May 3, 2009

Hermeneutical Treatment of "Israel"


In his book, We have heard that God is with You: Preaching the Old Testament (p. 98), Rein Bos notes the following:


“All hermeneutical models teat Israel in one way or another as a symbol or cipher without a theological identity of its own. I discovered the following patterns describing and interpreting the relation between Israel and the church.

-The church has taken over the role of Israel (model of substitution);
-Israel became part of the church as the new people of God (model of integration);
-Israel in Old Testament times was the preliminary phase before the era of the church (model of development);
-Israel is the shadow of the reality of the church (typological model);
-Israel is the negative example as warning for the church (warning model);
-Israel is God’s experimental garden (failure model);
-Israel is an illustration of the generally human (illustration model)."

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