in a way that made their writings infallible

Philosopher who proposed that all knowledge involves both objective perception and subjective processing through our mental concepts that already exist in our minds

View of inspiration that believes that the Holy Spirit essentially dictated the Bible and that the human writers passively recorded what He said

The smallest unit of meaning in linguistics, a small feature of words that indicates things like singular and plural and verb tenses

Approach to knowledge that believes it is possible to arrive at impartial knowledge

View of inspiration that believes that the Holy Spirit used the personalities, experiences, outlooks, and intentions of human authors as he supervised and directed their writing

One of the most famous early Christian teachers who was heavily influenced by the allegorical method of interpretation of Scripture, and who lived from 185 to 254 A.D. He divided the meaning of Scripture in two categories: literal and spiritual.

Phrase used in this course to mean the concepts, behaviors, and emotions that the divine and human writers jointly intended a biblical document to communicate to its first audience.

Writer from Alexandria who is considered to be the originator of the allegorical approach to interpreting Scripture

In early roman society it was a chariot drawn by four horses. In hermeneutics, it referred to an interpretive approach that considered a passage of Scripture to have four distinct meanings.

View of inspiration that believes that Scripture isn’t God’s infallible truth, but only the personal reflections and opinions of the human authors

The theologians of the Middle Ages in Europe used this term to speak of the original meaning of Scripture. Thomas Aquinas made a distinction between this and the "allegorical" sense.

In hermeneutics, this term is used to explain how we can progressively gain a better understanding of Scripture as we continue to dialog with the text. 

School of thought whose proponents tried to use rational and scientific objectivity to obtain an exhaustive understanding of everything they studied.

Approach to knowledge that believes that knowledge is always influenced by personal biases, making impartial objectivity impossible