quote:
I'll tell you right now that what I am NOT looking for is an argument that double fulfillment must be true in order to make the Bible accurate. I am looking for direct theological, historical, and Biblical evidence that we SHOULD consider double fulfillment as a valid method for interpreting prophecy in its own right.
I would love input from Christians as well as non-Christian Bible experts such as Brian if he is around.
Hopefully hermeneutical method is close enough to "theological, historical, and Biblical evidence?"
Most Christian hermeneutics texts mention the concept of "multiple fulfillment" of prophecy, and see this as valid. E.g.
Bernard Ramm writes:
(
Protestant Biblical Interpretation, Third Revised Edition [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970] ch 10 "The Interpretation of Prophecy")
There is the possibility of
multiple fulfilment. There is a difference between "multiple sense" and "multiple fulfilment." Misunderstanding has arisen due to the failure to distinguish double sense from double fulfilment. ...
Johnson has an extended discussion of
double reference. Double reference is characteristic of all great literature, and the Bible being great literature contains it. Hence deeply buried in the events, persons, and words of the Old Testament are references to events, persons, and words of the New Testament. An Old Testament prophecy may find a fulfilment in a pre-Christian event and later in the Christian period, such as the astonishment of the Jews (Habakkuk 1:5-6), which was fulfilled in the Old Testament with the destructive armies of the Chaldeans and in the New Testament with the salvation of the Gentiles.
Ramm's text is a standard, widely-used hermeneutics text. "Johnson" is
The Quotations of the New Testament from the Old.
™ Version 4.2
