QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS



Chapter One
Evolving Methods of Gospel Interpretation


Answers Questions
001 Does the Catholic Church view religious life as being important to it?
002 Do you know the difference between diachronic and synchronic?
003 What could be some of the on-going assumptions made by readers of Scripture?
004 It could be said Martin Luther triggered the Protestant Reformation which took place at the same time as the invention of printing. How did Luther understand Scripture?
005 Did Calvin (an early Protestant) understand Christ to permeate the whole of Scripture?
006 In the Age of Enlightenment (18th century) there was a lot of scepticism about the truth of Scripture. What did the Protestant tradition do to combat this?
007 The Historical Critical Method of interpretation placed emphasis on scientific research into history and language. What was the effect of this?
008 Did the Catholic church ever come to recognise the benefits of the historical critical method of interpretation?
009 Can you think of a limitation of the diachronic approach of Historical Critical Analysis?
010 How much of the text would a diachronic approach consider at once?
011 Could you briefly describe narrative criticism?
012 Do you think narrative criticism considers the gospels as literature with similar rules in writing etc.?
013 What sort of “understanding” is it when one looks at a story from beginning to end?
014 Do you think rhetorical interpretation considers what a writer is trying to convince people about?
015 Is semiotic analysis a form of structural analysis?
016 Could a writer have an underlying line of logic without explicitly telling the reader about this? (It may be of course that such a line of logic was much more obvious to first century readers than 21st century readers).
017 If you look at the patterns of a text to work out its meaning would you also need to be conscious of the social environment of the writer?
018 Was it likely that “story tellers” of the first century had a better memory for detail than twenty-first century people who rely on “prompts”?
019 If you consider at Shakespeare’s plays, every person has their own interpretation of these. Would that also hold for Scripture when you consider it as literature?
020 Mark’s gospel was written around the time Jerusalem and its temple was destroyed (70 CE). What do you think Mark would be wanting to tell the Roman Empire about the followers of Jesus?
021 If an interpreter wants to explore a particular question in the gospel do you think they should consider a range of methods they could use and then pick out the most effective one?
Workshops - one gospel at a time, on Mark. Matthew, Luke, Luke's Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John

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