Welcome to Day 1559 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomBible Study – Nonliterial Real Interpretations – Meditation MondayWelcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! Wisdom is the final frontier in gaining true knowledge. Our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, seek out discernment and insights, and boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; this is Gramps; thanks for coming along on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy Today is Day 1559 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.
We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our current insights are focusing on accurately interpreting the Bible. Today let us meditate on:
Bible Study – Nonliterial Real Interpretations· Insight Fifty-Three: Nonliteral Doesn’t Mean “Not Real.”
I talked earlier about how “literal interpretation” isn’t easy to define. The whole idea of what “literal” interpretation means needs interpretation. The frequent insistence on thinking only in literal terms (whatever that means) has led to the caricature of other kinds of interpretation. Nonliteral interpretation, many are told, is just a strategy to avoid what the Bible clearly says. When something in the Bible threatens people (e.g., makes them draw a different conclusion than the one they favor), those panicked souls resort to “allegorizing” or “spiritualizing” the text. That’s nonsense.
I do not deny that people do come up with weird interpretations to avoid something they don’t like in Scripture. I deny that this is an acceptable portrayal of nonliteral interpretation. It had better be, since New Testament writers do at times take their Old Testament nonliterally.
The myth is that “nonliteral” somehow means “not real” or “I don’t want what I’m reading to be real.” The kind of nonliteral interpretation the New Testament writers sometimes engage in is hardly the result of wishing something in the Bible isn’t true.

The idea behind the kind of nonliteral interpretation you’ll find in the Bible is that sometimes the text’s meaning transcends what we would expect the passage to “literally” mean. The text means more than what immediately pops into our head. Nonliteral interpretation presumes that what God means by a statement might go beyond what humans presume. Since the spiritual realm is just as real as our physical, embodied existence, we have no right to make such presumptions. Nonliteral doesn’t mean not real. It often means more real than you imagined.
For example, there is a considerable debate over the nature of the Antichrist figure in the New Testament. Some say the Antichrist will be a man, perhaps the Devil incarnate. Others say that Antichrist is a symbol of evil. In both perspectives, believers’ suffering that ensues from the appearance of this man/evil is real. It would be dishonest for the “literal man” perspective to argue that the “symbol of evil” side wants to escape what the text says. Whatever the text means, the evil will be a clear and present danger.
Don’t embrace caricatures of interpretive approaches you don’t like or have little experience with. Find out what an approach really says.
· Insight Fifty-Four: Be Open to Nonliteral...